Why is my Macbook Pro overheating?

[Blundell89]

Hi there,

I purchased my Macbook Pro approximately 18-24 months ago therefore it is outside of Apple's standard warranty. For the past 24 hours, when the laptop has been on, the fans have been going crazy and the notebook is extremely hot.

Just now I downloaded an application named Temperature Monitor to try and obtain some readings into how hot the Mac is getting - it seems the processors are around and above 90 degrees! (http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/7889/overheating.png)

Does anybody have any suggestions as to why my processors are overheating? I am only running Firefox and Microsoft Word (2011) on a 2.8Ghz model with 4GB of RAM. There's no reason why it should be overheating.

Thank you in advance.

Lee

 

[simsaladimbamba]

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Have a look at Activity Monitor (Applications / Utilities /) and select All Processes and sort by CPU to see what the culprit may be.
Also check the "System Memory" tab to see what your "Page ins:", "Page outs:" and "Swap used:" are.

image below uses sorting by CPU as an example

Further reading:

Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
Making The Most of Activity Monitor
What Is Activity Monitor (or How to Take Your Mac's Pulse)​

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[Blundell89]

Much appreciated, I'll have a look into it! It makes sense

Thank you and regards

Lee

 

[Blundell89]

It's sorted! There was an Adobe application running in the background using approximately 90% of my processing resources! Not nice.

Cheers again for the quick reply mate!

Lee

 

[Deedolito]

Adobe's revenge for blocking out flash on iOS?

Glad you were able to sort this out.

 

[TenderBranson]

I feel like there should be a notifier informing you when a background application is hogging a large percentage of the cpu for a while

 

[ender land]

I feel like there should be a notifier informing you when a background application is hogging a large percentage of the cpu for a while

iStatMenus does this essentially.

If I ever see my system resources above about 10% when "idling" (ie not running CPU intensive things like compiling code or videos or such) I check to see what it is.

 

[GGJstudios]

I feel like there should be a notifier informing you when a background application is hogging a large percentage of the cpu for a while

Install iStat Pro to get accurate readings of your temps, processes, hard drives, battery, and several other things.

 

[Blipp]

I think we need a sub-forum just for heat related issues. Every single one of these threads are filled with the same questions and the same answers.