2008 MacBook with heat issues

[lisaraby]

Hey there - I have a 2008 aluminum MacBook (NOT the Pro) that I mistakenly upgraded to Mountain Lion (10.8.2) a few weeks ago. Ever since, it's super slow and laggy, and has been running really hot. I have smcFanControl and iStatPro, which both tell me my computer runs around 160F/73C constantly, and the fans never drop lower than 6000RPM. I have roughly 35GB of free space on my hard drive. I keep my Mac propped up on some books, and I even have a fan on it right now, and it's still hot.

All I really do is internet and word processing, as I'm trying to finish my History major. Can anyone think of a reason it would be so hot? Or ridiculously slow, for that matter. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[neilly93]

I have the same Macbook running ML without any issues. What version of OS X did you upgrade from - SL or Lion?

 

[brop52]

I'm using the same machine on Mountain Lion.

Check Activity monitor to look at your page outs and to see how much available RAM there is. Check to see your CPU usage. If your CPU is running at 100% all the time it will be hot. You can also install iStat Pro and set the advanced memory. Take a look at how many page outs you have after a day or two of normal use. If you are paging out, it means you need more RAM. If you don't have enough RAM most processes "page out" to the HDD. Since the HDD is extremely slow (5400 RPM) it can become overcome and is working hard all the time.

 

[jtm77]

I know this is anecdotal however: My 2008 Macbook (2.4g c2d that was promptly taken by my wife after marriage and is still in use by her) does the same thing. If anything "taxing" is running the computer gets very hot to say the least. Even during simple things such as having firefox up with a few tabs, and syncing something to itunes seems to get the temps up.

 

[brop52]

I know this is anecdotal however: My 2008 Macbook (2.4g c2d that was promptly taken by my wife after marriage and is still in use by her) does the same thing. If anything "taxing" is running the computer gets very hot to say the least. Even during simple things such as having firefox up with a few tabs, and syncing something to itunes seems to get the temps up.

I'd be concerned about what exactly is going on in Firefox. Probably Flash causing problems. For iTunes it is CPU intensive so I understand that.

 

[lisaraby]

I upgraded from 10.6. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's the WDSmartWare program that came with my external hard drive. Despite removing every trace of it from my computer, it still pops up all the time at the top of my activity monitor readout.

Activity Monitor says that my CPU usage is btwn 5-20% user, the same in system, and free is whatever's left over. That's with just this Chrome page open, and Skype running in the background. It spikes back and forth though. I don't know where to find the statistic for page out, I have iStatPro, am I missing it?

 

[brop52]

I upgraded from 10.6. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's the WDSmartWare program that came with my external hard drive. Despite removing every trace of it from my computer, it still pops up all the time at the top of my activity monitor readout.

Activity Monitor says that my CPU usage is btwn 5-20% user, the same in system, and free is whatever's left over. That's with just this Chrome page open, and Skype running in the background. It spikes back and forth though. I don't know where to find the statistic for page out, I have iStatPro, am I missing it?

Click the i. Then the "Sections" heading. Then click advanced for memory. It will show you what you want.

 

[lisaraby]

Click the i. Then the "Sections" heading. Then click advanced for memory. It will show you what you want.

Awesome, thanks! It says 189.2mil page ins, and 1.6mil page outs. Is that a lot?

 

[brop52]

No. Doubt you are seeing any performance hit or heat related to RAM. Probably CPU.

 

[lisaraby]

Ok, good to know. Guess I just have to deal with it!

Thanks for all your help - I really appreciate it!!!

 

[Commy1]

Sorry to hear that guys, we all have the same machine and I have nothing to report. I'm running at a cool 43C reported from iStat, OS 10.8.2 Mountain Lion.

When I purchased my machine I gave it a really good cleaning and thought about doing a thermal repaste job on it but I'm not so familiar with Apple products and the size of the Logic Board surprised me, so small! I didn't want to do anything without the research first, it seems as though it's not needed any how.