macbook pro running hot after maverick update

I have just upgraded to Maverics as well (from Mountain Lion). I am about 2hrs in and my MBP (mid-2007) runs a lot hotter than before.

In those 2 hrs, I've noticed that Spotlight indexed all my files (I guess that is pretty intensive, also judging from the CPU utilisation) and I also fired up my Mail which took a good 1hr to update (don't know why but it had to download absolutely everything from all my mail accounts).

I am over those two activities by now and I am still running pretty hot (CPU temperature on average around 67ºC with fans at full speed, just as a precaution).

In the activity monitor, I've observed that the mds process is still taking a good chunk of my CPU (c. 50%). This process is Spotlight's metadata process and it appears that it still has some work to do on my system.

You can look in your Activity Monitor app to see what is happenning with you CPU. If you have very high CPU utilisation for a prolonged period of time, this will ramp up your temperature and you sense your MBP feeling hotter at its bottom side.

I am also a bit apprehensive about the new features in Mavericks, i.e. Timer Coalescing and Memory Compression. I am really not an expert but the memory compression might be adding an extra load on the CPU, which might in turn cause the operating temperature up somewhat. Perhaps someone else can offer some insight on these advanced features and their impact on the CPU and the average operating temperature.

I will give it a couple of days to see if the system settles to a "quieter" state CPU-wise and if the average temperature goes down to what I am used at. The thing with my MBP is that it suffered from the NVIDIA graphics card problem a few years back and even though Apple repaired it for free, I am pretty aware that it cannot withstand very high CPU/GPU temperatures. If Mavericks makes my MBP run hotter, then I am going straight back to Mountain Lion.

Try a SMC reset:

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

Ciao.

Any other suggestions to try?

You can make sure the MBP is getting plenty of air. The case bottom acts as a heat sink so you need to have room for air to get underneath. Use a laptop stand with active cooling or simply put little spacers about 1/2-inch (12mm) thick (I use plastic building blocks I snitched from the grandkids toy box) close to the "feet" to allow more flow. Make sure the slot on the back is unobstructed by anything on the workstation; that is the air exhaust port on that model.

One thing that could be at play but is hard for the average user to fix is dirt/dust inside the case and on the fan blades. After five years, your MBP has surely inhaled its fair share of environmental particulates and that can run up temps.

How much RAM do you have? Many of that model shipped with only 2GB RAM, making Virtual Memory work harder and potentially contribute to heating.

I think Nicos' advice to let everything finish updating is sound. However, also use his suggestion of using Activity Monitor to check for other processes that might be out of control. IMPORTANT! When using activity Monitor, it defaults to looking at only the processes unique to your account and that does not give a true picture of other things running in the background. So...

In Mavericks, AM changed where to set the processes observed. Go to AM's "View" menu and select "All Processes" from the pull-down:

That will reveal the background processes that most commonly cause overheating. To get an accurate reading, use the computer normally for several hours (this won't be effective immediately after a restart) and then close any apps you've opened to put the computer basically "at idle" before using AM. Highlight the "CPU" tab. Any process using about 10% or greater of your cycles is suspect.

If you are running any anti-virus, internet security, or those awful "I'll clean your Mac because you can't" programs, that alone can explaining overheating.

As Nikos wisely points out, that model has the dreaded Nvidea GeForce 8600M GT video chipset that is know to fail with mild overheating so you need to be sure you are controlling temps. My first MBP had the same chipset and mine failed last June and Apple says they can no longer fix it--too old. Keep your data backed up--the failure can give no warning of its coming.

bridge1490 wrote:

but the fans are still running at unusually high speeds and the temperature is still quite hot for only running Chrome with one tab open.
Any other suggestions to try?

What happens when you shut down Chrome (use Safari or another browser for the test).?

Ciao.

I tried the SMC reset as well. Not sure whether it affected the temperature management on my MBP. However, I wouldn't consider my case representative because after the replacement of my toasted NVIDIA chipset, the fan control did not work as before - it became much less responsive when the temperatures were rising inside my MBP and hence the risk of it getting toasted again was pretty high. Because of that, I forced smcFanControl to always run at maximum fan speed (i.e. 6,000 rpm). It made my MBP noisy but at the same time, the temps were kept pretty low on average (c. 45ºC, which is pretty safe, I reckon). Also, whenever I had to do very prolonged and intensive tasks (e.g. TimeMachine full backup, OS upgrade etc), I always placed an ice pack under the laptop. I know, it sounds pretty poor but that's the reality with this crappy chipset...

Now, to the point. I have isolated two main causes for the rise in temperature:

(1) the initial indexing of Spotlight

You can check whether Spotlight is indexing by just invoking it via Cmd + Spacebar - if it is indexing, it will show the relevant progress bar. There is an associated process called mdworker (metadata worker) and I think another one called mds (if you google it, you will find the details). Those processes take up quite a lot of CPU on my MBP when the indexing is taking place. After a few long executions, they now seemed to have died down.

(2) Mail

I have a lot of accounts in Mail and when I started it for the first time in Mavericks, it was ridiculously slow and unresponsive. Also, Mail used insane amounts of CPU for hours again, which apparently took place at the same time as the Spotlight indexing - you can imagine what the poor MBP went through. Again though, after hours of execution, Mail seems to have calmed down.

