PB Overheat?

[mad cow disease]

I started noticing a couple weeks ago that the fans on my 15" PB tend to spin up quite early when I'm doing something as innocuous as watching a Youtube clip. The base seems to get quite hot as well. I'm pretty sure I've had a couple freezes because of this issue - I run a few programs simultaneously, and then wham! Everything locks up and I have to reboot from scratch.

I'm running on normal performance settings, the thing is raised up on a iCurve, and I'm sitting next to the A/C.

Time to open it up and dust it out or what? Any advice?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Dmac77]

That isn't normal. I would run the diagnostics test on the OS install disk. See if that brings up any hardware issues. Also if it's still under warranty take it to the genius bar and show them.

Don

 

[jbaird77]

how hot does it get?

My new 17" Penryn hits 55 Celsius easy and after using flash applications or full-screen games it easily gets past the 60 Celsius level.

(My high score is 70 Celsius )

 

[eXan]

how hot does it get?

My new 17" Penryn hits 55 Celsius easy and after using flash applications or full-screen games it easily gets past the 60 Celsius level.

(My high score is 70 Celsius )

He was asking about his PowerBook, so I'm sure your MBP info won't be any helpful

BTW, watching "simple YT videos" isn't that simple on your processor in Mac OS X. Flash takes A LOT of power.

 

[mad cow disease]

That isn't normal. I would run the diagnostics test on the OS install disk. See if that brings up any hardware issues. Also if it's still under warranty take it to the genius bar and show them.

Don

It's one week out of warranty. -_-.

Ran the hardware test but no problem. So far I've had two freezes, which I assume are heat-related...

 

[leodavinci0]

I started noticing a couple weeks ago that the fans on my 15" PB tend to spin up quite early when I'm doing something as innocuous as watching a Youtube clip. The base seems to get quite hot as well. I'm pretty sure I've had a couple freezes because of this issue - I run a few programs simultaneously, and then wham! Everything locks up and I have to reboot from scratch.

I'm running on normal performance settings, the thing is raised up on a iCurve, and I'm sitting next to the A/C.

Time to open it up and dust it out or what? Any advice?

Thanks in advance.

Youtube videos do draw a lot from the CPU, and on the old PB's can easily kick on the fans early. The fact that you can feel the bottom get hot is actually good in that it typically means the heat-sink is doing its job, and the heat-sink paste is still good. I've seen many folks with heating issues find that their problem was running too many Dashboard widgets, which can add up even if each uses only a meager portion of the CPU. Try quitting some widgets, and also check the Activity Monitor for any CPU hog processes.

Also, I'm rather sure the computer won't freeze if it overheats, but instead just shuts down. That fact that it freezes points to an errant process hogging the CPU.