Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

JTSmeed

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 25, 2009
61
1
As the title says, my fans are running at 100% since I upgraded to Catalina. Initially, I thought it was just due to Photos analyzing my library which took nearly 36 hours. With that done, the only significant apps using CPU are coreaudiod (no audio is playing, so I’m not sure why it is using 10+% of CPU), backupd (time machine backup is running) at around 40% and occasional spikes with Mail using up to 40%.

This is on a 2018 MacBook Pro with the 6 core Core i9, 32GB Ram, 2TB SSD.

In iStats Menu, it is showing temps of around 100° for some of the CPU cores. It has been doing this since I upgraded shortly after it was available.

Anyone else experience these symptoms or have any ideas as to how to get it to behave as expected? Should I be worried about premature wear on any components at these temps?
 

n-evo

macrumors 68000
Aug 9, 2013
1,765
1,483
Amsterdam
Should I be worried about premature wear on any components at these temps?
Don't worry. Your Mac will shut down if it's running in excess of what it can handle temperature-wise.

Anyway, the fans of my MacBook Pro went up when it was still in the process of doing all sorts of things right after installation too. Just shut your down Mac once you're done loading your pictures, Time Machine, etc. and start it up again. Things should be fine. If not you can always try a PRAM reset.
 
Last edited:

JTSmeed

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 25, 2009
61
1
Anyway, the fans of my MacBook Pro went up when it was still in the process of doing all sorts of things right after installation too. Just shut down your Mac once you're done loading your pictures, Time Machine, etc. and start it up again. Things should be fine. If not you can always try a PRAM reset.

I have shut it down at the end of each work day and it just ramps back up the next time I start it. I’ve also reset the SMC and PRAM to no avail.
 

JTSmeed

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 25, 2009
61
1
That is odd. Does the same thing happen on a newly created user account?
Interestingly enough, it does not. CPU temps are hotter at around 150°F in a fresh user account, but the fans are barely running at around 2000 RPM.
 

n-evo

macrumors 68000
Aug 9, 2013
1,765
1,483
Amsterdam
This is pretty much the reason why I do a clean installation when a new major version of Mac OS Mac OS X OS X macOS is released. You can see if you or someone else here can find the culprit within your current user account, which might take a while. Move over to a new user account. Or back-up your data, reinstall macOS and your apps and move back your files. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.
 
Last edited:

JTSmeed

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 25, 2009
61
1
Well after trying a whole lot of troubleshooting, I came to the conclusion that there were too many bugs in my upgraded Catalina install. I have decided to do a clean install and NOT restore from Time Machine. I have been upgrading using this Time Machine backup when I got new mac’s ever since I can remember and I guess it has accumulated enough junk to cause problems. So far, everything is working as expected with the fresh install. Thanks all for the insights and advice.
 

VineRider

macrumors 65816
May 24, 2018
1,337
1,149
Well after trying a whole lot of troubleshooting, I came to the conclusion that there were too many bugs in my upgraded Catalina install. I have decided to do a clean install and NOT restore from Time Machine. I have been upgrading using this Time Machine backup when I got new mac’s ever since I can remember and I guess it has accumulated enough junk to cause problems. So far, everything is working as expected with the fresh install. Thanks all for the insights and advice.
I had the same problem on my MacBook Pro. Clean install solved it for me as well.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.