I am almost certain that the high temperature I observed on my MBP for all those hours (roughly averaging 67ºC with fans constantly at 6,000 rpm and icepacks under the casing) were correlated with the two above processing tasks. Now, that those tasks have finished, my CPU utilisation is pretty good and the temp has gone down to familiar values (c. 45ºC along with my blood pressure 🙂).

I'll be on the lookout in the next few days on this issue. I am particularly interested to see what will happen upon a few shutdown/restart cycles, especially when re-starting Mail.

It has been a much less than smooth upgrade (especially if you top it up with the iBooks disaster). We'll see.

Hope that helps and good luck.

See my post [unsubscriber] here, which includes a bit about the Mavericks heat issue. I have returned my MBP to Snow Leopard.

Yeah, I debated that as well, as Snow Leopard runs super fast on my MBP. The only problem there is that you cannot use iCloud, which I really like.

There are bits of iCloud you can have on Snow Leopard but it's just not right.

Hi, I also have Macbook Pro (Mid-2007) and rather than installing over Snow Leopard, I had just got Maverick installed on an external drive today.

Upon on install being completed, I have turned the indexing off on MBP's HDD where SL sits so it didn't took long to index the external drive itself. I did not add anything such as mail etc apart from Firefox browser as it was for testing to see if it is good enough to switch over.

With this out of the way, my MBP is definitely running hotter than normally with SL. I checked the activity monitor and the cpu was idling very low (around 3%?) and there was no freezes or whatever. However, it was still running hot after several minutes so I rebooted MBP back to Snow Leopard and after just few minutes, it was going back to lukewarm slowly then rebooted again to Mavericks and not long later, it was back running hotter.

With low CPU usage, my first thought is that Mavericks may be hard on GPU because the screen of Mavericks is much nicer/clearer on the eyes and also Firefox/Safari seemed to be running more smoothly & also load more fluidly than SL but it might means it could be making a full use of (taxing) Geforce's GPU unit which SL didn't.

I just felt it was a bit too risky to upgrade to Mavericks just yet as it was running a bit too hot to be comfortable (I also had a mainboard replacement a couple of years ago). Maybe it is still a bit early days and hopefully Apple might have a fix for this, probably unlikely but who knows.

I think i've found the issue.

my macbook pro's an early 2013 15'' retina model. Similar to you, I've recently upgraded to mavericks, use google chrome etc etc.

The biggest issue I noticed since the Mavericks update was the temperature rise. Have you tried monitoring the temperature before/after you ran chrome?

For some strange reason, whenever I open a new chrome window, the temperature spikes up to 70+C from 50-ish. It'll gradually lower, but only if the fans spin at a high speed (I used ultrafan to monitor and to control the temperature).

Bob1130, greetings: Google Chrome has had a history of compatibility problems with Mac OS's. That is why I suggested the OP shut it down and see what happens. Perhaps you have validated my point.

I use Firefox as my primary browser.

Ciao.

My Macbook Pro was running extremely hot after the Maverick upgrade. It went on for a couple of days until I found the simple fix on osxdaily.com

Reset the SMC (for MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models with internal batteries.

1. shut down the MAC

2. Plug in the MacSafe adapter (i.e.power cord/charger)

3. PRESS AND HOLD SHIFT+CONTROL+OPTION+POWER buttons at the same time

4. Release all keys and buttons simultaneously

5. press the power button to turn on your mac as usual

Apple notes that the little LED light on the MacSafe adapter may change colors or states, or even briefly turn off when you reset the SMC, which would be an easy way yo tell if it's been done successfully.

There is a part in the Macs, I can't remember the name of it but my friend who has a mid 2012 Macbook Air had a similar issue but on Mountain Lion his cooling fan would be blasting even when the Mac was cold. My 13" Macbook Pro has this issue every couple weeks where when I hit the power button to put it into sleep mode, all the icons will disappear and the screen will go black and the cursor and screen will stay on. This part manages the power supply for all the components and one of the symtoms of this part having issues is the fan is always on. But that may not be the propber diagnosis. Other symptoms are screen brightness can't be adjusted manually, and keyboard brightness. If it is this issue then there are a few ways to reset it. 1) is you can take it to an Apple store and they'll plug in a cable to the power port and restart it. 2) You can restart the part yourself. I forget how to but I think the name of the part is the PMC, or Power Management Chip.

I hope this helped and if it didn't I hope its nothing bad happening with your machine.

Actually I have now managed to get Mavericks stable on my MBP 3,1 2007 2.2GHz Santa Rosa. See the thread linked above for how.

Also, I am still watching the heat issue, but so far so good. When my HD finishes partitioning (the shrinking is taking hours and hours, but Activity Monitor's disk tab shows that data is definitely being read and written slowly but surely, so I'm happy to wait - the drive would be very fragmented after all these years perhaps), I will next try following MKWilkie's tip above about resetting the SMC.

I might also install SMC Fan Control, though I think it probably needs to be used gently/carefully. I don't want to wear out the fans of an already old MBP!

Does anyone know if SMC Fan Control works with Mavericks? The developer's site only mentions Mountain Lion at this stage.

I have absolutelly the same problem.

If you'll downgrade to 10.8 I think to do the same. No one of new Mavericks feature costs of overheating and additional noise.