109°C (228°F) CPU temperature, fans idle @ 2k rpm!!!!!! I'M SO MAD

Well I've admitted defeat, and after 3 months of MBP related issues and numerous replacements I've given up and have switched to another computer. I'm afraid the MBP was not reliable enough for my day to day work, and with no response from Apple Engineering for twelve weeks I can't see the problem being solved anytime soon.

Can't praise the customer/executive relations & tech guys I dealt with enough however, but with all the good will in the world, I still preferred my reliable previous gen. MBP, and simply want to get on with my job, which has been disrupted enough so far.

I have never seemed to have had this issue (after the firmware update quite some time ago), but the other day, I plugged in a a Wii balanceboard charger to the USB port, and while it was plugged in, the CPU temperature would go up and the fans not increase past 2000rpm (while playing a game). So I set smcfancontrol to 3000rpm to keep things from getting too hot. After unplugging the charger, and waking from sleep the next morning, everything worked fine again.

May not have anything to do with this topic though.

Some people from the other forums noted that they had issues with the fans not working properly without FanControl's intervention after that app had been removed from the system.
Also they have reported that the fans do not operate properly after turning off FanControl. The fans would not spin up at all from idle after the app had been removed.
It seems that the program actually screws with your SMC and modifies parameters which is impossible to reverse (including SMC reset!!!).
Unfortunately, Apple does not make firmware restoration CD for new macBook pro (late 2008) that can reset SMC more deeply.
So nobody can find an answer how to restore the original SMC firmware with the factory settings.
Good luck!

Wbyung wrote:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=589408
I replaced the thermal grease with AS5 and the CPU temperature decreased about 75C from about 61C (9600M) or about 52 (9400M).
The chassis is apparently much cooler. Running CPU/GPU intensive applications for minutes, the fans doesn't even beef up from 2000rpm.
I have not gone through the 200 hour break-in process.
And I'll open up again later to see if I applied too much AS5 and re-apply it again.
You might want to try replacing the grease. When I first saw the factory applied grease, it is pretty similar to the photos on iFixit.com . It doesn't seem to be too much but after replacing with AS5, it is still too much.

So I can suggest that the "109°C (228°F) CPU temperature, fans idle @ 2k rpm" problem in new MacBook Pro's is caused by Apple misapplication of thermal grease (thermal paste) between the heatsink and chips and on the logic Board of the MacBook Pro to make
the temperatures skyrocket!!!
This is very old and well knowen issue!!!
See for more info:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=636731
thermal paste on unibody macbook?

This might be a reasonable idea for anyone whose MBP is more than a year old and out of warranty. No one who still has a warranty (or an AppleCare Protection Plan) should consider it, and no unibody MBP will be out of warranty for a long time to come.

If your fans do not spin up at approx. 75-85C to keep the temperature under 75C then your machine is faulty. Contact Apple for repair or replacement. My MBP works perfectly.

I have been in extensive contact with Apple and have had my machine sent in for repair. When running two instances of the "yes" command, to drive the CPU use up rapidly and repeatably, my machine will reach 105 deg-C plus before the fans ramp up. With full knowledge of this behavior, Apple has said that my machine does not need hardware repair and that the behavior is "normal at this time".

I suspect that most people who do not see the problem are not exercising the CPUs with a heavy and fast enough loading to see the behavior. Even heavy load applied gradually allows the control algorithm time to react and the fans will ramp up. Resetting the SMC changes/fixes the behavior temporarily. See earlier posts if interested in more details.

And this is not just a theoretical problem that's only caused by running special terminal commands; that is just a convenient way to reproduce it reliably. Some people have reported seeing it in normal usage doing something like video coding.

I'm using HandBrake to encode video, it loads both cores at 100% for a couple of hours. Fans run at 2000rpm until the temperature reaches approx. 85C, the fans then start spinning up (usualy to 2600-3000rpm) so the temperature returns back under 80C.

If your machine does not behave this way, it has hardware problem and needs to be fixed.

look at screens from my MBP at http://img299.imageshack.us/my.php?image=temps.png

"If your machine does not behave this way, it has hardware problem and needs to be fixed."

Engineering Management at Apple does not agree with you.

BTW what week was your machine built? At the other thread "Screen turns black when gaming? (continued)" many guys reported that the overheating problem affects machines built in weeks 43-47, machines built in weeks 48 (like mine) and later seem to be OK.

Week 44.

BTW, here is the behavior as captured using the latest version of Hardware Monitor (4.6), and starting from approximately the same temperature for both post-SMC reset and usual conditions.



(Click to enlarge.)

seems like machines built in the weeks of 43-47 are affected. mine is week 45 (november) and has the same problem.

nope, mine's built the week of 31/12/08 and has these issues, fans dont start until it gets to 102 deg C. reset SMC and all is fine until it sleeps again then back to square one!!!

Hello,

I just want you to know that I've been floowing this thread since day one and my computer also have the problem with fans not spinning up.

Today I discovered something intresting. I used the "reparing permissions" function and after that my fans start working like they should, even after activating screensaver, changing graphicard, login-logout etc etc..and I didn't even reset the SMC or PRAM.

Please try urself and see if it helps and come back with comments.

How about after putting the notebook to sleep, and then waking it up?