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New Macbook overheating and slowing down

J

jufjo

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 6, 2008
41
0
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
I have a new macbook, see stats below.
Up till last week everything was fine, I could run 'Second Life', photoshop, email, a browser, download stuff, play Itunes AND watch a movie all at once without any trouble.
But recently the computer has gone a bit weird.
It started getting very hot, much slower and turning itself off.
At this moment it even does that when I run 'Second Life' at a much lower setting them before.
I got smcfancontrol and it showed the heat being 90degrees C!
A bit hot I reckon.

I am wondering what is wrong with my laptop, why it happened and how to solve it.
At the moment I am playing with the smcfancontrol settings but I want to know why this suddenly has happened and I think even just smcfancontrol will fix it.

With smxfancontrol set at max (6200) the heat is still near 80 degrees C.

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MB51.0073.B06
SMC Version (system): 1.32f8
 
Have you taken a look at Activity Monitor showing All Processes to see if there is something using all of your CPU?
 
I forgot to mention to sort by CPU % as well.

It might be Flash if you're running Snow Leopard, Spotlight, or some runaway printer daemon. One more thing. You might want to remove your serial number from your post.

Otherwise if those are the highest CPU using processes I'd reset your PRAM and SMC first.
 
jufjo said:
BTW, at the top of my screen Smcfancontrol tells me that the rpm is 000.
Does that make sense?
Click to expand...

Do you actually mean zero-zero-zero or did you miss a digit off the beginning?

If you did mean zero, your fan is likely broken which would explain the entire overheating problem. In fact you're pretty lucky the internals haven't melted yet. Get your machine to a repair shop, who will be able to tell you what failed; most likely the fan motor or a snapped fan belt.
 
Richard1028 said:
There are actually "belts" in a macbook fan? :eek:

Maybe the hamster just died?
Click to expand...

I would assume so, I've never really pulled one apart before to look but I'd have thought that the fan being so small would probably be powered by a motor adjacent to it connected via belt.

I'll go and have a look at iFixit and see what they have there. I may be wrong. Always good to learn something new though :D

As for dead hamsters... well there are three hamsters in the room with me right now and I wish they were dead. All three of them seem intent on driving me mad by spending a stupidly long time drinking from those absurdly loud water bottles. Then running in their wheels which no matter how much Vaseline you put on the axle always squeak. Anyway, I digress, lack of sleep is beginning to have an effect on the amount of ranting I'm doing tonight.

Bloody hamsters. If it weren't for the threat of Hayli's wrath I'd have drowned them all by now.
 
KielderWolf said:
I would assume so, I've never really pulled one apart before to look but I'd have thought that the fan being so small would probably be powered by a motor adjacent to it connected via belt.
Click to expand...
I was just ribbing you. There are no belts on cooling fans.

there are three hamsters in the room with me right now and I wish they were dead.
Click to expand...
I hear they are good eatin' after 6 months or so. Taste like chicken. :D
 
Richard1028 said:
I was just ribbing you. There are no belts on cooling fans.

I hear they are good eatin' after 6 months or so. Taste like chicken. :D
Click to expand...

Really? Huh, must be a tiny tiny motor then. Though that said... I have a USB floppy drive that's only a third-inch thick so I suppose you must be able to get pretty flat motors now. I kinda haven't paid attention to general electric components since I did electrical engineering for a term in early secondary school; and that was just LEDs and PIC-chips and so forth. My mind tends to draw a line between electrical components and computer components for some reason; it can accept a microprocessor chip being a sixteenth of an inch across but an electric motor will always be a cylinder one half inch in diameter and three quarters of an inch long.

I wouldn't know about how hamsters taste but I've had chargrilled guinea pig before and it was really quite nice. Had a kangaroo burger before too from the Christmas Market in Newcastle.

Boy have we gone off-topic :D
 
Just a long overdue update.
I contacted Apple and they told me my fan was broken, I would have to bring it to the shop for repair.
I was not keen on being without my computer for days, perhaps even weeks so I decided to take a look myself.
I am not very technical and modern electronics hate me (they do, it is a conspiracy, but everything made after the 1940s tries to kill me now and then ;) ).
So carefully I opened the back of my macbook and saw the fan, it was very dusty.
I took a can of compressed air and cleaned the fan, started the computer up again, gave the fan a little push with my hand and wooossssshhh it started working again.
Laptop was as good as new.
This happened one more time since, yes I know, my house is dusty, but just cleaning the fan very carefully did the trick again.
 
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