What causes a macs system management controller (SMC) to fail?

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Level 1

6 points

What causes a macs system management controller (SMC) to fail?

In the last month my MacBook Pros SMC failed twice. The computer shut off when I was using it and would not turn on, nothing would light up including the charger and I tried to reset the computer by holding down shift,control,option and the power button and that didn't work. The first time it happened I sent it in to Apple and they told me that they reset the SMC but that everything else checked out fine. Today it happened to me a second time so I opened it up disconnected the battery and the reconnected it and that worked. I tried looking up reasons why my mac would do this and all I could find was a power serge. This could be the issue but both times it happened I was plugged into the same power strip and it has serge protection. I also have been using that power strip since I got my macbook last august and have never had a problem and my girlfriend uses it for her macbook too and hasn't had this happen.

I would like to know if a power serge is the only reason why the SMC would fail or could there be something else going on? I want to know why my macbook is doing this so I can prevent it. Below I will post anything that I can think of that might help answer my question, so if you have and idea as to why this happens to my mac or just know about why the SMC fails I would love to hear about it.

I have a 13" MacBook Pro running mavericks 10.9.2 it has a 2.9 ghz i7 processor and 8gb ram

I bought the mac last august so it's not very old

I rarely use my laptop without it charging it and only drain my battery once every 1-2 months

Both times it happened I was playing super mario 64 on sixty force the n64 emulator- (pretty much the only thing running the second time it crashed)

Both times I was also plugged into the same outlet

Both times I was using a n64 usb controller by retro link

The macbook wasn't any warmer then usual and it was well ventilated both times

My mac was plugged in both times too

Those are the only things that I can think of that might help. If you have any further questions just let me know.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on May 14, 2014 9:16 PM

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Answer 1

MrHoffman

Level 10

146,407 points

May 15, 2014 3:55 AM in response to Clendenen02

Call up Apple again, and tell them what you've written above.

Determining whether this is a problem with your particular MacBook Pro, or if it's some side-effect of the USB gear (buggy, drawing too much power from the USB, etc), or there's some other trigger will require some digging around.

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Answer 2

Aug 22, 2016 4:23 AM in response to Clendenen02

I don't have a reply but a similar problem. I bought a modified late 2012 27" iMAC from a dealer. It has a 500 gb ram disk in and that is the reason I bought it. I worked fine for about year. Then it started crashing. It turned out it is the SMC that is failing and requires resetting. After resetting the SMC, the machine will run anywhere from an hour to 48 hours before crashing again. I took it an apple authorized repair store a couple of time and to an apple store once. They couldn't diagnose the problem. I suspect they never ran it long enough for the problem to appear. One thing I tried was to have machine run cooler. I install Stat and Mac Fan Control. The fan runs at between 1900 and 2000 RPMS and the CPU proximity temp is 120. The computer is plugged into TrippLite surge protector that is supposed to handle of 3840 joules. I hope some apple engineers are monitoring this board, because I sure would like to know what's causing my SMC to continually fail.

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