Intense Thermal Throttling at 60 Degrees?

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itscooldani Author

Level 1

4 points

Intense Thermal Throttling at 60 Degrees?

Hey everyone,

I'm having some issues with my 2019 i9 Macbook Pro overheating since updating to 14.1.2.

I've been having some thermal issues for a few months now, but that was

mostly due to having accidentally installed malware (oops) and not

really understanding the things I was doing that would trigger it.

After doing a clean and beginning to monitor my temps, since doing an

incremental update to 14.1.2 (was already on Sonoma for a while, so no

massive changes), later that day when I was doing some recording in

Logic Pro, things kept getting extremely aggressively throttled. This is

stuff I was doing just the day before, and had been doing for weeks

since my initial issues, with no problem.

On top of that, these temps don't seem very high??? Before it was throttling when the CPU was getting into the 90s, and the GPU around 60. But now they're both at 60, which from what I can tell seems to be a pretty fine idle temp? Throttling seems to be more aggressive when the GPU temp rises than the CPU too.

Here are some pics of Hot and powermetrics:

No temps above 65 max.

Trapping?? GPU and CPU at 60/61??

Things contributing: Firefox with a bunch of tabs, some IO: midi controller, synth, audio interface, being routed through my computer and not directly. It's all going through a cheap hub on one side of the Macbook, which I know is not ideal. Also have Messenger and Moises running.

All of these things are definitely contributing to the heat, and unplugging or turning them off helps, but I'm confused as to why this is an issue *now*, when it wasn't happening anywhere near to the extent it was before the update?

MacBook Pro 16″

Posted on Dec 7, 2023 4:15 PM

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Answer 1

John Galt

Level 10

154,898 points

Dec 7, 2023 5:50 PM in response to itscooldani

That excessive fan speed is due to the CPU reporting it's too hot: "SMC asserting ProcHot" (Reference Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer's Manual Volume 3B: System Programming Guide, Part 2). It could conceivably be due to an internal CPU fault.

Read Check for unexpected heavy fan use in About fans and fan noise in your Apple product - Apple Support. The only applicable suggestion is to Reset the System Management Controller (SMC). That's about all you can do.

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

68,306 points

Dec 8, 2023 8:45 PM in response to itscooldani

Try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected. Unfortunately the diagnostics don't detect most issues, but if it does detect a problem, then you know you have a hardware issue.

I have also encountered lots of weird behavior with these USB-C Macs, so this behavior does not surprise me. I have seen these USB-C Macs run extremely slow even though the CPU frequency appears at full speed. Power related issues can cause it to run slow as well....it isn't always a temperature issue.

You also have to keep in mind the i9 should never have been put into this laptop....Apple had to cripple it in order to even have it work since it gets so hot.

These 2019 Macs tend to have a lot of Logic Board failures. My organization has encountered lots of Logic Board failures across all the 2019 & 2020 Apple computers. They have the highest number of Logic Board failures of any Macs I've ever supported for my organization. Personally I would suggest putting the money into a new computer instead of repairing a 2019 laptop with lots of known issues. Don't forget the battery will need to be replaced at some point which will cost at least $250+ US. Normally I'm all for trying to keep computers & devices running, but I rarely suggest we repair my organization's 2018 - 2020 Intel Macs.

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