Snow Leopard - problems with portable lineup fans/heat

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Level 1

55 points

Snow Leopard - problems with portable lineup fans/heat

It seems many models in Apples portable lineup have an issue with fans/heat and Snow Leopard. I'm starting this thread to try and collect data on which models/revisions to see if we can find some root cause. Mods - I felt this deserved splitting from the main Q&A as a hunt around the usual suspect forums finds a lot of people having the same issue. Hope that's OK.

On other forums I have seen reports of it affecting MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs, and one mention of a Mini. Mine is a MacBook.

My fans are constantly at 6200rpm on a MacBook White 2.16 Core 2 Duo with 2Gb RAM. CPU temp is up at just shy of 70 degrees, CPU usage is below 50% and RAM usage shows over 25% free.

Maybe portable users could add their own forms here? We need to see if this is a problem with SL (which I think it is) or particular hardware.

*Report Form:*

AFFECTED: YES
MODEL: *MacBook White REV: C*
CPU: *2.16 GHz Core2Duo*
RAM: 2Gb
DRIVE: *250Gb HD*
CLEAN INSTALL OR UPGRADE: UPGRADE

MacBook Rev C, 2.16 C2D, 2Gb RAM, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Aug 29, 2009 12:14 AM

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Answer 1

DocB13

Level 1

0 points

Aug 29, 2009 3:26 AM in response to bombardier

Yes, same problem. Late 2008 15" MBP with 4G ram. Very hot with high fan speed

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Answer 2

necronym

Level 4

1,434 points

Aug 29, 2009 4:18 AM in response to bombardier

AFFECTED: NO

MODEL: MacBook Air (Rev A) - now runs cooler, faster and quieter on Snow Leopard than Leopard
CPU: 1.6GHz
RAM: 2GB
DRIVE: 80GB
CLEAN INSTALL OR UPGRADE: Performed both a clean install and an upgrade.

AFFECTED: NO

MODEL: MacBook Pro 15.4 (late 2008)- Runs as expected on 32-bit kernel and 64-bit kernel
CPU: 2.53GHz
RAM: 4GB
DRIVE: 320GB
CLEAN INSTALL OR UPGRADE: performed both a clean install and an upgrade.

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Answer 3

Esquared

Level 6

12,385 points

Aug 29, 2009 6:15 AM in response to bombardier

AFFECTED: NO
MODEL: MacBook Pro (3.1) early 2007
CPU: 2.4 GHz Core2Duo
RAM: 4GB
DRIVE: 1600GB HD
CLEAN INSTALL OR UPGRADE: UPGRADE

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Answer 4

Aug 29, 2009 8:45 AM in response to bombardier

Problems
After install clean copy of snow leopard 3 times 2 times upgrades from clean leopard ended with serious heating issues , cpu Temp around 70 with no activity reached 92 degrees , never had such overheating with leopard called Apple support and the case been past to the 2nd line engineering

will role back to leopard .....please replay if anyone encounter such issues

Macbook pro 13 inch
2.5 GHz 4GB ram

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Answer 5

Aug 29, 2009 8:53 AM in response to bombardier

Hi bombardier: "CPU usage is below 50%" If your CPU is running near 50% there is a problem. What activity is pushing the CPU so high? Be sure to check you activity monitor is set to show "All Processes" as oppose to "My Processes". It's quite possible there is an activity running in the background that isn't compatible with SL.

Hope this helps
Stedman

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Answer 6

bombardier Author

Level 1

55 points

Aug 29, 2009 9:56 AM in response to stedman1

stedman1 wrote:
Hi bombardier: "CPU usage is below 50%" If your CPU is running near 50% there is a problem. What activity is pushing the CPU so high? Be sure to check you activity monitor is set to show "All Processes" as oppose to "My Processes". It's quite possible there is an activity running in the background that isn't compatible with SL.

Hope this helps
Stedman

Hi Stedman.

OK, checked "All Processes" and the two highest percentage uses are:

mds (groan, this is now becoming a repeat of the initial spotlight problem with Tiger) at between 65 and 69%, 6 threads, 22.6Mb RAM - parent process is "launched (1)"

java at between 40 and 45%, 65 threads, 335.9Mb RAM - parent process is "launched (1)" - can't work out what might be running java at a root level?

I'm going to try turning spotlight off with Spotless as a temporary fix but this needs to be sorted as I use Spotlight quite a lot.

Thanks for the heads up on the processes though, I'll try Spotless and report back, as I'm not even sure if it's SL compatible yet.

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Answer 7

bombardier Author

Level 1

55 points

Aug 29, 2009 10:15 AM in response to bombardier

Stedman, you legend!

Spotless isn't working with SL yet, so I dragged my root drive into the Privacy Pane of the Spotlight Preferences and almost immediately both the mds and java processes tailed off and the fan has reduced back down to 1800rpm.

