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MBP Burning Up?!?

MowingDevil

MowingDevil

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 30, 2008
1,588
7
Vancouver, BC & Sydney, NSW
I was doing some intense surfing w/ up to 40 tabs on the go in Safari....I know that was taxing on the machine so no surprise that the fans were going....almost max at around 6k...

But then after quitting Safari I noticed they were still quite high so I decided to check on things in iStat Pro....I was shocked to see the CPU "user" was around 60% and I had no programs open whatsoever....the fans were still over 4k. Pretty sure the memory hadn't freed itself up as well.

I decided to restart and everything is back to normal. The "user" bounces between 2 & 4% and the fans are just shy of 2k.

My only concern is that it took a restart to return everything to normal; usually quitting programs frees up the ram and calms the system down. Not this time...
At first I thought it was Time Machine causing the issue but it wasn't backing anything up. Anything to be concerned about or does this happen from time to time on other people's MBPs?
 
Even though I don't have a MBP, I usually have to wait for a few minutes for everything to settle down.

Did you let it calm itself a little bit? Just a thought. ;)
 
How long did you wait to check the temperatures? Since the machine was so hot at the time, its not going to cool down instantly. So the fans were still running to cool the machine back to normal.
 
General rule of thumb is if you can fry an egg on it, then after you finish the egg should you probably be worried. If the egg doesn't fry up, then clean your computer, and your an idiot for putting an egg on there in the first place. Don't worry unless the temps are way higher than they should be.
 
The temp isn't going to go down the second you stop the process making it hot, it takes time for the fans to work.

Be patient.
 
Fine, if you really must know I was on MySpace adding people who might like my band...not that its really relevant why I had 40 tabs...but it saves time.
Anyhoo...I noticed its hot again today, especially on that metal strip between the keyboard & screen...I have Safari open w/ about 5 tabs and I checked in iStat Pro and got the following info:

"CPU"
user : 52%
system : 6%
idle : 44%

"Temp"
CPU : 69-70

fans : 4155

Only thing I've done differently is instead of going online through an ethernet cable I'm now using Wi-Fi via my Time Capsule. Could this additional heat be due to my AirPort card by any chance?
 
If those tabs include flash and other heavy objects it's easy to get your CPU working at 100%, fill your memory, make it cache on the HDD. All this action gets CPU, memory, mobo and hard drive hot. And it's pretty cramped in there...

70 degrees is hot but pretty much average for a laptop being pushed. I am typing from a 1.8ghz fujitsu right now that has a bigger fan than the 13.3 mbp and the computer is idling at 60 with just this tab and gtalk/msn open.
 
There may have been flash yesterday but today it was nothing more than message boards or text articles in the tabs. I've left it sitting idle for about 15 minutes other than a print job and the CPU is still running about 50-55% (user) and the fans between 3800 & 4500.

Why would the CPU be running 50% if the computer is sitting w/ no programs running? If thats happened before I connected to TC I never noticed it.
 
Wow, I didn't know you can check the temp and fan rpm on your computer! Is that a native application? Or one you have to download?
 
Next time you encounter the same scenario, launch Activity Monitor and click on the CPU tab, that should sort by processes that are taking the most CPU cycles.
 
shakeman0 said:
Wow, I didn't know you can check the temp and fan rpm on your computer! Is that a native application? Or one you have to download?
Click to expand...

iStat Pro, its a free download

fehhkk said:
Next time you encounter the same scenario, launch Activity Monitor and click on the CPU tab, that should sort by processes that are taking the most CPU cycles.
Click to expand...

thanks I'll monitor it.
 
MowingDevil said:
There may have been flash yesterday but today it was nothing more than message boards or text articles in the tabs. I've left it sitting idle for about 15 minutes other than a print job and the CPU is still running about 50-55% (user) and the fans between 3800 & 4500.

Why would the CPU be running 50% if the computer is sitting w/ no programs running? If thats happened before I connected to TC I never noticed it.
Click to expand...

I have found that OS X doesn't have the best print manager. To me it seems to take up way too much CPU and has to be manually closed each time. Maybe that is your problem, at least in this instance, but that is just my 2 cents.
 
I have a MBP (June 2009) with the 9600M GT and I want to know what kind of temperatures are considered unsafe? I tend to use the computer on my lap (I know, but it's nice to watch TV and surf) and when playing a game, it's not uncommon for my laptop to rev up to 67 degrees C almost instantly upon entering the game.

What temperature range should I try to stay at? Is 67 degrees for an hour at a time too much?

