MacbookPro 15" 2016 Overheating

[Jreinhal]

I received my 2016 15" MacBook Pro this past Wednesday. Ive been noticing some fairly high heat coming from the chassis both directly above the TouchBar and at the bottom of the computer, underneath where the Touch Bar is. It would seem the TouchBar is put out a lot of heat. Is anyone else experiencing this issue? I feel as though it's responsible for the fairly rapid battery drain Im experiencing.

Thank you

 

[xraydoc]

Use Activity Monitor and let us know what the CPU % load is when the computer is heating up.

 

[deadworlds]

Also, what kind of programs are you using when this happens?

 

[entropi]

well, dGPU!

 

[Jreinhal]

Here is what I got as the forward section of the computer began to heat up. Everything from the TouchBar up to the base of the screen because very hot.

 

[kevinkyoo]

Here is what I got as the forward section of the computer began to heat up. Everything from the TouchBar up to the base of the screen because very hot.

Well, TIL that Photos eats up CPU% like no other. Try force quitting and using your computer for everything else, and let us know what happens.

 

[Jreinhal]

Here is what Im at with Photos closed. Still warm but not Hot

 

[kevinkyoo]

Okay. How about turning the computer off, letting it cool off, and turning it back on (Making sure that Photos is still quit - perhaps it opens automatically every time you turn it on? You can search online to disable this)? The reason why I say this is because Photos itself took 105% of the CPU, while Photo libraries around 55%. That's extremely irregular, and I suspect Apple will have to fix this properly in the next macOS update.

As for that next screenshot, it looks pretty normal. I'm guessing it's still hot because of how hot it was with Photos running.

 

[Jreinhal]

Im still fairly surprised at how warm the computer is considering how little Im doing at the moment. Im wondering if this is due to Touchbar heat generation or the T1 (?) chip

 

[darkside flow]

Cool as a cucumber here. Definitely seems like photos app was the culprit for you. I don't bother with it.

 

[Jreinhal]

Ok,

Okay. How about turning the computer off, letting it cool off, and turning it back on (Making sure that Photos is still quit - perhaps it opens automatically every time you turn it on? You can search online to disable this)? The reason why I say this is because Photos itself took 105% of the CPU, while Photo libraries around 55%. That's extremely irregular, and I suspect Apple will have to fix this properly in the next macOS update.

As for that next screenshot, it looks pretty normal. I'm guessing it's still hot because of how hot it was with Photos running.

Ok, Ill shut it down and let the computer cool off.

 

[kevinkyoo]

It is probably too early to tell.

Im still fairly surprised at how warm the computer is considering how little Im doing at the moment. Im wondering if this is due to Touchbar heat generation or the T1 (?) chip

I doubt it. It is probably just another area to get hot, but I don't think the culprit is the Touch Bar. More likely than not, it is just a problem of how Photos is running on your new computer. I say this because of the 2 years I used Photos, I never had it consume 105% and 55% of my CPU. That's just crazy.

Were you doing anything on Photos, by the way?

 

[Softwarez]

Since it's still fairly new, spotlight might still be indexing which can cause higher than normal temps (higher cpu usage).

 

[kevinkyoo]

Since it's still fairly new, spotlight might still be indexing which can cause higher than normal temps (higher cpu usage).

Wouldn't Photos be the main culprit (Refer to the first picture he linked)? 105% and 55% CPU usage for just one app seems way too excessive, and I've never seen an app use over 100% of the CPU.

 

[joelypolly]

Wouldn't Photos be the main culprit (Refer to the first picture he linked)? 105% and 55% CPU usage for just one app seems way too excessive, and I've never seen an app use over 100% of the CPU.

