MBA 13" Mid 2011 heating and shut down

Hello

At the end it was a RAM bad contact/unsoldering.

I took my MBA to a technician who did a reball to RAMS and now it works again

Cheers

Nope.

My MBA is definitely dead. RIP.

I can't install a new OS. The progress installation bar stays still at 10% more or less.

Disassembling heat sink showed a CPU corner scratched/broken. I think it's gone

Resurrected again 👿

I'm writing from my redivivus MBA!

High Sierra still makes problems I think

During recovery or installation process my fan is working normally and if the CPU get hot it speeds up.

As I finish to install OS and login, Higs Sierra don't spin my MBA fan at full throttle if needed but stays at low rpm..

I really don't understand what's up with this system

Desperately looking for a bootable El Capitan image to see if something change..

I know 1300 cycles were too much, but that was my sister Laptop not mine.

I received it as dead machine and I didn't want to pay for an original Apple replacement, considering that by Apple store they told my sister it was a faulty logical board (450$ at list) and Apple don't sell spares so you must go to an Apple center and they (I think) charge money also for a work that takes 10 minutes to be done...

So I went by a reasonable DIY replacement. Sloda has lots of positive feedbacks on Amazon and I must say it's not bad.

I can work for 4/5 hours without a charge session.

But considering the fan speed management, what could be the problem for the wrong native behaviour?

Without third part apps High Sierra don't burst rpm's at high temperature, why?

Fan is turning correctly, it doesn't make noise and I cleaned it well from dust as I disassembled MBA.

The problem is that with normal cooling Fan starts turning >2000rpm when CPU Die sensor reaches 80°C.

At that point cores are @100°C or more..

So I think now they spin up when die temperature in greather than 72°C..

And Yes, I use CPU led as an indicator of CPU load

Usually as I see red bars I wait a little for the MBA to calm or I go and see what is using resources

I use Iterm and "top" command to see what is using CPU

I changed the old battery (>1300 cycles) with an aftermarket one (sloda)

It's recognized and has only 15 cycles now..

Could this be a problem?

Yes I will, thanks

By the way the technician suggested me to use a more aggressive cooling behavior with 3rd party program.

At the end I was able to install El Capitan and I did a bit of testing

I tried to leave the fan control system and I ran tests with geekbench 3 to see how it responded to the stresses.

I have seen that the fans start only when the CPU Proximity sensor reaches >= 80°C

At that temperature the cores and the CPU Diode are already well above 90/95 °C ..

Cores can even exceed 100 °C

With CPU Proximity at >80 the fans go to about 3000RPM, that is enough to keep my MBA alive.

Yes with El Capitan it seems to be a lot better in terms of overheating..

I made a video that I link

One thing seems strange to me

There is a sensor called Heat Sink Proximity, that remains fixed or changes very little and is also much lower than the CPU sensors

It could be thermal conductive paste, but I just changed it ..

Could it be the heat pipe of the heat sink gone??

https://youtu.be/0Fhveh1Ggxs

EtreCheck version: 4.1.3 (4A188)

Report generated: 2018-03-25 18:39:05

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime: 2:38

Performance: Excellent

Problem: Computer is restarting

Major Issues:

Anything that appears on this list needs immediate attention.

No Time Machine backup - Time Machine backup not found.

Obsolete hardware - This machine may be considered obsolete.

Minor Issues:

These issues do not need immediate attention but they may indicate future problems.

32-bit Apps - This machine has 32-bits apps that may have problems in the future.

Hardware Information:

MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2011) - Obsolete!

MacBook Air Model: MacBookAir4,2

1 1,8 GHz Intel Core i7 (i7-2677M) CPU: 2-core

4 GB RAM Not upgradeable

BANK 0/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1333 ok

BANK 1/DIMM0

2 GB DDR3 1333 ok

Battery: Health = Normal - Cycle count = 13

Video Information:

Intel HD Graphics 3000 - VRAM: 384 MB

Color LCD 1440 x 900

Drives:

disk0 - APPLE SSD SM256C 251.00 GB (Solid State - TRIM: Yes)

Internal SATA 3 Gigabit Serial ATA

disk0s1 - EFI [EFI] 210 MB

disk0s2 - M****S [Core Storage Container] 250.14 GB

disk1 - M****S (Journaled HFS+) 249.77 GB

disk0s3 - Recovery HD [Recovery] 650 MB

Mounted Volumes:

disk1 - M****S 249.77 GB (222.73 GB free)

Journaled HFS+

Mount point: /

Network:

Interface en0: Wi-Fi

802.11 a/b/g/n

One IPv4 address

Interface en2: Bluetooth PAN

Interface bridge0: Thunderbolt Bridge

iCloud Status: 3 pending files

System Software:

OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 (15G19009)

Time since boot: About 9 hours

System Load: 1.88 (1 min ago) 1.82 (5 min ago) 1.71 (15 min ago)

Security:

System Status

Gatekeeper Mac App Store and identified developers

System Integrity Protection Enabled

32-bit Applications:

Name Version

SecurityFixer 10.8

Wish 8.4.19

quicklookd32 5.0

DVD Player 5.8

InkServer 10.9

Kernel Extensions:

/Library/Extensions

[Loaded] EnergyDriver.kext (Intel Corporation Apps, 2.0 - SDK 10.13)

System Launch Agents:

[Not Loaded] 6 Apple tasks

[Loaded] 155 Apple tasks

[Running] 77 Apple tasks

[Other] One Apple task

System Launch Daemons:

[Not Loaded] 46 Apple tasks

[Loaded] 156 Apple tasks

[Running] 89 Apple tasks

[Other] One Apple task

User Launch Agents:

[Loaded] com.dropbox.DropboxMacUpdate.agent.plist (Dropbox, Inc. - installed 2017-08-10)

User Login Items:

Macs Fan Control Application (Ilya Parniuk

(/Applications/Macs Fan Control.app)

CPULed Application (Mac App Store

(/Applications/CPULed.app)

Internet Plug-ins:

Default Browser: 601 (installed 2018-03-25)

QuickTime Plugin: 7.7.3 (installed 2018-03-25)

Time Machine:

Time Machine Not Configured!

Top Processes by CPU:

Process (count) Source % of CPU

WindowServer Apple 7

Dropbox (3) Dropbox, Inc. 3

kernel_task Apple 2

MacsFanControl Ilya Parniuk 1

pkd Apple 1

Top Processes by Memory:

Process (count) Source RAM usage

kernel_task Apple 454 MB

Dropbox (3) Dropbox, Inc. 165 MB

mdworker (7) Apple 130 MB

softwareupdated Apple 101 MB

Finder Apple 78 MB

Top Processes by Energy Use:

Process (count) Source Energy usage (0-100)

WindowServer Apple 4

MacsFanControl Ilya Parniuk 2

Dropbox (3) Dropbox, Inc. 0

SystemUIServer Apple 0

CPULed Mac App Store 0

Virtual Memory Information:

Available RAM 1.49 GB

Free RAM 18 MB

Used RAM 2.51 GB

Cached files 1.47 GB

Swap Used 39 MB

Software Installs (past 30 days):

Name Version Install Date

CPULed 1.3 2018-03-25

Diagnostics Information (past 7 days):

2018-03-25 10:32:15 Dropbox.app Crash (once)

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSRangeException', reason: '*** -[__NSArrayM objectAtIndex:]: index 0 beyond bounds for empty array'

abort() called

terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException

2018-03-25 08:51:29 Last Shutdown Cause: 0 - Power loss (once)

2018-03-24 16:00:57 sharedfilelistd Crash (once)

End of report