New 2011 MacBook Pro Heating Issue?

I bought the new 2011 line of MacBook Pros yesterday and was wondering if anyone else noticed that the processor heats up a lot faster causing the fans to rev up really high? I had Steam open yesterday re-downloading my games and the fan went ballistic and I don't see why when steam was only using roughly 20% CPU downloading those games. That never caused my previous MacBook Pro's fans to rev up like this.

MacBook Pro 15" Early-2011, Mac OS X (10.6.5), Intel Core i7 Quad 2.2 GHz, 8GB RAM

Posted on Feb 25, 2011 9:41 AM

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849 replies

Mar 7, 2011 12:01 PM in response to killthelights

Ok, this is a bit weird, reinstalled the Snow Leopard OS, and now, during heavy workload
(After Effects Total benchmark multi-core render) the CPU shows only 80-85% Celsius and
the fans only reach just under 5000 rpm, wich means: much quiter.
Also the back of the macbook is now much cooler...

Yesterday, the same render hit around 94% Celsius and the fans went crazy, then 2 out of 5 times,
the macbook pro froze, and a hard reboot was the only option.

I will run some more tests tonight, try to stress the ** out of this beast and see if I can re-create the freeze problem again, I do alot of Final Cut/After Effects HD rendering, so i guess this will be quite a good benchmark to see if reinstalling the Snow Leopard OS is a proper solution.

Would be good to see if anyone else might have the same luck as I did?

I will keep you posted on the progress.

/Daniel

Mar 7, 2011 3:21 PM in response to killthelights

I got the basic spec 13" MBP yesterday and the first thing I noticed was how hot it got when installing stuff, installed a couple of temperature tools and when it's "busy" doing a lot of things it heats right up to 89c.

Decided to see how bad it got and tried playing Starcraft, it jumped to 92c but once the fans reached 6000RPM it didn't get any hotter.

Idle is high 40s, I can watch videos and surf the net with it being around 52c.

Looking around it seems this is quite "normal" but I find it hard to fathom how any chip should ever get to 92c so quickly. It's being used on a hard surface in a cool room.

What would you lot advise? I think I can return it within 14 days. If it's normal I'm happy to keep it (and just not play games on it) but I'm a bit concerned that it can get so hot.

Mar 7, 2011 4:58 PM in response to PaperFacer

Nothing in PaperFacer's post sounds particularly bad to me. Mate, longer term experience would certainly be more telling, though. It's virtually impossible to predict how the machine will operate under a wider range of circumstances, but if the fans keep all the critical components cooler than their max. temp specs, then there isn't a lot to be concerned about. Some don't like fan noise, however. If you are one of those, then you probably already have your answer vis-a-vis a return. (Apps that "adjust" fan speed don't usually slow them down (to satisfy noise averse folk), they enable folk to adjust set points that enable them to run even faster earlier, so as to keep components even cooler than factory set points.) So, those apps are probably not the answer for folks that do not like fan noise.

Returning to the question.....Completely risk averse folk (like myself) would return the MBP, re-pocket the money, wait for a few months to let the smoke clear, and then re-evaluate the requirement for the horsepower of a 2011 MBP. Less risk averse folk would keep it beyond the 14 days, and hope that Apple stands behind its warranty.

Mar 8, 2011 1:04 AM in response to dnakad

I also have the freeze problem running After effect Renders or CInema 4d.
It also happened to me just opening After Effect (scary).
My computer freeze , Fans run crazy.
Even if I can't do anything, I still have the mouse.

CPU Temp : up to 94°c
Fan speed : 6200rpm

sometimes it get there for a few second and come down to 85°c 88°c
Fans are still at 6200rpm.

Maybe I'll try to reinstall if anyone can confirm.

Mar 8, 2011 1:30 AM in response to killthelights

If you are using iStats Menus, be sure to deactivate the speed fan control option under Sensors (it's activated by default on the sensors option), as it will bypass the system settings for fans control, and I've observed that it's causing the fans to not speed up quickly enough to cool the CPU soon enough, and resulted to system freezes sometimes because of that. Disabling this options solved this problem (and the fans are speeding up significantly sooner).

Point also valid for any other app that have a fan control option (SMC Fan Control & co). So beware of any Temperature sensors or Fan sensors apps, they may have an option to control the fan speed that bypass the default system settings and may disturb the appropriate functioning of fans and computer cooling system.

Mar 8, 2011 2:42 AM in response to phlexib

The reinstall did seem to help at first, but then eventually another freeze..

So NO, reinstalling snow leopard did not help.

What did help/helps at least in After Effects, was to change the After Effects CPU to use only 6 cores with 1 GB allocated ram each, that worked really well, fans stayed at 5000 rpm and temp ever rose above 85 celcius.

/d

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New 2011 MacBook Pro Heating Issue?

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