Macbook Pro Burning Smell When Hot

I have a MacBook Pro Retina 15" mid-2015. A few weeks ago I started noticing the smell that you all mention. I will admit that at first I thought it was something in my apartment, or maybe ME that smelled so bad!! It took me until just a couple of days ago to realize that it's actually my laptop. So it's helpful to have read all of your comments. Someone mentioned that they felt it was possibly because they had bought a lower-priced MacBook. I don't think that has anything to do with it. I paid full price for my MacBook Pro, straight from the store.

Today I notice that the fan seems to be running quite frequently and the computer does seem to be running hot, which is why I sought out this forum. So it's definitely time to take it down to the Apple store and see *** is going on.

Many years ago I bought a laptop for my daughter which turned out to have been from a bad batch; the memory board crashed within its first year. Rather than honor the warranty, every Apple employee told me my daughter had spilled something into the computer. I insisted that they show me the evidence but got no cooperation, just months of run-around. In the end, I had to threaten them with a news story about this particular model which I knew was faulty, and then they immediately backed down and replaced the memory board for free in very short order. Needless to say, I no longer trust Apple to do right by their customers when a batch turns out to be faulty.

This same thing happened to me when I installed iMovie yesterday (version 10.1) All's that I did is import a video than select the image stabilizer icon and when its 'rendering the video' for shaking or whatever, it glitches and crashes... it also now smells like burning plastic as others mentioned. I have a 2012 MBP i5 with upgraded 16 GB of Ram and almost 500 GB Hard Drive space open still..... ***** cause one of the only reasons I got a Mac (this is the first one I've owned) is to do creative projects lol but yeah,... either I need a newer more over-priced Mac, or back to Windows.. honestly.... I paid about $450 for this model...

I've spent many, many years dealing with similar... My own personal MacBook Pro has always been used for gaming on Windows, which unavoidably comes with really high temperatures...

A few things to make note of in my experience:

The MacBooks and their individual (relevant) components are pretty smart and have protections built into them to prevent damage from overheating... Essentially, if your processors ever reach a temperature designated "dangerous" by Intel, they will shut themselves down. Built into the chips. Cannot be avoided or changed (which is a good thing!).

Having said that, anything over 100 degrees celsius is entering dangerous ground. The century-ceiling (+1) is where I personally start taking note and will begin considering taking action to prevent things from going any further... This is always going to be a particular issue when running Windows due to a whole slew of different, interrelated factors. As such I'm always sure to run additional software that enables me to modify the behaviour of the coolling system in my device - setting things so that the device tries for cooler temperatures sooner than it otherwise would do with just the base configuration.

Others may (probably will) tell you otherwise, but I'm just sharing my own personal experience from the last decade... While the generally-high temperatures really bugged me in the beginning, I quickly learned to just chill once I had a few extra protections in place (as above) and continue doing my thing (in this particular case, generally, gaming) until and unless temperatures went above 100. But up to and including that point, well it just became something I learned to expect and live with.

I had one particular MacBook that lasted 9 years as a gaming machine using it as described. And the only reason it didn't go on longer was because of an ill-placed bucket of water from the cleaning lady.

I hope this look into my own personal experiences helps some.

I am having the same problem. At first, I thought that it was an electrical transformer, an old power strip, or perhaps the car that I seldom drive outside the window below. it occurred to me that it could be my macbook air, as it follows me around the house, and the musty odor seems to follow. Last night I took the lap top out of the room, opened the window, and the odor went away immediately.

What should I do ?

I do not want this odor to cause a health problem

I would highly recommend you take your MacBook to the Apple Store for them to have diagnosis. I would also stop using it until you do so to prevent the problem from worsening. If you take it in now, they may be able to save it!

Nope both my rMBP do not smell like burning plastic, but then again I don't run programs that heat my computer up to 100deg Celsius, then make the decision to ignore it and continue doing so.

I would have it looked at, that is not a good sign. You can get a free 'Apple Service Diagnostics' test at the apple store to see if it shows any error

Genius reservation http://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/

on-line https://getsupport.apple.com/GetproductgroupList.action

check warranty https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do

Yes, I have both a 15" (mid 2015) and a 13" (early 2015) rMBP. I think you described the smell exactly in your last post (cpu elements)...the degree of which will solely be dependent on how hot and long a computer is exposed to that stress.

As far as the 2015's running hotter than normal, someone else needs to chime in who has benchmarked performance on a specific program on older and new computer.

i get a smell when I'm exporting 4k video is this normal and safe as in the smell thats coming from the macbook pro 2015

Have you had any further issues with your mbp ? I do get a slight burning smell when I render videos.....

I have a similar issue as well, but you can actually smell it coming from the front part where the speaker openings are. If you are close its a strong chemical plastic smell which changes when hot. Other times I would describe it as the same smell you would get from a hot electric motor. Just started out of the blue.

Get SMC Fun Control app and set it to start the fun more at the point you want