Macbook Pro fan keeps running (2011)

Question

Level 2

378 points

Macbook Pro fan keeps running (2011)

Hi there, I recently charged my 2011 13" Macbook Pro to 100%. Upon using it in class for about 2hours the Fan was constalny running and CPU raging on high. Moreover, the battery goes down to 20% in this time period. For reference, I only had Google Chrome, Mail and Word open in this class period. Whats going on? As I type this to you, the fan is this going strong and my battery in 20%

Any ideas? Should I contact the Apple store as I do have an Apple Care Warranty on the machine

I also have a Curcial 512GB SSD in the machine but this is the first time this is happening in the 3 weeks use in the SSD installed and upadted to Apples latest update a few days ago

Thanks

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Mar 13, 2012 11:37 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Mar 13, 2012 11:44 AM in response to Stuwawah

Stuwawah wrote:

Should I contact the Apple store as I do have an Apple Care Warranty on the machine

yes. That is what your paid extra for. Call AppleCare, not the store.

Reply

Answer 2

Shootist007

Level 6

16,703 points

Mar 13, 2012 11:48 AM in response to Stuwawah

You have a run away process. When was the last time you shut the system down and restarted? Not waking it from sleep.

Reply

Answer 3

pennbank

Level 4

1,688 points

Mar 13, 2012 12:16 PM in response to Stuwawah

The SMC covers the Thermal management, so may I suggeest

Do a SMC reset first

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

Reply

Answer 4

Bart1977

Level 2

287 points

Mar 13, 2012 1:24 PM in response to Stuwawah

Don't you have some silly Flash applet running, which ***** CPU?

Reply

Answer 5

Bart1977

Level 2

287 points

Mar 13, 2012 1:25 PM in response to Bart1977

The stars indicate another word for draining...

Reply

Answer 6

Stuwawah Author

Level 2

378 points

Mar 13, 2012 1:45 PM in response to Shootist007

"Shootist00"I havent shutdown my computer for months so thta is a valid point. I did shutdown my computer and started it up again and that seem to have stopped the fan/cpu issue. Thanks!

Reply

Answer 7

ILatu

Level 1

11 points

Mar 13, 2012 2:01 PM in response to Stuwawah

You can always use Activity Monitor when you get unreasonable CPU activity. Also istat nano for a quick reference.
I am studing programing so I often get some runaway processes that keep getting more and more cpu untill i shot them down 😝

Reply

Answer 8

Shootist007

Level 6

16,703 points

Mar 13, 2012 2:54 PM in response to Stuwawah

You are welcome. Reboot often, it solves a lot of problems.

Reply

Answer 9

Jun 22, 2012 7:08 PM in response to Stuwawah

Just to narrow things down a bit.

I had the same problem and discovered the following. When using Firefox, my battery ran out of time faster, my mac was hot and fan ran periodically. When using FF with Silverlight, battery time was even worse, fan almost always on and computer was hot.

On 3rd test, I moved all my open pages from FF to Safari and have been testing the battery time with FF closed and Safari open. So far, my fan has not come on once. Going to watch a video online to see if it's better as well. My diagnostics show Silverlight, by far, is a power hog, FF was the next biggest problem but not bad.

Basic details from rough testing.

6/21/12 with Silverlight running in FF

1.34 min at 12.39 pm full power on screen, full charge

.32 min at 1.39 pm

just over 1 hr.

6/22/12 - activity monitor open, FF, no silverlight.

3.47 min at 9.38 am 3/4 power on screen, full charge, silverlight off and on.

.19 min at 12.28 pm

Almost 3 hrs.

6/21/12 after recharge. Full charge, 3/4 power on screen lighting. All work in Safari, FF closed.

4.39 min at 5.55 pm using safari and not firefox.

3.59 at 7.02 pm

waiting to see.

Hope this helps anyone.

Using a MBP 15", late 2011, with Snow Leopard, v. 10.6.8, Hybrid hard drive

Reply

Answer 10

Sep 1, 2013 5:03 PM in response to Stuwawah

I had the exact same problem with my macbook pro (Purchased June 2012).

My fan was running constantly, and I couldn't figure out why. I simply saw in my activity monitor that "iTunes" was using 61% of my CPU! I force-quit the application and the fan immediately began to slow down.

Thanks for the help! 🙂

Reply

Answer 11

Jan 11, 2016 9:22 AM in response to Stuwawah

Hi,

I checked my activity monitor and Chrome had four background processes churning away. Each one seemed to be using 97% CPU. I had left open a lot of Chrome pages and I guess that they were not passive. When I closed Chrome, my fan stopped running. I have temporarily switched to Safari for general browsing. I think that I will only use Chrome for gmail for now.

Reply