Aluminium Macbook, Memory, Heat, Speed, Response time issues. Help?

[tongteh]

I have got the 2.4ghz aluminium macbook, and I upgraded the ram to 4GB about a 2 months back. I have always felt that my macbook is slower now than before the upgrade(which is strange), but recently the situation became worst. My macbook would randomly heats up very quickly, iStats pro would show me that i only have 1-10MB of free memory, my fan would be running on 6200rpm. response rate would be much slower, and circle of rainbow also occurs much more often..

I get panic whenever this happens(i have only got my macbook for 5-months), so when that happens i usually try to quit those application that i am not using like mail, safari, iwork 09 and etc. It didn't really help much(or maybe not at all) until at some point(around about 30-45mins) the systems automatically cools down, reduce fan speed and etc but similar problem would happen again in 30mins.

it's true i have more applications now, more background apps, and more plug-ins as well but they shouldn't be taking too much of my memory. I am really afraid that my macbook might probably got affected by a virus or some sort(i came from a windows background). I have tried reading stuff on ram, paging in, out, cpu but most of them are too technical so i couldn't get much out of it.

What i really want to know now is;

1) what's responsible for the heat increased in my macbook? the cpu usage? the ram? or??
2) why when i quit some applications, my free memory doesn't free up?
3) am i running too many applications? is the background applications taking up too many spaces?
4) is virtual memory more important than real memory or via versa?
5) Should i delete applications that i don't use often?
6) What can i do?
7) What's happening to my macbook?

Please let me know if i have missed something, or if there's something i am not aware of, or if you need more screenshot pictures. thank you very much now, I would appreciate any help..

 

[tongteh]

here are some shots of my common applications, and background apps.

 

[misterredman]

take a look here for your questions about inactive/free memory:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/142719/

You should not worry about the memory from what I see in your screenshots.

As far as the eat is concerned, it mostly depends on the CPU usage. I see from your screenshots that you are using almost 50% of the CPU which is enough to explain the fan spinning up. I would check the CPU usage of the apps you have opened to see if there is something wrong there (like apps using too many CPU cycles when idle, in which case you may want to close them when not in use).

 

[tongteh]

hey, i had a read on the thread you suggest and i must say thanks alot, it gave me alot more information on memory patterns in OSX.. while on this topic, what exactly is SWAP anyway??

So what you are saying is that if i could somehow manage to reduce my CPU usage, then my macbook wouldn't be slow, or heats up? is that right? am i safe to assume my mac doesn't have any virus?

 

[g3funk]

SWAP memory is a chunk of "virtual memory." On Linux and Unix OS's you needed to cut a little bit of your HD into what was called swap in order for programs to use it to swap data into it when not in direct use. So when items get pushed in and out of memory they usually will reside in the swap space for a certain amount of time. It is a little confusing but think of a parking garage (swap space) and roads (memory). The cars (data) go where they are suppose to but when they become dormant they chill for a while in the parking garage. Yep I know it was a bad analogy but it works. Ciao.

 

[tongteh]

hmm.. still don't quite get it.. but focusing back on my problem, anyone manage to see a problem in my screenshots?? thanks

 

[g3funk]

What was the brand of the ram you swapped in? How much space do you have left on your HD? One thing that flags me is the crazy amount of unread items you have on your rss reader. Is safari safari 4b? How many tabs are open in safari? Questions like this are incredibly hard to come to a specific answer especially since we can not sit right there and see the computer. Do your fans spin up when you have mail open, safari, itunes, hit list, and one or so other apps. There is no need to have that many apps up and running either.

 

[SelfMadeCelo]

Is TuneUp always using that much CPU?

 

[DPB17]

63º is fine for the CPU to operate at, you should only worry when it hits around the 80º mark. If the fans are annoying you try SMC Fan Control to regulate the speed.

 

[DPB17]

Here is a comparison of my, reasonably perfect, 2.4 AluBook with yours-(mines on the right)

 

[tongteh]

What was the brand of the ram you swapped in? How much space do you have left on your HD? One thing that flags me is the crazy amount of unread items you have on your rss reader. Is safari safari 4b? How many tabs are open in safari? Questions like this are incredibly hard to come to a specific answer especially since we can not sit right there and see the computer. Do your fans spin up when you have mail open, safari, itunes, hit list, and one or so other apps. There is no need to have that many apps up and running either.

I have the transcend 2x 2GB ram(2gb memory modue std 204p ddr3 so-dimm[256mx64][128x8/ddr31066/7-7-7] [LG]). is it a good ram?? cause i got it relatively cheap..

