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Loud Fan on MBP 15" Late 2011

2.4 GHz Intel Core i7

8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3


Only running Ableton Live and Safari. One Safari window open, this one, so I can post this question.


CPU of 120% on average for Ableton in Activity Monitor. Spikes up to 135% when running extra plug-ins in Ableton but my CPU usage in Ableton is only about 25%. Next highest CPU% in Activity Monitor is Safari at 4%.


CPU load at the bottom of Activity Monitor looks low. Idle is about 80%. Memory pressure, whatever that means, seems low.... 4.38 Gb used out of 8. 2Gb cache.


I have run a couple of tests to see if the fan gets louder when just using headphones plugged into the machine vs using my audio interface and there doesn't seem to be much difference. One other thing I noticed is that attaching the power supply makes the fan fun louder versus no power attached. This I discovered by eliminating the Thunderbolt Display and just using as a notebook.


Any thoughts? Is this normal? Is it the age of the machine? What would be my best alternative to void a loud fan while producing music? I can't have this background noise while critical listening.


Thanks!

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Apr 19, 2015 11:38 AM

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Posted on Apr 19, 2015 12:03 PM

If you can fix the over-heating then the fans may slow down, but you are working at burning up the machine.


Runaway applications can shorten battery runtime, affect performance, and increase heat and fan acti…


Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the View menu. Click on the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order. If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar. Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process. See if that helps. Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.

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Question marked as Best reply

Apr 19, 2015 12:03 PM in response to cmf312

If you can fix the over-heating then the fans may slow down, but you are working at burning up the machine.


Runaway applications can shorten battery runtime, affect performance, and increase heat and fan acti…


Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the View menu. Click on the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order. If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar. Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process. See if that helps. Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.

Apr 19, 2015 12:03 PM in response to Kappy

Thank you. I checked and nothing else seems to be draining CPU%. Kernel Task and Window Server are the only high CPU Time parameters. I quit the window server to restart but I could not quit the kernel task. I also quit Ableton and then restarted the program and began working on my project again. This resulted in CPU% for Ableton exceeding 200%.


You said I am burning up the machine.... I don't think that running Ableton by itself should cause that. There are no other runaway applications.


Any other thoughts on what it could be?


Thanks again.

Apr 19, 2015 2:06 PM in response to cmf312

The application is running too hot which is why the fans are running, and this is bad for the computer. And, yes, running Ableton by itself is causing a problem you need to fix by finding out why it is running like it is. Could be a bad preference file, bad cache file, corrupted data file, etc.

Loud Fan on MBP 15" Late 2011

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