MacBook Core Duo dies under stress

[MultiFinder17]

My trusty old MacBook has recently taken to dying when put under stress. Whether it is watching something on netflix, installing a large software update, or anything like that, it will do it for a minute or two, then just shut off. Often when I reboot it, it will kernel panic halfway though booting, then the next time I restart it it'll be fine. Any ideas at all?

 

[alust2013]

It probably isn't getting cooled well enough and just overheats and automatically shuts down. I'd check to make sure the fan is working, and if so, it may need new thermal paste, or at least cleaning from dust.

 

[Blondie :)]

You could also install smcfancontrol on your machine and raise the default speed of your fans so that you can cool it down a little bit more.

 

[MultiFinder17]

I think I may have nailed it. It had just come back from a repair at the Apple Store when this started, so I opened it up to take a peek around. Removing the heatsink, there were gobs and gobs of heatsink compound under there. I cleaned it all off, reapplied, and after a good bit of stress testing (a pair of 1080p youtube streams going and flooring the machine), it seems to be responding well again. We'll see if it holds up in the long run though.