MACBOOK PRO & SNOW LEOPARD - OVERHEATING

Temps and fans still rising.

I'm taking this to the Apple Store once I get a back up drive.

As opposed to my previous post, switching to a 32bit kernel didn't help. The new flashplayer didn't help as well.

So I went back to Leopard for good. It got a bit better, but I still had some problems. Then I found this version of Fan Control:
http://rapidshare.de/files/47413196/fancontrol121b1.zip.html

Here's the (german) forum thread:
http://www.macuser.de/forum/f10/fan-control-angepasste-250122/index48.html

Just one tip I got from that: You need to fix a permission after installation, by calling this command from the command line:
sudo chown -R 0:0 /Library/StartupItems/FanControlDaemon

After that, restart the computer.

Now it's quiet most of the time. I'm happy again.

This version of FanControl is supposed to work with SL as well, so it might help some of you folks without the need of going back to Leopard. You might want to give it a try, but be careful with the options...

I Have the some problem with MacBook White(2008)
Hot Hot Hot
Fans max speed 😟
When I play poker in facebook, this problem start.
I don't know, but I think flash player is the ploblem.
Apple don't follow Windows Vista please!
Fix All problems in SL ASAP.
SL is cool, but at the moment lots of problems together.
Quicktime bad - lost options
Context Menu - MORE option disappear
Were is the Quality?
Hot
blablabla
Steve Jobs wehe are you?

Same thing with my MacBook Pro. For a while, whenever I'm doing or not doing actually, my Macbook Pro unibody is overheating to a point it really burns.
And as some have said, battery life became miserable.

Come on Apple, we have really too much issues with SL and his applications that really need to be fixed. I'm actually missing now Leopard that was faster and much more reliable on my macs.
SL was supposed to give us a faster OS. I get a slower, crashy, full of bugs one.

Somehow, SL is like Vista, the wrong version !

People, does this happen on battery or charging or both?

If I drain my battery on my 2.4 ("last years model", with 4 gigs of ram) MBP, and charge it - my fans ramp up to 6k doing hardly anything.

Just typing this (and nothing else) the fans are at 3400RPMs.

THIS HAS BEEN HAPPENING SINCE LEOPARD. (so, not a SL issue)

I have zapped the pram, which has helped - but it always comes back.

If I am on battery, this does not happen.
If I am FULLY charged, this does not happen (plugged in with full power - green light)
Only happens in the charging state.

Anyone with similar results?

Just wanted to make something clear,
if i am using the computer on battery, than plug it in and continue using it - it is at that point that the fans will start to kick in (sometimes).

usually when i plug the computer in after using it on battery, i put it to sleep - so this issue does not creep up often.

next time i use it, the battery is fully charged - so again, the problem does not happen.

larsomat wrote:
So I went back to Leopard for good.

I've just done the same thing and not had a single problem since.

This problem started with a clean install of Snow Leopard, and that despite resetting various things before the install. Prior to Snow Leopard I had no fan problems, and no heat problems.

Post install, one particular Flash enabled site would send the computer mad, with temps in the late 80s/90s and the fan in the region of 6K. My MacBook actually got so hot at one point I turned it off because I felt sure it was going to mark my desk with the amount of heat being thrown out.

Since rolling back to Leopard, I'd need to open four videos from the same site to get even close to the same effect. Currently, I have BBC iPlayer running and Handbrake transcoding a video in the background. iStat Pro is reporting CPU temp at 82c and my fan at 4848rpm.

No way I'm going back to Snow Leopard, for all the new features I enjoyed, until Apple acknowledge this as a problem and commit to fixing it. Not that I'm holding my breath on that one of course.

Yep, same issues. I did find that running messenger ramped everything up, shutting it down fixed that. I deleted it, no point in using it, it's ***** anyway.

I think the time has come, and I'm a Mac user of many years, to finally really admit it. Apple is just not building quality products anymore. SL is fail fail fail pure and simple, It's Apple's Vista. Their hardware is not all that great anymore, looks slick, but under the hood...? Not so much. Inferior video chip sets and dvd drives. Bad screens galore, the list goes on and on.

I'm going back to 10.5, **** maybe back to Tiger, I never had anywhere even close to the issues I've had with Leopard, both versions, when I used Tiger.

Very disappointed for sure.

