Early 2011 MBP 13" - heating up

If you dig down through the links in About fans and fan noise in your Apple product - Apple Support, you will eventually find this passage from Keep your Mac laptop within acceptable operating temperatures - Apple Support:

"If your Mac laptop gets warm even when it isn’t doing tasks that require intensive calculations, or if it has fans that run for a long time, use Activity Monitor to check CPU activity. Look for malfunctioning processes that can put a significant load on the CPU and check for unexpected fan use. If issues persist, close and open the lid on your laptop, or restart your computer. ..."

Post a screenshot of Activity Monitor if you wish. Use the Energy pane, or CPU sorted by %CPU to see which apps or processes are using the most energy or placing the greatest demands on your Mac's CPU, respectively. To show the most relevant information I suggest selecting "Active Processes" from Activity Monitor's View menu.

Other thoughts:

• Installing Google turns a Mac into a full-time information-harvesting and -uploading "bot" in the same manner as a "computer virus" would, if such a thing were to exist on Macs, which it doesn't.
• Google constantly pushes updates to the processes that constantly scour your Mac for personal information.
• Google won't care if that causes your Mac to run poorly, degrade its battery, and suffer an early demise.
• If that means you need to buy a new Mac every couple of years to keep up with Google's expanding demands, I suppose Apple won't mind either.
• If Safari does not meet your needs use Brave. Brave is Chrome without the Google.
• If you are required to use Google buy a Chromebook. They ought to be free.
• Don't install the Crucial SSD just yet. Fix that Mac first.

jlmontezuma wrote:

Here are the screenshots for the Activity Monitor and the Webmacs Fan Control.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/6fc895ee-38a5-4160-8518-f425220238e1

I feel I get the best overview in Activity Monitor by select View > All Processes.

Try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected.

Even if the diagnostics pass, it is possible that the fan and heatsink could have dust blocking it. If there is no dust, then it could be due to worn out thermal compound on the heatsink. I've seen the original Apple thermal compound dry out in just three years where it causes the CPU idle temps to be 10C higher than they should be.

You can also try booting into Safe Mode to see if that makes any difference. If Safe Mode makes a difference, then you likely have some sort of software issue.

The hard drive usually won't affect the CPU temps like that. A failing hard drive would just cause the computer to run slower than normal...sometimes lots slower.

I suggest that you uninstall "Macs Fan Control".

I can think of only two reasons for using it or things like it: to hide a problem that should be fixed, or to satisfy a curiosity regarding its temperatures and fan speeds.

• Reason #1 is invalid because they must never be used to override the Mac's cooling system. Arbitrarily setting a speed faster than required will only draw in additional airborne contaminants, and accelerate the eventual need to remove them.
• Reason #2 is invalid because you don't need an app to tell you if a Mac is too hot or its exhaust fan is objectionably loud.

Finally, you can see for yourself that it is presenting an additional burden on your Mac's resources. It's only about half as much as Brave, but why needlessly burden a Mac at all?

Quitting Activity Monitor and uninstalling the needless "fan control" program will relieve the CPU of about 2.5% right away. It's not much, but it is the cost of "observer effect".

That Mac is running just fine and its temperatures are comfortably within their normal range.

I used to have the early 2011 MacBook Pro with antiglare display. I was having the same issue as you, but I maxed out RAM to 16GB, upgraded my 250GB HHD to a 1TB SSD, and also used the OWC Data Doubler and installed a 2nd 1TB SSD. It was a power house!

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal_storage/Data_Doubler

Welcome!

First, a big +1 on John's analysis of Chrome. I would not touch it with a cattle prod.

As the critical safety-shutdown temp in that model is around 100C, I am not too concerned when my non-Retina 2012 MBP13 (same form factor as yours) gets to 60C

That said, the other issue is that the 13-inch Macbook Pro from 2009 on has but one cooling fan, and all air intake is through the keyboard, and the hinge area at the back. If you use a keyboard cover, that will run up temps, as will blocking the hinge. The hinge is also used to exhaust hot air, so keeping that area unobstructed is critical.

When you opened the case to install the new RAM, did you check the condition of the cooling fan and the heat sink it services? I upgraded my HDD to SSD several years ago—best money I every spent on an upgrade—and found the fan not too dusty. However, the heatsink the fan services had a big pad of lint and dust stuck to it, reducing the effective surface area the fan could cool.

Check for crud when you do the SSD install. Removing the clog reduced my running temps by about 5°C.

⚠️ NOTE! When you change the drive in that model, best practice is to change drive CABLE as well. The cable has vaery thin insulation that, after years of normal use and transport, can chafe against metal edges on the chassis. That exposes the cable's wring can can cause a litany of oddball issues.. A worn cable is hard to visually detect so ALWAYS replace out of an abundance of caution whenever you service/change the hard drive.

You should be able to find a proper cable for under US$20. Example:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apple/9229771/