Next step is to take the drive out of privacy and see what happens after a full index. If the same thing happens I'll delete the Spotlight database manually through Terminal and let it index again.

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Answer 8

Aug 29, 2009 10:39 AM in response to bombardier

Hi bombardier: Glad it helped.

Stedman

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Answer 9

bombardier Author

Level 1

55 points

Aug 29, 2009 12:14 PM in response to stedman1

So, adding to the privacy pane and then removing caused a full index to take place, but strangely, while the indexing was being carried out, the fans didn't go that mental, in fact they weren't running very high at all. It was only when the indexing was finished that the fans ramped up again and the MacBook got really hot.

Next step was manually removing the .Spotlight-V100 folder, rebooting and letting it index again. Exactly the same result.

So it's not the Spotlight indexing being performed that is doing this, it's something funky going on with the finished index itself.

The only thing I can do at the moment is to keep it my boot drive in the privacy pane until a fix is released.

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Answer 10

Aug 29, 2009 5:38 PM in response to bombardier

Same problem with intense heat here.

Macbook Pro (3,1) -- CPU is low. Temp is high (~74°C "Graphics Processor" according to Temperature Monitor) when idle. It's gone as high as 78 when playing a small video in either Safari, Quicktime, or Firefox.

I think the GPU is maxing out and not being cooled properly.

I'm not doing anything graphic intensive, although watching any kind of flash or quicktime video makes it even hotter.

I'm also not doing anything that SHOULD take up CPU that might have be moved to OpenGL. It's got nothing running!

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Answer 11

Aug 30, 2009 1:46 AM in response to bombardier

Initially it was an issue however Spotlight was indexing heavily after the Snow Leopard Upgrade. Now it's back to normal.

I'm sat here on battery (max battery) with temps at 37degC, fans at 1998rpm and over 4 hours left (I've seen Leopard hit 5 hours in use thanks to the SSD).

On AC power it's usually hotter overall but still within normal limits.

MacBook Pro 3,1.

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Answer 12

bombardier Author

Level 1

55 points

Aug 30, 2009 1:55 AM in response to Nick 1066

Nick 1066 wrote:
Initially it was an issue however Spotlight was indexing heavily after the Snow Leopard Upgrade. Now it's back to normal.

I'm glad it's OK for you, for the rest of us there is definitely something funky going on with Spotlight!

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Answer 13

SWOT

Level 1

0 points

Aug 30, 2009 2:35 AM in response to bombardier

AFFECTED: Maybe?
MODEL: MacBook Pro (Early 2008, Last ver. before Aluminum)
CPU: 2.4 GHz Core2Duo
RAM: 4Gb
DRIVE: 200Gb HD
CLEAN INSTALL OR UPGRADE: UPGRADE

Been trying both 32bit and 64bit kernel settings, in general, 32bit is ~5˚C higher in average temp than before SL, and 64bit is another ~5˚C higher.
Temperature when "work-idle" (launched Mail, Calendar, Safari, Lightroom, PS, but stop doing stuff for 20 minutes): CPU, GPU
32bit: 53˚, 63˚
64bit: 61˚, 68˚
(Note the true Idle temp is only 1˚ or 2˚ lower than the work-idle temp in my case)
Temperature when video playback (RMVB file via MPlayer)
32bit: 61˚, 72˚
64bit: 67˚, 75˚

what puzzles me is that, in Leopard, the CPU usually has like 3 or 4% load in work idle or true idle, while the temp is on average 49˚
in Snow Leopard, the CPU can go all the way down to 1% yet the temp is higher...

Spotlight is NOT indexing in all cases.

Snow is hot... how ironic.

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Answer 14

Aug 30, 2009 2:35 AM in response to bombardier

Some people in this thread and others have related the fan problem to CPU load (obviously). In addition to the several processes/apps that have been mentioned as hogging, I will add antivirus. My antivirus was for some reason taking about 97% of the CPU. I'm no expert but probably not made for 64 bit. Anyway, I was never sure I needed it so this made it an easy decision to take it out of my startup list. PS I never saw the problem with Spotlight indexing that others have reported. 10.6 seems to be performing very differently on different machines, with no obvious explanation based on hardware variations.

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Answer 15

Aug 30, 2009 2:39 AM in response to bombardier

I am having an Issue with my Macbook Pro since updating to SL. Fans run fast, and the system freezes solid after some time (hard to determine how long it takes as it has a habit of happening when I am not around) - fans still run fast but everything is frozen - have to hold down the power button to get it to restart. As a consequence time machine backups fail but the USB external drive I am using for TIme Machine is also not recognised and I can unplug and it makes no difference. Under leopard had a similar issue but it simply did not recognize the built in trackpad and keyboard but would work normally with a USB mouse and keyboard and sometimes closing the lid to initiate a sleep would make it reconnect to the keyboard and trackpad. However now it is a total freeze. Thought it may be the screen sleep but turning that off did not help. Basically at any time the computer can freeze this is a serous issue.

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