Hot CPU temp/noisy fan

Hi,

Even 76C is way over the normal operating temperatures for processors. You should figure out what causes the over-usage of the CPU, as semiconductors might give up at approx. 90C. But it depends on the model and on the particular piece. In short term, it shouldn't cause any problems below 110C. In long term high temperatures can shorten your CPUs life drastically.

Open Activity monitor, and kill processes that use the CPU too much. Note, that you can see the processes in order by CPU usage.

Gábor

Contrary to what szogaborka says, 76°, 83° and even 95° are well within the safe operating range for your MBP, and are common operating temperatures when the machine is working hard. It may, however, be working hard at some background process or stuck process that you don't know is running, and that's why checking for processes with high CPU usage in Activity Monitor is useful.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1473

Note that although this article focuses on rapid battery drain rather than excessive heat, the two go hand in hand, and runaway processes will generate undue heat even when the machine is running on AC power and the battery isn't draining.

Hi,

According to: http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=47341 Intel 520M's (i5s in the Mid 2010 MacBook Pros) TJunction is at 105C. therefore 95C is not "well within the operating range) Even 110C is too hot.

Gábor

10° below the 105° threshold of danger is indeed well within the safe operating range. And as I wrote above, recent MBP CPUs very often operate at temps in the 70s, 80s and 90s when gaming, encoding video, rendering 3D graphics, or even just playing streaming Flash video. 110°C is, as you say, too hot, but a MBP should never reach that temperature, because it will shut itself down for its own protection before overheating.

Don't take your computer apart. You can take the bottom pan off and blow out any dust you can see, but don't go any farther than that. I'm guessing your heating is a product of the programs you run and the websites you visit, not of any malfunction or fault in your MBP.

Graphics-intensive gaming will always jack your computer's temperature way up, because it stresses the GPU even though it may not be loading the CPU particularly heavily. If you don't want the temperature to remain high when you've paused a game, quit the game instead of pausing it. Some of the behavior you're noticing could be the result of sloppy work by the game programmers.

Hi. Firefox at 58% CPU usage seems quite high, unless there is video running within one of the tabs. Have you checked temperature/fan speeds without Firefox running?

Stedman

I have a white Macbook late 2006 with the same issue. All of this started after installing Snow Leopard and it really drives me nut. Now the temp is at 58% C and I still have the fan at 6200 rpm. But it can go up to 85 C easily. I tried all tools to regulate the fans with no success. Same after installing Click2Flash and Flash 64 (?) bit. It's not the HW, because... guess what? With Windows 7 I don't have the issue!! And as I said neither Leopard caused any problem.

What it really bothers me is that looking on the Internet this is a very common issue, and Apple is doing just nothing to fix it.