I have 107/200GB usage of HDD space. NetnewsWires is giving me quite a lot of trouble, i haven't really figure out how to use it so i don't check it often but however i do check my newsgator(on safari). i probably shouldn't use netnewswire until i figure how it works.

yup, i am using safari 4b. i am a big fan of tabs, most of the time i would have up to 15-20tabs opened. the fans occasionally would spin up even when not much application is running.. So you suggest i should quit those applications i am not using like iCal, iPhoto and etc?

Is TuneUp always using that much CPU?

the picture isn't really much, i have seen it used up to 100+..

Here is a comparison of my, reasonably perfect, 2.4 AluBook with yours-(mines on the right)

Did you just restart your macbook?? cause you have 0 page-out.. you are running very few applications from that screenshot..

 

[tongteh]

63º is fine for the CPU to operate at, you should only worry when it hits around the 80º mark. If the fans are annoying you try SMC Fan Control to regulate the speed.

There my CPU usage is on 30-50, my fan is on 3500-4000rpm, and CPU temp is at ~70.. is this okay??? its close to 80℃

 

[natebookpro]

I see Tuneup is taking up 1/3 of your cpu. I have used this program before and while it is great at what it does, it takes up a lot of resources. I believe if you go to Library>iTunes>iTunes Plug-ins and delete the Tuneup plug-in it will make it so it does not automatically open with iTunes. Give that a shot, it might help.

 

[arnette]

Sounds like a typical case of 'bad RAM'. You'll need to uninstall the RAM and get new sticks. I would stay away from the cheapy stuff... but occasionally even the more reliable brands have problems. I've never had a bad experience with Crucial.

 

[tongteh]

take a look here for your questions about inactive/free memory:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/142719/

You should not worry about the memory from what I see in your screenshots.

As far as the eat is concerned, it mostly depends on the CPU usage. I see from your screenshots that you are using almost 50% of the CPU which is enough to explain the fan spinning up. I would check the CPU usage of the apps you have opened to see if there is something wrong there (like apps using too many CPU cycles when idle, in which case you may want to close them when not in use).

Sounds like a typical case of 'bad RAM'. You'll need to uninstall the RAM and get new sticks. I would stay away from the cheapy stuff... but occasionally even the more reliable brands have problems. I've never had a bad experience with Crucial.

Can i ask how to justify a good or bad ram?? since now i have two comments contradicting each other... I was convinced that my ram is alright after reading the link given above, but now not so sure anymore..

 

[misterredman]

The two posts are not contradicting each other. We are talking about different issues.

What I was talking about is the way OS X manage the memory. You were worried about the small amount of free memory. If you read the post i linked above you will see that inactive memory is almost the same as free memory, since it is available to the system to use: that is you have enough RAM, despite the free % is small.

I personally don't think it is a bad RAM problem (i.e. a problem with the sticks you added), but it may be worth testing it to be sure. Bad RAM is more prone causing freezing or kernel panics than a simple slow down, but again, is better to be sure, especially since you said the problems started after the RAM upgrade. Look here on a way to do it:

http://www.command-tab.com/2008/01/11/how-to-test-ram-under-mac-os-x/

You mentioned that you saw 100% CPU usage some time. You need to find out what is using the CPU cycles. That is a major cause of slow down and heating.

 

[tongteh]

i left my macbook running the test(memtest all) the whole night, and the report said my memory is good... but i am really not convinced..

my mail occasionally crash during start up(circle of rainbow), does yours?

when i am on safari, i tend to open multiple tabs. After i've open new tab and want to get to that tab, it usually slows my mac or sometimes even become unresponsive for 2-3secs(circle of rainbow).

Opening a new application may sometimes cause my mac to be unresponsive for 3-5secs(circle of rainbow to the newly lunched application)

that's all i can remember now.. are these an indication to bad ram??

 

[tongteh]

Update: should i be worry at 88C???

 

[misterredman]

Update: should i be worry at 88C???

Don't think you should. You are almost using the CPU at full power, it's normal to have the mac heat up! Usually once the fan spin up the temperature stop increasing.


Did you run memtest for at least 3 passes? If it reported nothing your best way to tell if there is a problem is to remove the new sticks and put the originals inside.

Can you check the status of your HD in disk utilites? Is it SMART verified?

 

[tongteh]

Don't think you should. You are almost using the CPU at full power, it's normal to have the mac heat up! Usually once the fan spin up the temperature stop increasing.


Did you run memtest for at least 3 passes? If it reported nothing your best way to tell if there is a problem is to remove the new sticks and put the originals inside.

Can you check the status of your HD in disk utilites? Is it SMART verified?

the status of my hard disc is verified.. hmm, i am not sure if i went through 3 passes.. i just key in memtest all and went to sleep.. the next morning it says ok, and during boot up my mail crash..

