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Late '06 MacBook runs incredibly hot (>100°C!)

P

pap3rw8

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 22, 2009
4
0
Last night, my macbook (2.0 GHz C2D T7200 with 10.6) overheated and shut itself down while I was watching hulu. It was so hot that it wouldn't boot for several minutes. After it finally started, I went back to hulu and started watching the CPU temperature in iStat. It hovered between 75° and 90°C but quickly climbed to 102°, at which point I quit Safari. Until yesterday, the highest temperature I had seen was 92°.

Should I be worried about a load temperature this high? I looked around the forum and didn't see anyone mention temps above the low 90's. Is there anything I can/should do?

BTW, my idle temps seem to be the same as ever. The CPU is at 59° right now and floats between 56-64° during everyday tasks.
 
miles01110 said:
Are the fans not running or something? Sounds like a hardware failure.
Click to expand...
I hear the fans going and I feel them blowing hot air, but maybe they're starting to fail. Would it be worth opening the case and checking the fans out?
 
Interesting. Mine is also a late 2006 MB. A few months ago the fans stopped spinning fast enough and the computer kept overheating if I tried to do anything fun and processor intensive. But it wouldn't go to 100º. It rarely made it to 90º before the computer shut itself off to protect itself.

A few weeks ago I did a reset of the SMC and a few days later the fans started spinning again. Before this I couldn't even use a utility to force them to spin at the max speed. Now they are forced to 6200RPM and I haven't had it overheat yet.
 
mrboult said:
I would try an SMC Reset. I think this has helped a few people who had CPUs running hot after the SL Upgrade.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1411
Click to expand...

I did the reset about an hour ago and I think it helped a little. Now, the temp rapidly spikes to 90-100°C under high CPU load but quickly (almost instantly) drops back down to normal levels once the load falls. I blasted the vents with canned air but not much dust actually came out. That also didn't seem to affect the temps.

Any more ideas? I'm about ready to pop this thing open and clean the hell out of it.

Thanks for the help so far!
 
I'd say it's dust has taken over your MacBook. If you hear your fan spinning, they're working like they should be but dust is preventing it from cooling down the computer. A good cleaning is in order.
 
Resolved

I disassembled the macbook last night and solved the heat issue. It turns out that the heat sink was pretty loose. Every screw holding it to the board was loose and it had about 1-2mm of free motion. I tightened all the screws and gave everything a quick cleaning for good measure. After I put it back together, I did a stress test and the temperature was back to normal.


I'm going to regrease the proc later since air bubbles undoubtedly formed while the heat sink was loose.
 
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