Macbook Pro Heating

[w00t951]

I was just browsing the internet (mostly Gamereplays and Mac Rumors) and noticed that the CPU was at 150-170F, but the only things running were Finder and Safari. The CPU usage was 1%, and the NVIDIA integrated card was running at 140-170. Does this mean that there is too much thermal paste on my computer's processor, because I have seen this happen, or is it just something that happens because you are browsing the internet? Oh, and iTunes was running in the background playing music, not downloading anything or processing anything. Any ideas? I do have the ability to open the computer and scrape any thermal paste off myself, so it doesn't matter if the solution is DIY or Apple Retail Store level. I have the late 2008 Unibody Macbook Pro, 2.53 GHz, NVIDIA 9600 with 512, and the 5200RPM 320 GB disk.

 

[bli625]

I have my computer right now.. surfing the internet with iTunes on and it's at 115F. What are your surroundings like? In the morning when it's warmer, my computer is usually at around 140F with the integrated card. The ambient temperature affects your computer temperature a lot.

 

[m85476585]

I find it hard to believe the CPU use was 1%. Itunes uses 1-3% by itself playing music (MP3s at least, don't know about AAC files). Safari uses some CPU time while rendering pages, but it shouldn't be too much. Did you watch any flash videos? Those take a lot of CPU/GPU power, especially the HD ones.

Open Activity Monitor and set it to show all processes, and go to view->columns->CPU Time and check it if it is not already checked. Watch it occasionally to see if there is something working in the background. CPU time is cumulative since the last reboot, so that's a quick way to check for the worst offender.

If you have a thermal grease problem, the CPU/GPU will get very hot (over 100C/212F) during heavy use. Try this to stress your CPU:

Start terminal
Run the following:

$python
>>>while 1:
...    i=1+1
...          (press enter)

then open a new tab (command+t) and repeat. You need two tabs since you have a dual-code CPU. By the way, "$", ">>>", and "...' are the prompt symbols, so don't type those in. The tab before i=1+1 is very important, and the line after it has to be blank, but you need to press enter before the script starts. To stop it, just quit terminal. There's an app called CPUTest that does the same thing, but you might as well use something that's already built-in.

 

[miles01110]

Currently I'm running at 10-15% CPU and my temperature reporting software is saying 50C.