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

I have the opposite problem here... both my fans are at 6200 rpm, making noise like a darn airplane, while my CPU temp is a cool 42C.. I tried resetting SMC, no help.. Any ideas?

Its been serviced 4 times already.

Are you using SMCfancontrol? Perhaps a silly question, but if you have SMCfancontrol installed, is the minimum fan speed set to 6200rpm?

Also, try resetting the PRAM (PRAM have nothing to do with fans but worth a try). http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

If the problem is still there, try an archive and install of Mac OS X.

Hope this helps

Does anyone have any word on this problem yet?

Not yet, but today I called AppleCare, and they are sending me a shipment box for hardware repair.

The first level support person seemed to make careful notes of the problem description, how I said I can reproduce it, and that resetting the SMC didn't fix it. I pointed him to this thread and he noted that. Then he talked to a product specialist, who diagnosed hardware repair. We'll see.

I returned mine already, didn't want to pay for faulty hardware. I am however VERY curious as to what they are doing for this problem as I want to buy another so keep the thread updated.

I too have the same issues with my Macbook Pro. May I ask, how was it determined that you had a hardware problem?

Well, I think basically the problem can be summarized as: "The CPU temperature goes above 100 deg-C while the fans do not change speed from the 2000 rpm minimum, and an SMC reset does not fix it." The answer is a hardware problem, either malfunctioning heat sensors or something else to do with the logic board.

The only alternative answer I could think of would be, "Yes, it's a known problem and there will be an SMC firmware update coming shortly to fix it." They didn't say that.

In my case, the behavior is not consistent -- sometimes the fans do ramp up, though it still gets pretty hot -- and I'm not sure I see a pattern. I have been running almost always at the higher graphics setting (and plugged in).

I've also recently experienced two incidents of the machine freezing (meaning no screen update and no keyboard/mouse response), requiring a forced shutdown.

I will post the results after I get my machine back.

Perhaps interestingly, this MacBook Pro replaced a first-generation MacBook. That machine had a problem that also was triggered by high temperature. The discussion forums referred to it as the "RSD" (random shut down) problem, with many posts. My machine was sent for hardware repair, where they replaced the heat sink, and that fixed it. Others had their logic boards replaced, with or without the heat sink. Later there was a firmware fix that alone fixed the problem for others. What I think can happen is that hardware problems (even a damaged/loose wire?) cause the heat sensors to give bad data to the SMC, and the SMC firmware can sometimes be made more sophisticated to get around the bad data. (This is my take; I don't know if there was ever an authoritative answer on the MacBook solution.)

This problem is definitely not caused by bad data given to the SMC. If the thermal sensors are faulty, we would not have been able to monitor the temperature via iStat Pro, SMCfancontrol etc.

I don't think that's necessarily true. I think I recall that the CPU temperature(s) is reported by the Intel processor and the SMC gets readings off sensors nearby.

I noticed that my fan speeds would not increase as my cpu temperature went up and up and up. I did reset the SMC and the fans would work correctly. As others have stated when the MBP went to sleep or if I restarted the fans would not speed up as the temp increased. I decided to download FanControl and set the Base at 2000, lower at 50C, and Upper at 80C.

I then opened many apps, ran different videos at the same time, this time when the temp of the cpu increased so did the fans. My MBP did not get hot to the touch and then fan speeds went up to approx. 3500. I let this continue for about 8 minutes then I shut the programs down the cpu temp. decreased as well as the fan speeds back to 2000.

I feel better about this situation so thanks for the suggestion about FanControl.

The temperature we see when we monitor via the iStat Widget and other software, it is provided by the same sensors located inside the CPU the SMC uses to regulate the fans. In fact, if you install Hardware Monitor, you can see seperate temperatures for the two cores of the CPU, core 1 and 2.

Just to add my experience.
I read this thread a couple of days ago and i tested my macbook using CPU test and SMCfancontrol to monitor the temperature. The fans kicked in at 89-91 degrees Celsius, so i thought that i had the same problem. I did an SMC reset, PRAM reset, updated the EFI and SMC firmware and installed 10.5.6. The same: Using CPUtest, my fans did not kick sooner than 89 degrees.

BUT, BUT (stay with me here)
I installed COD4 and started playing for half an hour or so. As soon as i heard the fans kicking in, i quit and saw the temp with SMCfancontrol. It was no more than 75 degrees. Also, today, i did some heavy divx encoding. When the temp reached 74 degrees, the fans kicked in. Used CPUtest again. The fans stayed inactive till 91 degrees.

So, i may guess that something fishy happens with CPUtest, cause for everyday normal use, my macbook pro seems to handle the temps just fine. Just my two cents. Hope i helped a little and sorry for my not so good english.

I do use Hardware Monitor. If you are seeing temperature readings for Core 1 and Core 2 on this model MacBook Pro, you are using an old version of Hardware Monitor. The release note for version 4.5 (current version is 4.51) says:

"Support for on-core temperature sensors of Intel processors based on 45 nm technology ("Penryn") has been modified: As confirmed by Intel, the core sensors behave no longer linear enough for the display of absolute readings in low temperature ranges. For this reason, support for core temperature sensors in 45 nm technology has been removed in Temperature Monitor. Hardware Monitor will display them as logical sensors showing "Core Hot" status information."

By the way, the Hardware Monitor site also says,

"Please note that Apple does not support an official or standardized way of reading out sensor data in Mac OS X (the only exception is the Server Monitor application for the Xserve series). Moreover, there is no documentation or other technical note about the individual function of the sensors. For this reason, the development of Temperature Monitor and Hardware Monitor is very costly because the necessary data has to be determined by reverse engineering and tests run on a variety of computer models."

For what it's worth, I have browsed through the source code for FanControl, and it strongly suggests that FanControl does everything through an Apple API to the SMC.