I use a thermometer monitor app to check the temp of everything inside the computer (but disabled the HDD temp checker as that can damage the HDD). It works wonderfully, and has all kinds of information in it.

Thanks in advance.
 
IrishSniper87 said:
I have a MBP (June 2009) with the 9600M GT and I want to know what kind of temperatures are considered unsafe? I tend to use the computer on my lap (I know, but it's nice to watch TV and surf) and when playing a game, it's not uncommon for my laptop to rev up to 67 degrees C almost instantly upon entering the game.

What temperature range should I try to stay at? Is 67 degrees for an hour at a time too much?

I use a thermometer monitor app to check the temp of everything inside the computer (but disabled the HDD temp checker as that can damage the HDD). It works wonderfully, and has all kinds of information in it.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

These mobile processors have a very high temperature tolerance. 67C is nothing for these, provided that your fans are working properly. They should be able to withstand temps in excess of 90C sustained for long periods of time. I would only worry if your temps are 100C+ all the time... then you would start to think of a thermal issue somewhere.
 
fehhkk said:
These mobile processors have a very high temperature tolerance. 67C is nothing for these, provided that your fans are working properly. They should be able to withstand temps in excess of 90C sustained for long periods of time. I would only worry if your temps are 100C+ all the time... then you would start to think of a thermal issue somewhere.
Click to expand...

That's what I was hoping. Excellent. These fans sure can get loud though, haha.

I have the fan control app, but only use it when I know I will be playing a game.
 
MowingDevil, I'm a web designer, but I never have more than 10-15 tabs open at any time in Firefox. I know for a fact that you didn't need that many tabs open at one time.

Anyways, here are a few things you should know:
- Flash is very inefficient. Running something simple can bring your processor to at least 50%. It can take some time to clean up everything on completion.
- Opening and closing tabs in browsers can sometimes cause memory leaks. Some browsers are better at handling these than others, but usually a restart of the application is required to return everything to normal.
- When you run out of physical memory, your computer will start to use a page file located on your hard drive. Using this page file will slow your computer down as it is both hard drive and processor intensive to manage a large page file. When it is time to reclaim memory used in a page file, your computer has to work to put as much of it as possible back in the physical memory. If your page file was excessively large, you will experience a duration of high processor and hard drive use even though it may appear as if nothing is running.
- Having too little free space on your hard drive can also bring up your processor use and slow down your computer. This means it will have to work harder to fit the page file in the odd sections of free space on your drive.

MowingDevil said:
Could this additional heat be due to my AirPort card by any chance?
Click to expand...
No. Not a chance. Your airport card may be slightly hotter than when it isn't being used, but there will not be any difference you can discern. The chip is always on when airport is enabled and usually connected to the wireless network even when you are wired, just no data is being transferred.

IrishSniper87 said:
What temperature range should I try to stay at? Is 67 degrees for an hour at a time too much?
Click to expand...
That is normal. If you are above 90 degrees centigrade, you have a problem.
 
geoffreak said:
MowingDevil, I'm a web designer, but I never have more than 10-15 tabs open at any time in Firefox. I know for a fact that you didn't need that many tabs open at one time.
Click to expand...

Bolded for emphasis...

This comment is asinine. You have no right to tell him/her that. Just because you're a web designer doesn't mean you are the end all, be all to tabbed browsing. What a retarded comment. Really. How old are we?

Ridiculous.
 
chadamorrill said:
This comment is asinine. You have no right to tell him/her that. Just because you're a web designer doesn't mean you are the end all, be all to tabbed browsing. What a retarded comment. Really. How old are we?
Click to expand...
You won't see any person besides a web designer actually NEED to have that many tabs open. Sure, anyone can open a few dozen tabs and claim they are using them, but if you aren't switching back to the tab at least once every 5 minutes, it isn't truly needed. This is why bookmarks/favorites exist.
You could argue that people with a stock profile need that many tabs, but these people normally use applications or a single website to manage their data.

What is asinine here is the fact that you felt the need to step in and "one up" me. Not once did I tell the OP that they had to follow my advice. I was simply suggesting that the number of tabs was excessive and could be done more simply. Please use that noggin of yours before being a jerk to the next person, okay? Now lets stop this silly nonsense and get back on topic.
 
geoffreak said:
What is asinine here is the fact that you felt the need to step in and "one up" me. Not once did I tell the OP that they had to follow my advice. I was simply suggesting that the number of tabs was excessive and could be done more simply. Please use that noggin of yours before being a jerk to the next person, okay? Now lets stop this silly nonsense and get back on topic.
Click to expand...

I'll stop being a jerk when you quit trying to convince people that your opinion is fact.
 
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