Macbook Pro slow after battery replacement. CPU throttling?

ilkarmaletale wrote:

I know non-genuine batteries are of cheap quality, but unless I go to an Apple store I don’t know how I can find a real OEM battery, and I wouldn’t want to spend a lot on this old computer.

I'm not aware of any OEM batteries from anyone other than Apple. If there are any, they probably are Apple rejects....they may still be decent, but again not aware of anyone selling OEM batteries. Many online vendors tend to source these types of parts from various sources which usually means the quality can vary greatly.

Yes, I removed the logic board following the iFixit tutorial, do you know if there is some test I can do to check if that’s the actual problem and if that’s what has been damaged?

Unfortunately no. The best you can do is run the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected. However, some third party batteries will be reported as bad even if the battery is good & healthy since some of those batteries may not communicate in the same way as expected.

So do you think that other than the Logic Board the problem could be caused from the calibration? Because I’ve convinced myself that after I installed the new battery and used the computer on the first full charge, it worked normally!

Unfortunately there is no way to know without trying a known good battery to compare results. You could try reconnecting the original battery to compare results, but this is difficult to do without damaging the battery or shorting something out.

You can try checking the CPU frequency by using the command line and the following command which will print out the CPU frequency 20 times (approximately two minutes with an update about every six seconds or so):

sudo  powermetrics  -n  20  |  grep  -i  'frequency'

This command will prompt you for your admin password. Nothing will appear on the screen while you type the password, so press the "Return" key to submit the password.

As long as you are doing some basic activity on the laptop, then the CPU frequency should be over 1Ghz (aka 1,000Mhz). If however, you only see it at only 800Mhz, then it means the CPU is being throttled since that is just the CPU's idle speed. I have seen a Mac operate extremely slowly even though the output of the command showed the CPU running at 2Ghz. Since I had a known good battery, I assumed the Logic Board had some sort of fault.

Do you suggest to retry calibrating it

It does not hurt to try. I doubt it will make a difference, but it doesn't hurt to try either.

or the battery is now damaged and I should replace it?

The only third party Lithium batteries I am familiar are from OWC or iFixIt. I know OWC has resellers in various regions, I'm not sure about iFixIt availability in other regions.

In that case, should I try with the same model or change it?

That is up to you. The vendor, if they are reputable may allow an exchange, but most probably won't accept returns.

Unfortunately the quality of third party Lithium batteries is extremely poor even when purchased from a reputable vendor such as OWC or iFixIt. In my personal experience, many of these online vendors don't receive the same items when they restock their supplies, so one time you may get "X" brand, but next time you may bet "Y" brand. Or maybe you still get "X" brand, but the quality this time is much less than the first time.

My organization gets some parts from a respected vendor (they don't sell to regular consumers) which usually has good quality third party parts, but sometimes the parts they get are much different & of lower quality. Fortunately for my organization, this vendor has always been above board and replaced items we found to be subpar. I realize even they have trouble sourcing parts reliably.

I would avoid letting the battery sit at 0% charge for very long since that can permanently damage a Lithium battery.

Also I would recommend charging the battery to 100% and letting it sit at 100% charge for several hours before lightly using the laptop to drain the battery to 0% and have the laptop power off. I would reconnect the power adapter very shortly after the laptop powers off and let the battery charge to 100% and once more let the laptop stay on the power adapter for several more hours.

Edit: I forgot to mention, that power related issues will cause an Apple Retina laptop to run very slow (the CPU will actually run at idle speeds which for this laptop is 800MHz).

Also, you have a 15" model. Did you remove the Logic Board in order to remove the speakers when you replaced the Battery? If so, then there is a chance you may have accidentally damaged the Logic Board.

I'm assuming the fans are not running at high speed or you would have mentioned that problem. I'm also assuming you did not have any performance issues before the battery replacement. I'm also assuming you did not make any software changes before you noticed the performance issue. I completely agree with @leroydouglas' assessment of CMM and other cleaning/optimizer apps, anti-virus apps, and third party security software.

ilkarmaletale wrote:

Unfortunately there is no way to know without trying a known good battery to compare results. You could try reconnecting the original battery to compare results, but this is difficult to do without damaging the battery or shorting something out.

I'm afraid I can't anymore because the old battery connector is already oxidized.

Corrosion or oxidation? With the tight fit of the connection, I don't think oxidation would be a problem since it would "scratch" it away when reconnecting....again, the MLB battery connector would probably be oxidized as well. Corrosion is an entirely different matter.

