Constant load on 2012 Mini

[EmmEff]

I am running Mojave on my 2012 Mini and observe there’s constant load, which is seemingly caused by kernel_task. The machine might run for weeks without an issue but then something triggers it and kernel_task starts consuming CPU. A reboot immediately resolves the issue.

Does this ring a bell with anybody? I’ve been chasing this bug forever and while not a huge deal, it’s seemingly robbing interactive system performance.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

It is quite a normal bug, and you will find thousands of entries on Google on it. Why it happens is anyones question. Sometimes a reinstall of the system helps, sometimes it does not.

 

[saudor]

how big is the load. my kernel_task goes up whenever i switch audio sources and toggling wifi off and on fixes it

 

[EmmEff]

With nothing running, except Activity Monitor, kernel_task is consuming about 7% CPU. My 1/5/15m load averages from a shell prompt are around 4. Toggling wifi doesn't seem to have an effect, neither does logging off/on. All users on the system are affected.

I am tempted to upgrade to Catalina.

 

[saudor]

I think i figured out my issue. I had some 3rd party kexts left over in my /Library/Extensions (i think it was lulu, the network filter app). Once i removed that and the other 3rd party kexts, i havent seen it get loaded (mine hovered around 17%) When i looked at the console app, i saw a lot of network related stuff so starting eliminating other potential culprits. These things are often third party stuff. Id check your launchagents in both your ~/Library, /Library, etc as well as Launchdaemon folders to see if useless stuff is loaded on startup

Catalina was worse for me. I did a clean install and the deleted process kept using 30% constantly and only a restart would fix it. Apparently it has something to do with stuck caches. On both my systems, WindowServer took way more CPU from simply scrolling Safari (I hardly ever saw 90%+ idles in catalina) and this was with a clean install. Again, maybe some of my apps didnt like catalina - who knows

 

[EmmEff]

This was a fresh installation on a new SSD in early 2019, so I don't have remnants. Just to be sure, I checked things out and the only kext there was for the Intel Power Gadget I installed in an attempt to diagnose this issue as some said it was related to CPU overheating.

I did clean out some Adobe stuff but so far that doesn't seem to make a difference.

I am bothered by the amount of CPU time and threads used by kernel_task.