Actually quite normal for photos to take that much CPU. They are doing image analysis for search and it does this every OS upgrade

 

[Jreinhal]

I had Photos open and it quite possibly was syncing photos over iCloud. Im wondering is this is the norm for Photos regarding CPU load.
Either way, thank you all for assisting me

 

[Uplift]

New MacBooks are a nightmare for a few hours...spotlight indexing and Photos tasks cause the CPU to stress. Everytime Photos app uploading some library or whatever it does, fans run full power and it gets really hot.. I would let it run it's course before panicking

 

[kevinkyoo]

Actually quite normal for photos to take that much CPU. They are doing image analysis for search and it does this every OS upgrade

Interesting, never knew.
[doublepost=1479601407][/doublepost]

I had Photos open and it quite possibly was syncing photos over iCloud. Im wondering is this is the norm for Photos regarding CPU load.
Either way, thank you all for assisting me

Yes, I wouldn't worry about your computer. From what other people have said, it's normal to have Photos use as much CPU as it did, especially when you're syncing over iCloud. Enjoy your new MacBook Pro

 

[dashwin]

I received my 2016 15" MacBook Pro this past Wednesday. Ive been noticing some fairly high heat coming from the chassis both directly above the TouchBar and at the bottom of the computer, underneath where the Touch Bar is. It would seem the TouchBar is put out a lot of heat. Is anyone else experiencing this issue? I feel as though it's responsible for the fairly rapid battery drain Im experiencing.

Thank you

At the retail store, I ran a few youtube movie trailers on both the old and new MBP models. From what I could tell they were running via the iGPU not the dGPU [checked via Activity Monitor at the time of playback].

I can confirm that the base new 15" was much warmer (not hot) at the touchbar area (on the top as well as the bottom) than the old one. The old one was almost cool to the touch and I could definitely feel the heat on the new one. Perhaps this is because the new 15" iGPU has 1/2 the processing power of the old 15" iGPU?

 

[WhiteWhaleHolyGrail]

At the retail store, I ran a few youtube movie trailers on both the old and new MBP models. From what I could tell they were running via the iGPU not the dGPU [checked via Activity Monitor at the time of playback].

I can confirm that the base new 15" was much warmer (not hot) at the touchbar area (on the top as well as the bottom) than the old one. The old one was almost cool to the touch and I could definitely feel the heat on the new one. Perhaps this is because the new 15" iGPU has 1/2 the processing power of the old 15" iGPU?

The new IGPU has half the processing power of its predecessor? Link? First I have heard.

 

[dashwin]

The new IGPU has half the processing power of its predecessor? Link? First I have heard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_HD_and_Iris_Graphics

(MBP 15" Late 2016) HD Graphics 530 GT2 Units=24 Clockspeed=1150Mhz GFLOPS=441.6
(MBP 15" Mid 2015) Iris Pro Graphics 5200 Units=40 Clockspeed=1200Mhz GFLOPS=832

dark_mark posted this difference: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/video-of-igpu-comparison-of-2016-vs-2015-models.2016303/

 

[maratus]

1. Fans are idling until you reach ~90-95C on your CPU and then slowly increase in speed to keep CPU temp constant. Hence a lot of heat. It was like that for all MacBooks for a decade. Not really big news.
2. To change that you need to install Macs Fan Control or a similar fan control software
3. It's not dGPU either
4. 2016 models have more efficient cooling system – a) better heat transfer from CPU to heatsink, b) better heat transfer from heatsink to air. But if you keep CPU temperature constant (like default curves do) it'll result in a warmer heatsink / enclosure / exhaust airflow because it'll be able to keep fans idling @ higher load. Higher load means more TDP and more heat generated by your computer.
5. If you change your fan control curves to proper ones, you'll notice that the new laptops are actually cooler than predecessors.

Here's a screenshot of 100% cpu load through terminal. It was barely enough to even speed up the fans to the max.

 

[sparkie1984]

I read into the photos app because I have a process called photolibraryd running and it's the analysis for the "people" section of the photos app.

It's been running for nearly 3 weeks on my 12" MacBook scanning 38,000 photos as it only runs when the laptops on and your not using photos app

 

[maratus]

Yeah that's true. A new installation always goes through that in one form or another. Spotlight indexing, iPhoto crunching in the background etc. But there's also a reason why the current generation feels warmer under the same load with default fan curves and it's actually a good sign (provided that you agree that Apple's default fan control is bad and must be changed by 3rd party software)

 

[tryrtryrtryrt]

Wouldn't Photos be the main culprit (Refer to the first picture he linked)? 105% and 55% CPU usage for just one app seems way too excessive, and I've never seen an app use over 100% of the CPU.

JFYI 100% means 1 core. 13" has 4 logical cores, 15" has 8. So you could see 8 processes with 100% on 15" and even 1 process with 800%.