fan going wild! macbook alu late 2008

[ismailoe]

hi,

i have a macbook late 2008 unibody aluminium. since 1 or 2 month i hear my fan a more often than before, so today i installed smcFanControl to check whats going on.

when i reboot the macbook the cpu is at 40-50 C and the fan runs at 1800rpm.
than i start google chrome and iphoto 11 and when i browse some pictures, immediately the heat goes up to 70-80C and some seconds later the fan runs at 6000-6500 rpm! and it sound like a starting airplane....

is that normal? is my macbook to old to run google chrome and iphoto?

i have 2ghz and 2gb ram. just the standard configuration.

any advice???

 

[spinnerlys]

Have a look at Activity Monitor ( Applications / Utilities / ) and select All Processes and sort by CPU to see what the culprit may be.

image below uses sorting by CPU as an example

And no, your MacBook is not too old to run such software. I have even older Macs which can run that software. Hmm.

Might be Flash related, thus the CPU gets more used and needs more power and gets hotter, thus the fans start to spin faster.

Btw, the following might help: Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

 

[ismailoe]

thank you!

i checked the activity monitor and it says that finder and iphoto are running at 90%

!?!?

weird stuff

 

[spinnerlys]

thank you!

i checked the activity monitor and it says that finder and iphoto are running at 90%

!?!?

weird stuff

Finder might run at 90% because it renders "previews" of the icons. You can disable that via "Show View Options" (Command + J) > "Show icon preview". Or you could just close all Finder windows once via Command + Option + W to remedy that. Sometimes Finder does that.
Why iPhoto is that CPU hungry I don't know, as I don't use it. Maybe it is rendering previews too?

 

[ismailoe]

iphoto went down to 10-15%. Seems that it was detecting faces or so.
i closed al finder windows like said, but finder goes up to 90%again after some seconds...

my fan is runnin now at 6500rpm since i startet this thread, and i did nothing with the macbook! just posting here and following your advices...

 

[ismailoe]

the fan has gone down to the regular 1800rpm (just chrome is running)

but the cpu has still 70 C

thats much too hot, isnt it?

 

[spinnerlys]

the fan has gone down to the regular 1800rpm (just chrome is running)

but the cpu has still 70 C

thats much too hot, isnt it?

No, it's not. The CPU can take up to 105° C, therefore the 70° C you get are okay.

 

[Creebe]

I've actually had this sort of problem with my first macbook (mid 2008). It was actually due to a pending printing job. Not sure if it's your situation though.

 

[ismailoe]

i´ll see how this goes on the next couple of days.
perhaps a clean install of osx would be the best, but it would take at least a day to get back everything...

 

[vukmaxim]

the fan has gone down to the regular 1800rpm (just chrome is running)

but the cpu has still 70 C

thats much too hot, isnt it?

With the same settings, Fan Control 1800 rpm base speed, and only Chrome running with 4 tabs opened, I am at 48 C!
I get 70 - 74 C when rendering movies in iMovie or recording in Garageband!
Never seen temperature went beyond 74 C, even with Photobooth and Garageband recording the same event!
Can you post Fan Control set up?

 

[ismailoe]

what do you mean with fan control setup? here is a screenshot from the activity monitor + fan data on top. 60-65 C

 

[vukmaxim]

what do you mean with fan control setup? here is a screenshot from the activity monitor + fan data on top. 60-65 C

Open SMC fan control from System Preferences, there you can raise the base fan speed, and also you can adjust the temperature point when your fan will kick in!
Here is my set up