Level 1

111 points

MacBook Pro having frequent CPU spikes

I have an early 2011 MacBook Pro that is having frequent spikes in CPU use (usually kernel_task). It doesn't seem to be caused by specific software and is cleared by just putting it to sleep for a minute. It is constantly happening, though, and driving me crazy.

I've replaced the battery, replaced the hard-drive (with a SSD), and upgraded the RAM. No change. I'm running El Capitan with a clean install, but the issue happens with a clean install of Yosemite, too.

Apple Hardware Test just reports an error on the battery (4xxx/4/40000005: G "Battery") but I think that's just because it is a 3rd party battery. It's working fine.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

The Sytem CPU otherwise runs at about 1%, but here is an EtreCheck report that was run with the spiked CPU (kernel_task at 623%):

EtreCheck version: 2.6.4 (224)

Report generated 12/12/2015, 12:57 PM

Runtime 13:23

Download EtreCheck from http://etresoft.com/etrecheck

Click the [Click for support] links for help with non-Apple products.

Click the [Click for details] links for more information about that line.

Hardware Information: (What does this mean?)

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011)

[Click for Technical Specifications]

[Click for User Guide]

MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro8,2

1 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 CPU: 4-core

16 GB RAM Upgradeable

[Click for upgrade instructions]

BANK 0/DIMM0

8 GB DDR3 1333 MHz ok

BANK 1/DIMM0

8 GB DDR3 1333 MHz ok

Bluetooth: Old - Handoff/Airdrop2 not supported

Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n

Battery: Health = Normal - Cycle count = 5 - SN = W00030C0L77ZC

Video Information: (What does this mean?)

Intel HD Graphics 3000

AMD Radeon HD 6750M - VRAM: 1024 MB

Color LCD 1680 x 1050

LED Cinema Display 2560 x 1440

System Software: (What does this mean?)

OS X El Capitan 10.11.2 (15C50) - Time since boot: about 3 days

Disk Information: (What does this mean?)

Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB disk0 : (1 TB) (Solid State - TRIM: No)

EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted> : 210 MB

Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted> [Recovery]: 650 MB

SSD (disk1) / : 998.97 GB (774.31 GB free)

Core Storage: disk0s2 999.35 GB Online

MATSHITADVD-R UJ-898 ()

USB Information: (What does this mean?)

Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)

Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad

Apple Inc. BRCM2070 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

GenesysLogic USB2.0 Hub 2 TB

Western Digital Ext HDD 1021 2 TB

EFI (disk3s1) <not mounted> : 210 MB

Ext Backup (disk3s2) /Volumes/Ext Backup : 2.00 TB (74.61 GB free)

Apple Inc. Keyboard Hub

Apple Inc. Apple Keyboard

Seagate Expansion Desk 4 TB

EFI (disk2s1) <not mounted> : 315 MB

M4TB (disk2s2) /Volumes/M4TB : 4.00 TB (749.55 GB free)

Apple Inc. Apple LED Cinema Display

Apple Inc. Display iSight

Apple Inc. Display Audio

Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver

Thunderbolt Information: (What does this mean?)

Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus

Gatekeeper: (What does this mean?)

Mac App Store and identified developers

Kernel Extensions: (What does this mean?)

/Library/Extensions

[not loaded] com.FTDI.driver.D2XXHelper (1 - SDK 10.11) [Click for support]

/System/Library/Extensions

[not loaded] com.wacom.kext.wacomtablet (6.3.15 - SDK 10.11) [Click for support]

Launch Agents: (What does this mean?)

[running] com.wacom.wacomtablet.plist [Click for support]

Launch Daemons: (What does this mean?)

[running] com.prey.agent.plist [Click for support]

[loaded] com.wacom.displayhelper.plist [Click for support]

User Launch Agents: (What does this mean?)

[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist [Click for support]

User Login Items: (What does this mean?)

iTunesHelper Application (/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper.app)

Dropbox Application (/Applications/Dropbox.app)

Other Apps: (What does this mean?)

