OS X Lion Causing Mac To Heat Up A Bit More Than Usual

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Level 1

8 points

OS X Lion Causing Mac To Heat Up A Bit More Than Usual

Okay hey there everyone, what's up! Anyways, I got Mac OS X Lion yesterday from the App Store like many of you fan boys out there! I've been using it for exactly a day or so now and I've noticed that my 2011 Macbook Pro is usually at 133 F when I'm just simply using the internet surfing the web. When it hits 133 F, I'm not actually doing anything intensive at all other than reading blogs, checking Twitter, and catching up with my news feeds. It started clocking it at this temperature right after I upgraded to Lion. Back with Snow Leopard, doing the same tasks would usually get the temperature of my MBP to around 99 F or 108 F at max. I'm also fearing that this could be an incompatibility with the App I'm using to monitor my system on OS X Lion. Currently, I'm using iStats and there hasn't been any news or updates that I'm currently aware of for OS X Lion. In terms of actually touching the left palm rest, I do actually feel it heating up hotter than usual, so perhaps the reading on iStats might actually be correct. I really don't understand this though... Is anybody else feeling this or is it just me? Now when I also go to watch a YouTube video, my Mac heats up to 180 F and the MBP's Fans kick it at 4000 RPM. Which is also unusual because with Snow Leopard, watching a YouTube video will usually heat up my MBP to only 140 F at max and the fans are chilling around 2k RPM which is normal. Thanks a lot in advance!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7), 2011 17" i7 2.2 Ghz, 4GB DDR3 Ram,

Posted on Jul 21, 2011 10:53 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 23, 2011 4:39 AM in response to AngkorDeNNiS

Hi there, I also upgraded to Lion, experienced the same. For me heat issue was bigger. CPU temp never goes down from 72C. Sometimes as high as 92 (Suddenly). After that I did a clean install - not an upgrade. Weird, same issue. Went back to Snow Leapord.

Thanks!

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Answer 2

gooober

Level 1

41 points

Jul 23, 2011 4:48 AM in response to prageethk

Hello everybody,

Not sure if this is the case, but when you first install Lion, there is some Spotlight indexing that goes on for the first hour or two.

That said, I also have a Macbook Pro similar to yours (i7 CPUs, Mid 2010 15") and am now running at approximately 158 degrees Fahrenheight.

I am also running a bunch of other apps, but my CPU usage is very low (varies from 6% to less than 1%).

If I were to switch to battery power, however the CPU temp would go down a bit. I am not sure what is causing it.

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Answer 3

Jul 23, 2011 4:57 AM in response to AngkorDeNNiS

Just an observation....

IMHO, monitoring things like fan speed and temperatures is a waste of time (although I admit I have iStat nano on my dashboard - idle curiosity). I do not know of any place that publishes the operating parameters for Apple hardware, although I am sure that information is available someplace. I really cannot see that what has been posted here is relevant to anything - including mean time to failure of equipment.

Like any other manufacturer, Apple employs armys of engineers to design and manufacturer things that are reliable. Apple users are fortunate that the operating system and equipment is made by the same manufacturer - unlike a different world that I will not mention.

My apologies for the pedandic lecture. I see this sort of post all the time and decided to provide some perspective.

Barry

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Answer 4

gooober

Level 1

41 points

Jul 23, 2011 7:22 AM in response to Barry Hemphill

You are correct!

There is such a site where one can view the normal CPU operating temperatures:

http://www.intelmactemp.com/list?sort=cpufreq

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Answer 5

Jul 23, 2011 1:16 PM in response to AngkorDeNNiS

Same thing here with a MBP 13' i5 early 2011. Did an upgrade from Snow Leopard and everything was allright. But this weekend I chose to do a Clean Install and the CPU is boiling at 75ºC in idle and even reaches 90ºC while doing flash.

I don't know why this is, but this reminds me a lot to the issues I had with this Mac when I bought it, exactly when it launched: it overheated a lot, but then Apple launched a firmware update and the performance was enormously better. Maybe since this is a clean install it 'erased' this package and now things are hot again. Anyway, hope that someone from Apple reads this soon enough.

Cheers

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Answer 6

AngkorDeNNiS Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 23, 2011 1:28 PM in response to gooober

Yes, that may be correct. I'm not entirely sure though now anyways. My MBP is still a bit hotter than usual and I'm still not sure why. However, it does seem cooler than the first day running Lion, when doing simple tasks it's now about 120F or so, but that's still a big difference compared to my old 99F rate. I'll see if it drops down any further in these couple of days. It might've just been the indexing like you said, although I'm not absolutely sure at this rate yet. I'm going to give it another 4 days or so and then see what's up.

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Answer 7

gooober

Level 1

41 points

Jul 23, 2011 1:38 PM in response to AngkorDeNNiS

Aside from looking in "Activity Monitor" and seeing if any processes are taking up most of your CPU cycles, try this experiment: Run it on battery power.

Right now my MBP is sitting at approx 133 degrees Fahrenheight - which is cooler than earlier today when I had it connected to the Cinema monitor at 158 degrees F.

We might be on the verge of a firmware update. At least I hope so.

Flash is usually pretty CPU intensive. Any sites that load flash player, you will notice this. Might be a good time to check the Adobe site and see if you have the most recent version:

http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about

If flash player is taking many CPU cycles, quit and restart Safari and see if that makes a difference. Once flash player is loaded in memory, it isn't usually unloaded until the browser is restarted.

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Answer 8

bbrip

Level 1

10 points

Jul 29, 2011 6:04 AM in response to AngkorDeNNiS

Same problem here. Ventilator keeps rotating at high speed (and noise) on my late 2010 MBA 13'. Its certianly not FLash as I havent even ectivated that. It is either Safari or Excel '11 that seme to cause these isuues

This is a serious issue as one cannot really work with such heavy noise in the background!

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Answer 9

MugeLSE

Level 1

0 points

Aug 4, 2011 2:16 PM in response to AngkorDeNNiS

Totally agreed. My pro is experiencing an enormous heating problem. Please we need an update urgently. I can not touch to the left side. Why they donot check this before they start to sell? I cannot understand that. A company like Apple should think these kind of possible errors before they invite their clients to use any kind of product.

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Answer 10

gooober

Level 1

41 points

Aug 4, 2011 2:47 PM in response to MugeLSE

The only thing that I noticed that heats up my MBP with Lion real fast is when I open a certain (500+ page PDF) in Preview. Once that is done, my Macbook heats up fast and the fans run continuously.

I had to go to Activity monitor app to find out which application was causing all the CPU activity and once I found that, I went to Preview and closed the file (CMD+W). Now if I open that PDF, it still overheats if I use Preview. Other PDF files do not have that problem. I wonder if it is DRM or something?

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Answer 11

AngkorDeNNiS Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 5, 2011 2:49 PM in response to AngkorDeNNiS

Sorry for no responses on this thread guys because I was on vacation for 2 weeks and I exceeded my data limit while on the vacation... Anyways, I've been using my Macbook Pro a lot more often while I was on vacation and I've noticed it's a bit normal now, although it doesn't quite get as cool as usual, nor does it get as hot as usual. I don't know if it's just me however, but idle temperatures during normal usage is a bit hotter clocking in at 110F (10F more than usual), but when I play Asphalt 6 from the Mac App Store, it goes to 150F at max (it used to go to 170F). I'm not sure if this is any how related at all or it's just me. But I find this pretty awkward. I'm really not sure what's up though because things are starting to go normal for me now but a lot of other people are having the same problem.

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