Early 2011 MacBook Pro Heat Issue

[TheBritishBloke]

I've been googling for this for a while but can't seem to find much, so here goes:

Just over the past few months I've noticed my MacBook Pro is getting very hot, when very little is running on the computer. The fans go up to full speed (~6200rpm) just from running a Skype video chat. I'm idling on Safari now with nothing but MacRumors open, my CPU is sitting at 70C and the fans at 3900rpm.

I opened up the case last night, took out the fans and cleaned out a mild amount of dust from around the fans and a little bit scattered around the casing. But this doesn't appear to have made much of an improvement.

I'm going to try completely reinstalling the computer and starting from scratch to see if it has any improvement; but would it be moreso worth just taking this into Apple (under Applecare)? It seems very weird. I've had this machine since new and it's only started doing this over the past few months.

 

[T5BRICK]

You've probably got some process running in the background using a lot of CPU cycles. Try opening activity monitor and see what is running.

 

[snaky69]

I've been googling for this for a while but can't seem to find much, so here goes:

Just over the past few months I've noticed my MacBook Pro is getting very hot, when very little is running on the computer. The fans go up to full speed (~6200rpm) just from running a Skype video chat. I'm idling on Safari now with nothing but MacRumors open, my CPU is sitting at 70C and the fans at 3900rpm.

I opened up the case last night, took out the fans and cleaned out a mild amount of dust from around the fans and a little bit scattered around the casing. But this doesn't appear to have made much of an improvement.

I'm going to try completely reinstalling the computer and starting from scratch to see if it has any improvement; but would it be moreso worth just taking this into Apple (under Applecare)? It seems very weird. I've had this machine since new and it's only started doing this over the past few months.

The culprit is Skype, which is a known resource hog, especially during video chats.

More resources being used = more heat, hence the increased fan activity, your computer is acting normally.

With that said, 70C is not very hot for an intel processor, they can and will reach up to 105C. I would not worry about it at all.

Check activity monitor for a rogue process going nuts, if you see something eating away processor cycles, you have found the problem. Give resetting the SMC a try as well, it has fixed fan issues for others in the past.