[running] com.etresoft.EtreCheck.200992

[running] com.wacom.TabletDriver.179552

[running] com.wacom.WacomTouchDriver.178912

[loaded] fm.last.Scrobbler.168352

[loaded] org.videolan.vlc.182432

Internet Plug-ins: (What does this mean?)

Default Browser: Version: 601 - SDK 10.11

QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3

WacomTabletPlugin: Version: WacomTabletPlugin 2.1.0.6 - SDK 10.9 [Click for support]

3rd Party Preference Panes: (What does this mean?)

WacomTablet [Click for support]

Time Machine: (What does this mean?)

Time Machine not configured!

Top Processes by CPU: (What does this mean?)

623% kernel_task

20% UserEventAgent(2)

9% WindowServer

0% askpermissiond

Top Processes by Memory: (What does this mean?)

1.12 GB kernel_task

475 MB softwareupdated

410 MB mds_stores

213 MB Console

197 MB Finder

Virtual Memory Information: (What does this mean?)

8.94 GB Free RAM

7.05 GB Used RAM (9.46 GB Cached)

0 B Swap Used

Posted on Dec 11, 2015 6:34 PM

48 replies

dentarg

Level 1

4 points

Dec 20, 2015 4:15 PM in response to Trephination

Just want to note that in my case I wouldn't call it "CPU spikes" – kernel_task is constantly eating over 600% and when I check with "Intel Power Gadget",

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-power-gadget-20, the CPU frequency is steady at 0.8 GHz.

Some additional info for other who might discover this thread: I'm using El Capitan now, but I think the problem started when I changed to the third party battery, and at that time I was on Mavericks. I thought maybe the upgrade to El Capitan could solve the problem, but it did not. In fact, it got even slower.

Also, in my searches about this problem, I've encountered the suggestion to remove a plist file to fix it. It doesn't feel like a real solution to me, but here's explanation of that: http://blog.viktorpetersson.com/post/100148585299/how-to-fix-kernel-task-cpu-usa ge-on-yosemite

Hotchili

Level 1

8 points

Jan 26, 2016 10:04 AM in response to dentarg

I am also experiencing this issue on a Macbook Pro 15 in which I've recently replaced the battery. I have replaced many batteries on Macs and have never encountered this behavior before.

Sometimes it seems like an SMC reset will alleviate the issue for a while, but it eventually resurfaces.

I have contacted the battery manufacturer (Lizone) to see if they have any input.

Another issue I'm experiencing which may or may not be related is copying data from a USB 3 drive. This Mac, along with needing a new battery and trackpad (swollen battery cracked the trackpad), needed a new hard drive (surface errors according to Scannerz). After installing a new SSD and clean OS (10.11), I could not get the Migration Assistant to run, it would error out almost immediately. So, I started copying the User folder from the Latest time machine backup, and it was showing over 20 hours to copy about 250 gigs. I reset the SMC and managed to get the issue where CPU load was over 90% to not happen, but when I restarted the copy it still was going very slowly, 20+ hours to complete. Looking at Activity Monitor shows CPU Load at 65%, with nothing running except this Finder copy. And, in the time it has taken me to write this, the processes that were hogging the CPU have gone away, load is down to 14% and copy time has reduced to 2 hours.

About 30 minutes later, came back to the machine to find it had gone into a power save mode (sleeping? Napping? Screen was dark but the external drive was obviously still moving data). When I logged back on, I saw that Activity Monitor had the kernel_task at 700%-850% again, and the copy has slowed to a crawl. I'm going to pull the battery and try another to see if it makes a difference.

dentarg

Level 1

4 points

Feb 20, 2016 6:55 AM in response to Hotchili

Yeah, I tried all the reset you can do but none helped. I got a new original battery from Apple (not cheap) and my MacBook Pro now performs like before (Geekbench 2 scores are back to the normal ~10 000 instead of ~2 000 (that was the score with the third-party battery or no battery).

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MacBook Pro having frequent CPU spikes