MBP motherboard hot while *off* and *charging* (not battery)

[Jimmy James]

My wife has an early 2011 MBP. I noticed the bottom getting abnormally hot while charging. The computer was off. I took off the back panel expecting a battery problem. In fact, it was the motherboard that was hot and the fan was spinning. The battery was much cooler and just above room temperature (presumably from the radiating heat). No battery swelling.

Was the computer really off? It was non-responsive before I opened it. After checking the internals I rebooted to an error screen, which seems to verify the 'off' status. My wife says the computer has been acting funny and shutting down prematurely but I don't have more specific details from her.

Is it possible to have a hot mainboard and spinning fan while off? Why would the board get hot during charging at all? Advice appreciated.

 

[sarpler]

It probably wasn't really off and the charging is a red herring. Modern macs have a feature called "Power Nap" where when asleep they turn themselves back on every few minutes to do stuff like download email, sync with icloud, backup with time machine, etc. It sounds like what happened is that something half crashed and caused a runaway process that maxed out the cpu. If you're lucky there might be a clue in the console app/logs (but probably not). Go though the standard steps to check for filesystem or disk corruption, and if that fails reinstall the OS from scratch before assuming bad hardware.

 

[Jimmy James]

Thank you. Since it’s already problematic I’ll do a clean install for her.

 

[Webster's Mac]

It probably wasn't really off and the charging is a red herring. Modern macs have a feature called "Power Nap" where when asleep they turn themselves back on every few minutes to do stuff like download email, sync with icloud, backup with time machine, etc. It sounds like what happened is that something half crashed and caused a runaway process that maxed out the cpu. If you're lucky there might be a clue in the console app/logs (but probably not). Go though the standard steps to check for filesystem or disk corruption, and if that fails reinstall the OS from scratch before assuming bad hardware.

2011 MBP doesn't have power nap. That started with 2012 MBP retinas (and I think the MacBook Air as well). I'd try an SMC and PRAM reset, and then try running down the battery, shutting down, and charging it again to see how the temps are.

See here for more info about power nap: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204032
SMC Reset: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295
PRAM reset: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

Try out the above and see how it goes!