Ohh.. once my macbook is loaded up(where all the start up applications are trying to load themselves after boot), is it bad that i use safari, mail and etc?? cause it's really slow when i do that..

thanks for helping me again tho..

 

[xraydoc]

To the OP - is your Mac's processors always at 40% or more??
First, this will cause your computer to heat up, the fans to fun near full and kill your battery life. Secondly, it will cause several of the slow-downs you describe, and third, if your computer is hitting 30% while sitting idle, then something you've installed (barring OS corruption) is really screwed up. There's no reason a computer at idle should be hitting 30%.
If you're using up 4GB within hours of starting your computer, some app has a serious memory leak.


Edit: Completely remove all traces of TuneUp and reboot. It's crap. Serious crap.

 

[g3funk]

Transcend is an amazing company when it comes to flash drives and flash based items however, I do not trust them on the memory front. You did a memtest and it finished so all is good on that front so we are looking at a separate issue. Why not try and blow everything away and start from the beginning. I know this is not a good option but might easily fix the problems (if they still exist) and take no more then 3-4 hours. You are definitely experiencing something that is not the norm, and you are definitely in the right place, with good people to get to the bottom of it all.

 

[tongteh]

alright... i did a couple of things last night to hope that everything would return to normal..

1) i ran oNyx and clear up most of my cache(history, data, and etc), disk repair, variefy, and most of oNyx's offering.
2) i ran the mem test again, but this time i did a three phases(memtest all 3), the result was "all ok"
3) i uninstalled safari 4 beta and went back to 3 instead.

i just got my system running, it feels like things are a little better but i am not too sure yet.. i will update soon.

i was planning to disable auto launch for tuneup, but when i am in library/itunes/itunes pluggin. i have nothing in there, so i really don't know how to disable it now.. On top of that. i really don't feel like uninstalling it, since i paid A$30 to it.

xraydoc, i don't quite get what you mean by idle.. if you mean when i am not doing anything resources intensive then my cpu would be around to 1-10%. But under istatpro's CPU section i notice there is "User", "System", "Nice" and "Idle". If you mean this "Idle", then i haven't really see it drop below 80%(it's always 80-95%).. So is everything alright??

g3funk, can i keep your solution as last resort... i really don't feel like starting everything over.. i dunno how troublesome it is on MAC OS X, but when i was back in windows it can take up the whole day(ranging from formating, backuping, restore backup, updates, drivers, restart, updates, restart and so on and on).... I have time machine btw, would that help if i were to really decide to start from scratch?

since now i'm pretty much sure that my memory is good, should i uninstalled the package from memtest? or no harm leaving it there?

thanks..

EDIT: looking back at my previous attachments, i find that the CPU's "Idle" is always around 45-50%, why is it above 80% now? Strange....

 

[misterredman]

Hi!
If your idle (the cycles you are not using) is at 80% or above it means that the CPU usage is around 20% or lower, which is good. This is true if you are not doing anything intensive of course (like when you leave the mac turned on without using it, which we call sitting idle).

I would try uninstalling TuneUp, to see if it is the cause of the problem. You should be able to reinstall it later if you paid for it.

To uninstall here are the instructions from the TuneUp support site:

How do I uninstall the Mac version
We're sorry to see you go. TuneUp has an uninstaller which didn't work on Beta versions. The uninstaller is located under /Users/"YourUserName"/Library/Logs/TuneUp Uninstaller.app Launch that and it will walk you through the steps...

By the way, since how long are you using TuneUp? Because at the beginning of its use it is known for using a huge amount of resources.

 

[tongteh]

Hi!
If your idle (the cycles you are not using) is at 80% or above it means that the CPU usage is around 20% or lower, which is good. This is true if you are not doing anything intensive of course (like when you leave the mac turned on without using it, which we call sitting idle).

I would try uninstalling TuneUp, to see if it is the cause of the problem. You should be able to reinstall it later if you paid for it.

To uninstall here are the instructions from the TuneUp support site:

By the way, since how long are you using TuneUp? Because at the beginning of its use it is known for using a huge amount of resources.

I just got it for 4 days, so i have been using it a lot to add coverart and correct my musics.. the new version is able to turn off the auto-launching(which i just realise), I would say it's really not that annoying anymore..

after using my macbook the whole day today, i got the feeling that my macbook is relatively more stable now compare to before the cleaning(oNyx)..

Is it just me or when you are backing up(time-machine), the macbook tends to heat up pretty quick?

the latest attachment is without tuneup running.. but Finder, Mail, Netnewswire, times, safari(5 tabs), ical, the hit list, itunes, iclip lyrics(awesome app), skype, adium, simplify media, quicksilver, alarm, and jaadu connect is running tho. so am i running too many application?