I couldn't agree more with the previous 2 posts. I've been watching this thread ever since I 'upgraded' to SL, hoping Apple will come up with a fix. It's just not coming - they just don't care.

This is a problem that MUST be acknowledged and addressed. It should have been fixed by now.

I give up - back to Leopard for me.

Apple - you've let a lot of your loyal customers down. Does this spell the end?...

After weeks of testing and investigation into this heat issue, I believe the problem has to do with speedstep not lowering the cpu voltage after needing a boost from the battery for a cpu intensive application (i.e. flash). The problem becomes more prevalent while the battery is charging for some reason, however this explains why the problem seems to primarily affect the Macbook lines. The solutions I have found are not pretty, and I would rather Apple fix it properly rather than chancing these 3rd party workarounds. From my experience, they will only fix something they consider to be a minor annoyance if enough people speak up about it, so keep complaining everyone! 🙂

1. Coolbook to manually lower the voltage back to normal.
2. 3rd party speedstep kext (i.e. xnu-speedstep) This is primarily used in the hackint0sh community, but works well on a real mac.

I have had success in managing this problem, but I really want Apple to acknowledge and fix it!

praetorfenix wrote:

1. Coolbook to manually lower the voltage back to normal.
2. 3rd party speedstep kext (i.e. xnu-speedstep) This is primarily used in the hackint0sh community, but works well on a real mac.

I have had success in managing this problem, but I really want Apple to acknowledge and fix it!

That's great stuff, thanks! Ok, CoolBook wants money, so it's not an option. What about speedstep? I installed the kext and started the app. Not sure what I'm supposed to do. Is it either one or another?

The command "sysctl -w kern.cputhrottle_curfreq=YYYY" doesn't seem to work.

bash-3.2# sysctl -w kern.cputhrottle_curfreq=996
kern.cputhrottle_curfreq: 1660 -> 996
bash-3.2# sysctl -w kern.cputhrottle_curfreq=996
kern.cputhrottle_curfreq: 1660 -> 996

Sorry if I ask here, but the instruction in the site are pretty lame.

Still, now I've quit speedstep, I opened speedtest.net web page (a huge Flash sucker) and.. Temp doesn't go above 55 C. I think it's working then.

Ok, I think I managed to make it working. For anyone interested one can download the kext and speedstep from:

http://code.google.com/p/xnu-speedstep/downloads/list

Installing the kext in /System/Library/Extensions didn't work, so I put it in another directory and loaded it manually:

kextload <path>/IntelEnhancedSpeedStep.kext

speedtest goes to the menu bar. It shows the clock throttling. They say to disable it putting it on manual, tho. It also has an option to change the voltage. I don't have a clue if it does anything. The good news is that going to http://speedtest.net AND watching a flash video the temp didn't go above 60 C!!!

Message was edited by: Michelasso

Why must my fellow mac users be so bipolar? Snow Leopard is not Vista. However, for a release focused primarily on stability and Intel support, this problem seems a curious oversight.

I still have the apparent speedstep problem in 10.6.2. I'm using HardwareMonitor, and I see my cpu voltage usually idle around 0.8 volts. Sometimes after sleep/wake my CPU voltage idles at 1.02 volts and will not drop back below that. The corresponding power consumption goes from ~1watt @0.8volts to 4-5watts @1.02 volts. And nothing using the CPU in either case that I can see.

Old Leopard was better about this particular piece. But I like Snow Leopard enough that I've not reverted. I didn't know this problem was affecting others with such severity, my reduced battery life seems mild in comparison.

And flash applications in general are CPU munchers. If you care about battery life and keeping your CPU cool, stop playing Bloons and watching YouTube. 😉

The new intel macbook pro computers are not as fast as the g4 velocity engine chipset. Apple is struggling to keep pace with the pc computer. Me, I own 1 g3, two g4s and a g5. I spent $3000 on my intel 17 inch mackbook pro, and it is the least reliable computer I own. Frequent overheating, fans running out of control, processors running at 100%, computer locks up. The worst investment I have ever made with Apple. I am planning on purchasing a g4 17 inch 1.5 ghz to replace my intel machine.

Well... as further evidence to my theory, I just experienced a kernel panic. Here's a snippet:

Kernel Extensions in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.driver.AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement(96.0.0)@0xffffff7f80f4a000->0xfff fff7f80f64fff

Hm. Power management. Come on Apple... fix it already!