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Whoa! I installed a new hard drive and the temperature is out of control

A

areusche

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 24, 2008
168
1
Ok so here's my problem guys,

I recently installed a new Seagate 2.5in 500gb sata drive for my macbook pro. I had the help of an certified apple tech I work with here on my campus. The whole operation went smoothly and I plopped that baby in with no issues.

I got back to my apartment and booted up the machine. I went through and restored my hard drive via a backup from Time Machine on my external drive. Again it didn't have any problems.

Now I am back in OS X and immediately I noticed something out of the ordinary. SMC Fan Control is set to run the fans at a max of 6000rpm to keep the laptop relatively cool. Before I did the operation the laptop would run the fans at the speed and idle a temp of about 107-115 degree Fahrenheit. When I started surfing the internet the temperature jumped to 135 and then to 140 and leveled off at 145. Needless to say it the whole unit was pipping hot. I freaked out and brought the unit out onto my balcony since it's 33 degrees outside in Ithaca. That brought the temp down to 122 and then I decided it would be smart to shut it down for a bit and let it sit outside to cool. I waited a couple of minutes and powered it back on.

Now the laptop idles sporadically at a temp between 120-135. Jumping crazily between temps. It never did this before and I'm worried. Istat pro says everything is running correctly. In fact the HD is the second coolest thing in the laptop at a balmy 90 degrees. The CPU and obviously the GPU diode are running the hottest.

As U finish typing this the temp has leveled off at 154 and is staying wait it went immediately to 142 and back up again. This is really odd. Any help would be appreciated :confused:
 
Hehe I work at the IT department at Ithaca College. Bunch of awesome people but still the temp is out of control.

I'm giving it a "lap" test :p as in having it sit on my lap and see if it gets uncomfortably hot. Right now it's not that bad, but I don't think it should feel like I've been playing a lot of Zombie Panic Source!

Right now the temp just darts all around. It's at 124 now.

I'm tempted to down clock this monster to help cool it down a bit!
 
It's in Fahrenheit. He's a repost in celcius
Converted for Celcius said:
Ok so here's my problem guys,

I recently installed a new Seagate 2.5in 500gb sata drive for my macbook pro. I had the help of an certified apple tech I work with here on my campus. The whole operation went smoothly and I plopped that baby in with no issues.

I got back to my apartment and booted up the machine. I went through and restored my hard drive via a backup from Time Machine on my external drive. Again it didn't have any problems.

Now I am back in OS X and immediately I noticed something out of the ordinary. SMC Fan Control is set to run the fans at a max of 6000rpm to keep the laptop relatively cool. Before I did the operation the laptop would run the fans at the speed and idle a temp of about 42-46 degrees celcius. When I started surfing the internet the temperature jumped to 135 and then to 60 and leveled off at 62. Needless to say it the whole unit was pipping hot. I freaked out and brought the unit out onto my balcony since it's 0 degrees celcius outside in Ithaca. That brought the temp down to 50 and then I decided it would be smart to shut it down for a bit and let it sit outside to cool. I waited a couple of minutes and powered it back on.

Now the laptop idles sporadically at a temp between 48.8-57. Jumping crazily between temps. It never did this before and I'm worried. Istat pro says everything is running correctly. In fact the HD is the second coolest thing in the laptop at a balmy 32 degrees. The CPU and obviously the GPU diode are running the hottest.

As U finish typing this the temp has leveled off at 67.7 and is staying wait it went immediately to 61 and back up again. This is really odd. Any help would be appreciated :confused:
Click to expand...
 
If your getting temps of 67.7C when doing tasks then your laptops too cool! mine often runs at well in excess of 100C so consider yourself lucky. I dont see any way the hard drive could affect cooling, hard drives dont get hot and only generate a bit of their own warmth, the only problem i could see is that the new hard drive is telling the bios it needs more power than it actually does.
 
I'm gonna chime in again with some [hopefully] useful information.

I think you should carefully reconsider the move to the new HD. If it really is getting hotter than normal, you should probably revert to the old HD and get a refund. I learned the hard way that it's not a good idea to stick faster components in a notebook at the expense of normal operating temps. I have a great HP notebook whose HD I replaced with a bigger/faster drive when I first configured it. The after market drive I purchased wasn't available as an option when configuring the dv2000 on HP's site. I thought this was silly at the time, because Dell had the option in their computer.....lo and behold, 2 years later my HD failed on me, presumably because of the added heat and extra strain on the components.

Some notebooks are designed to accept hotter components without risking degradation, others cannot. My MBP won't get to me until next week, so I can only offer anecdotal evidence - most MBPs already run hot as it is. To throw in an even hotter component is probably not a good idea. Do you really need 500gb?


=|
 
theNEOone said:
I'm gonna chime in again with some [hopefully] useful information.

I think you should carefully reconsider the move to the new HD. If it really is getting hotter than normal, you should probably revert to the old HD and get a refund. I learned the hard way that it's not a good idea to stick faster components in a notebook at the expense of normal operating temps. I have a great HP notebook whose HD I replaced with a bigger/faster drive when I first configured it. The after market drive I purchased wasn't available as an option when configuring the dv2000 on HP's site. I thought this was silly at the time, because Dell had the option in their computer.....lo and behold, 2 years later my HD failed on me, presumably because of the added heat and extra strain on the components.

Some notebooks are designed to accept hotter components without risking degradation, others cannot. My MBP won't get to me until next week, so I can only offer anecdotal evidence - most MBPs already run hot as it is. To throw in an even hotter component is probably not a good idea. Do you really need 500gb?

Edit: I wonder if the MBP was running some background tasks such as a disc fragmentor something. I restored from a Time Machine backup. Maybe that might have been it. Sadly I didn't check activity monitor to find out :(

=|
Click to expand...

I do, I edit news packages in the field and 500gb is definitely needed.

For what it's worth the drive is a Seagate 5400.2 500gb 2.5in SATA drive.
The problem seems to have gone away right now. The laptop is at a comfortable 109 (42 C) degrees Fahrenheit. As a test I did some video rendering in final cut and like before it jumped up to 145 degrees and didn't climb over it. It might have been a temporary problem. Either way I will watch it and if it happens again I'll put in my old HD.

Thanks for the help guys!
 
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