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JoeSchmoTheGrea

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 24, 2017
3
1
Hi all

I have a friend who has a 2011 MacBook Pro 15" who complained it has some heating issues and asked me to look at it, I have tried looking at some things like the charger and opening the Mac up see if it's maybe dusty in there but none of those things were an issue.
Since my knowledge of Mac and Mac related issues is a bit limited I tried googling and see if I could find an issue but none of the questions that were asked and answered were like the issue I notice.
If I sit on one site, let's say facebook, everything is fine, if I open 1-2 more sites like news sites or something and have all 3 open then still nothing, as soon as I open more then I hear the fan on the Mac start working harder, also if I open facebook and youtube and listen to music while checking facebook then the fan starts working harder.
I have checked the activity monitor to see if maybe something is sucking the CPU dry but at most there was 25% usage from Safari/Firefox so I feel that's a bit too much, a browser using 25% of the CPU on just facebook and youtube, for the sake of it I tried installing xcode from the app store just to see how much that would use and just on startup it used 101% of the CPU, if I kept using xcode it would use up to 158% of the CPU which to me seems totally insane and not good for the CPU so I shut it down and let it cool.
As mentioned earlier I have checked that the charger is the right one for this model and it is, I asked my friend what he's used his Mac for and he said mostly facebook, e-mail and school stuff like writing homework and such, in the end I tried reinstalling the OS but even after that when I retry using facebook and youtube at the same time in safari the fan starts working harder, as a last resort I borrowed a Mac from a different friend just to test it out and see, same model and everything, and while his stayed pretty 'normal' when using facebook and youtube together or having several pages open on the browser my friends would get pretty warm and the fan worked hard just by using facebook and youtube.
I've tried checking around on google but I mostly find answers about checking the charger, activity monitor, browser that I use etc so I can't really find anything similar to the problem this Mac seems to be having.
If anyone out there has any suggestions or ideas they would be welcome.
 
Have you removed CPU/GPU cooling system and replaced the heat sink compound with some good quality stuff?

my 2007 pro ran hot but repasted it with arctic paste and it runs tons cooler now, almost never hear fan.
 
Have you removed CPU/GPU cooling system and replaced the heat sink compound with some good quality stuff?

my 2007 pro ran hot but repasted it with arctic paste and it runs tons cooler now, almost never hear fan.

That I have not tried, I have some compound from when I built my stationary computer will that work?
 
should do.

compound in most laptops (unknown about apple) designed to last apex 3 years before drying out.

better quality paste the more quicker heat gets to heatsink and away from CPU/GPU thus they run cooler.

"MagicanPaster" in App Store will let you monitor temp, I used it when testing the 2007 before and after doing the paste replacement
 
should do.

compound in most laptops (unknown about apple) designed to last apex 3 years before drying out.

better quality paste the more quicker heat gets to heatsink and away from CPU/GPU thus they run cooler.

"MagicanPaster" in App Store will let you monitor temp, I used it when testing the 2007 before and after doing the paste replacement

Thanks I will try that, hopefully that solves the problem, wonder why I didn't think of that considering the Mac is from 2011.
 
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