Mac book getting hot

[jpski36]

I have had my mac book for about 2 years now. I have noticed lately that it seems to be getting hotter when running than it use to and along with that i am getting decreased battery life. I was wondering if anyone knew of ways that effectively clear out the air vents to possibly make it run cooler.

JP

 

[broken-chaos]

Sounds like it's a problem with an application taking up a lot of CPU time, not a problem with the venting.

Open up Activity Monitor, turn it into All Processes mode, and sort by CPU usage. Look for something taking up high amounts of CPU constantly. This is by far the most likely culprit when it comes to increased heat and decreased battery life - some application misbehaving.

 

[Richard1028]

What version of OSX are you using? 10.5? 10.6?

 

[brn2ski00]

What version of OSX are you using? 10.5? 10.6?

Same question I have.

I noticed that my MB runs cooler on SL - by a long shot.

 

[Richard1028]

Same question I have.

I noticed that my MB runs cooler on SL - by a long shot.

Well that's different. I'm wondering if the upgrade to SL didn't purge something out of your MB that was causing it to run hotter before. Most are reporting increased temps with SL. Mine has been running about 10F hotter (Sorry UK, I refuse to do Celsius). Fans are spinning faster too.

Other than that, I'm OK.

 

[brn2ski00]

Well that's different. I'm wondering if the upgrade to SL didn't purge something out of your MB that was causing it to run hotter before. Most are reporting increased temps with SL. Mine has been running about 10F hotter (Sorry UK, I refuse to do Celsius). Fans are spinning faster too.

Other than that, I'm OK.

Must have been that then, because other than YouTube videos being choppy in SL, the upgrade has actually helped my machine.

 

[KielderWolf]

...about 10F hotter (Sorry UK, I refuse to do Celsius)...

I'm up here in Sunderland [UK] and pretty much nobody here uses centigrade or celsius or whatever the European's are wanting to call it now. If you want to know how hot it is I can tell you it's 52º out there; and nobody is dying of heatstroke because it's Fahrenheit.

To the OP

I agree with earlier posters; sounds like a bad process. Open System Monitor and kill anything hogging CPU time, and just hope it isn't a main system process!

 

[patohi]

Hi.

Just yesterday my gf's mackbook ver 3,1 bought 2 years ago, started getting real hot and very sluggish(she was netflix streaming). I opened activity monitor and it showed high system use 40-50 percent but no programs or the finder for that matter were all at 0-2%. I did a restart and everything was fine(web browsing) but then again at some point got hot and fan speed went up sluggish again . So went into activity this time it was user at 40-50% but nothing was open .... Whats up??? everything is up to date as of 9/14/09 running 10.5.8. Is this software or hardware? Maybe I should update to SL???

Thanks

 

[Richard1028]

I'm up here in Sunderland [UK] and pretty much nobody here uses centigrade or celsius or whatever the European's are wanting to call it now.

Well, you sure can't tell by the posts here at MR. Almost everything seems to be given in celsius.

I wonder if people "this side of the pond" know you can change this in iStat?

I agree with earlier posters; sounds like a bad process.

Yeah but the CPU is typically the source for heat so that's not saying much IMO. (unless something's broke of course).

Personally, I suspect it has everything to do with SL and Flash. Then again, I'm at a cool 79F right now so what the hell do I know?