If the battery connector on the battery has corrosion, then the contacts of the battery connector on the Logic Board are also likely damaged as well. Most likely that is your problem. I have rarely seen this model laptop have any corrosion on the battery connector, so I would be

The 800Mhz CPU frequency is confirming a power related issue since you are not reporting any fans running at high speed all the time.

ilkarmaletale wrote:

Nono, it's just oxidized because I was ready to dispose it when I replaced the battery and I put the old one temporarily in a trash bin outside, indeed the connector became greenish.

The connector on the Logic Board is clean.

That indicates corrosion, not oxidation. Corrosion can cause the coatings on the metal to deteriorate as well making them less efficient. If there is corrosion on the battery connector, then I would suspect there may be corrosion (aka liquid damage) elsewhere that could be causing problems. Corrosion can be hard to see since it can just be a pin point since some solder connections are just a hair width apart and that pin point of corrosion can cause an electrical short (aka an undesired connection) between them. Plus many chips have solder joints hidden beneath them so the corrosion/damage cannot be seen. I have lots of practicing inspecting Logic Boards while supporting my organization's thousands of Macs, and even I have trouble seeing some signs at first inspection even with a magnifier.

Liquid damage & corrosion on certain components of the Logic Board can just as easily cause these problems too.

FYI, never toss out any removed part until it has been 100% confirmed the new part is working 100% correctly. Having the old part handy allows for comparing results. This holds true even if a person has access to other parts since the original part is a known quantity unless it was damaged during removal.

leroydouglas wrote:

It is not recommended to run the Lithium ion batteries down to zero— this was old battery types, outdated information.

FYI, third party manufacturers are recommending the calibration for their replacement Lithium batteries. Here is the OWC product page with a footnote labeled "1":

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/BAP13MBPR72K/

With a link to this calibration procedure:

https://www.newertech.com/batteries/power-calibration-guide/

While those instructions do mention leaving the battery at 0% for 5 hours, I do disagree with that. I would reconnect the power adapter within several minutes of the laptop powering off since leaving the battery without power for hours will damage a Lithium battery.

I think these batteries need to be exercised a bit before they are used with a heavy workload. We had an iFixIt battery which ended up failing within a day....it had not been fully calibrated so after it was fully charged, the battery was used under a heavy load which drained it more quickly than it should have for its first use. Maybe it was coincidence, but with the replacement battery I took a closer look at the battery Full Charge Capacity and it appeared to act oddly, but after a calibration cycle (I think I did it twice to be safe & to observe its behavior), when we did use a heavier workload the 2nd battery behaved like it should with no anomalies.

I do think it is important to fully charge the battery and leave it at 100% charge for several hours before using it slowly until it powers off, then immediately reconnect the power adapter and let it charge to 100% again and let it sit for a few more hours at 100%. I'll know more soon since I will be trying out a few OWC's Newetech batteries and will be observing their behavior during this process to compare them to the iFixIt batteries.

ilkarmaletale wrote:

Hi everyone, I've recently replaced my Mac battery (for info the model is Macbook Pro 15'' Retina Mid 2014 A1398 E2881 and this is the battery 95Wh A1494 Akku Für Apple Macbook Pro 15" A1398 Late 2013 Mid 2014 Batterie | eBay

)

I carefully replaced it and tried to use the computer and all seemed to be working just fine. So I started to calibrate the battery in this way: charge it to 100%, unplug the charger and use the computer until it shuts down, wait 3-5 hours leaving it off and lastly recharge to 100%.

After this process I started to notice that everything works slower than before,

-run Clean my mac

-run Onyx

It is not recommended to run the Lithium ion batteries down to zero— this was old battery types, outdated information.

clean my mac — is not recommended, it typically does more harm than any good it proposes to do. I hope you did not pay for it. Consider garbage at worst, malware at best.

If the battery is suspect, it sounds like it i s running on a low power mode...(?)

Look at your Battery settings:

The rule of thumb—if you are near the mains leave it plugged in, if you need the portability then run on the battery only—this is how you help optimize your battery charging and extend the working life of your battery by reducing the cycle count.

you can try a SafeBoot Use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support to sort anomalies.

Does a quick disk repair before it fully boots up, and certain system caches get cleared and rebuilt, third party system modifications and system accelerations are disabled.

Login and test. Reboot as normal and test. Caches get rebuilt automatically.

ilkarmaletale wrote:

Hi, in Big Sure I can’t find the “Low power mode” option in the battery settings.

I don't think Big Sur has that option since I don't see it either although I am on an M1 laptop.

Thanks for the update. I'm glad it all worked out.