listen to these knobs, I have my late model 2013 operating on one (right hand) fan right now, multiple tabs open and it's never been so quiet since I disconnected the noisy (left) fan.
Its perfectly possible they added two fan son the pro model to keep the noise down. (two fans at low speeds quieter than 1 fan at high speed right?)
-At the end of the day it's still got a lot of heat sink ducting and the other fan will draw the heat away.
My noisy fan left must have been generating a lot of heat, because the left one ibarelya whisper right now, and lately theyve been spinning up hard.
No okay so I'm only running chrome right now with 20 something tabs open.. but man, it's not even warm.
You know how hot it gets, when it gets really hot...
But everyone on the net is an ultra conservative nutless wonder when it comes to spouting off about "what the correct thing to do is".
This is y advice.... you know how hot is hot. by feel.So if it starts to feel real hot, shut down all those extra apps... just run the one thing your using... try to use it in the shade, or in an air conditioned room, on a cool, hard surface as much as possible.
( Maybe not on your lap in bed if you're going to run anythig hard core.)
These things boards are populated by putting them in in an oven hot nough to melt solder.
So just think about that.
Just trust your instincts and dont push it to hard... if you've got a cooler pad or whatever all the better.
In general warm is fine, anywhere near to hot to touch is not a good idea...
Just go easy on it and dont run to many intensive apps at the same time...
Mine is absolutely fine on one fan right now...whisper quiet and not even warm.
(I also just cleaned out the fans and removed all the dust bunnies etc, which has probably helped)
you could even get an app to watch your temp sensors... they exist...
Best of luck.