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dieseltwitch

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 24, 2008
142
0
I have the pre-unibody macbook pro (i can take my battery out) I got my laptop a few weeks before xmas 08' and im have some issues with heat. I have the SMC Fan Control and laptop seams to be running really hot right now im at 148*F degs (down from 190*F) and I've had the fans running at full speed now for 30 min and it doesnt seam to be cooling down at all. im not doing anything taxing at all. just some very slight internet use. Im drawing almost 3.25 Amps doing nothing? how is this possible? The current doesn't seam to change even when i turn the fans off. what the heck is going on? I reset my SMC some time ago. should I do it again? this has turned my 4 hr battery into a 1:30 min battery!
 
If your machine is running super hot why on earth would you want to control the fans. That's like draining your car's radiator on a really hot day in stop-and-go traffic.

Run activity monitor to see which processes are using up so much of the CPU.
 
If your machine is running super hot why on earth would you want to control the fans. That's like draining your car's radiator on a really hot day in stop-and-go traffic.

Run activity monitor to see which processes are using up so much of the CPU.

I'm sorry i wasn't clear with what i wrote. i used the fan control to see how fan speed would affect my power draw. and i also set my fan speed at max and the thresholds at the lowest possible level. (so the fan runs at a high speed for a lower temp.
the fans speed begins to rise at 104* rather then the 140* stock setting. and the fans hit their max speed at a lower temp , they hit 6000 RPMs at 158* rather then 180* stock setting.
I also turned up the base speed to 3500 rpm rather then the 2400 rpm stock setting.
does this make sense now?
 
If running Activity Monitor doesn't tell you anything useful the most concrete test you can do is a fresh install of the OS and don't load any extra software. Then do the EXACT same task(s) that currently tax your MBP and see what happens.

The only thing I would suggest you load would be the iStat Pro widget so you can monitor the temps. Don't load SMC because if you have to take it to Apple they could say your fan control software is messing things up.

If the fresh install fixes things DO NOT clone your old drive back over because that could copy over whatever caused the issue you were having.
 
If running Activity Monitor doesn't tell you anything useful the most concrete test you can do is a fresh install of the OS and don't load any extra software. Then do the EXACT same task(s) that currently tax your MBP and see what happens.

The only thing I would suggest you load would be the iStat Pro widget so you can monitor the temps. Don't load SMC because if you have to take it to Apple they could say your fan control software is messing things up.

If the fresh install fixes things DO NOT clone your old drive back over because that could copy over whatever caused the issue you were having.

I actually am just running the bare bones os. the only thing I have running is Safari. and system profiler, and fan control. I thought what you said that maybe i loaded some random stuff that ate up my power. but this time around its doing the same thing. could it be a bad battery that is overheating the rest of the machine through the conduction of the case?

Looking at my activity monitor.
At this moment i have:
238 threads
59 Processes
80% of that is the user
20% is the System
Im drawing 2.73 Amps and I'm plugged in and my core temp is at 151 and holding stead the fan is at 5580 RPMs.

Safari is using 14 threads and .5 to 2% of the cpu and 88 MB of Real Memory
Kernel_task is using 59 threads and 5 to 10% of the cpu and 67 MB of Real Memory

I also noticed something odd. ATSServer is using 190% of the cpu? how does that work? lol
 
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