Bret7

Q: Late 2008 Macbook pro hot doing nothing

My laptop get hot when it is not doing anything at all. I have checked the activity monitor and it does not appear to be doing anything out of the ord

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Jun 27, 2016 9:00 AM

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Q: Late 2008 Macbook pro hot doing nothing

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  • by cdhw,

    cdhw cdhw Jun 27, 2016 5:19 PM in response to Bret7
    Level 4 (2,653 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Jun 27, 2016 5:19 PM in response to Bret7

    Have you checked both the CPU and 'energy' panels of Activity monitor? Intense network activity and watching videos can also heat things up quite a lot.


    Fans do sometimes fail, or get clogged with dust. Some information from Apple here:

     

        Learn about the fans in your Mac - Apple Support

     

    Resetting the SMC can often resolve overheating issues.

     

    C.

  • by Rysz,

    Rysz Rysz Jun 27, 2016 5:21 PM in response to Bret7
    Level 7 (20,636 points)
    iPhone
    Jun 27, 2016 5:21 PM in response to Bret7

    Batteries get warm when being charged. The MacBook has multiple internal heat sensors. when overheating is detected by them, it will automatically control charging, slow down CPU and display overheating warnings. If you don't see any, I would not worry too much.