Firefox causing MBP to overheat?

[SamNeeds]

Hello -

I started up Firefox tonight and within about 10 mins the laptop was actually starting to get uncomfortable to sit on my lap... I downloaded a temperature application and it was at about 75-80 celcius...which to me is too hot.

I had a quick look at the Activity Monitor and found Firefox was using an absolute chunk of CPU. I shut Firefox down and within 5 mins it had dropped a load and was pretty cool.

Is this a known issue with Firefox? The only thing I can think this would be, in respect to web browsing, would be flash, as not much else can cause CPU to be used that much...

 

[robert05au]

How much cpu does firefox take up when this happens?

Which version of firefox?

What if any other apps where running at the time?

My imac just having firefox 3.5.6 runs at between 39-42 degrees C

Do the fans seem to run hard when this happens?

Which version of flash player do you have installed?

 

[SamNeeds]

Latest version of Firefox and was using over 100%. Couldn't hear fans that loud but was getting very, very hot. Once Firefox was closed, it cooled down and that was that.

 

[SamNeeds]

Morning all,

Does anyone else experience the issue?

From what I can tell it is a known issue that Mozilla offer advice on. Simply put, it would seem that with Firefox has problems with Flash; the result being abnormally high CPU usage, which would obviously account for the volcanic CPU thermals!

Anyway, I'm fairly confident this is the crux of the problem and will starting using FlashBlock to limit the amount of Flash resources the CPU has to put up with.

 

[dbwie]

It affects Safari as well. Flash seems to be the culprit, not the browsers themselves, from what I have seen.

 

[SamNeeds]

In many respects, it's a naf bit of software...

 

[maflynn]

flash is usually the cause for safari or firefox to spike the temps and cpu usage. I don't think it matters if we're talking about a Mac or a PC. I use a pc at work and find that firefox causes my cpu to spike on flash based sites as well.