Macbook Pro 2018 overheating, and other strange problems

I had the exact same issue when I replaced the new 15" unit. High Sierra ran fine. Upgraded to Mojave thinking that the first one may have had a problem. No luck. Hot and battery drain again. Rolling back from Mojave to High Sierra is not so simple. Especially if you want to start with a 'new' out of the box unit that originally came with High Sierra. I decided to let Apple do it for me. Arrived at the store when they opened (no appointment) and was taken 45 minutes later. Completed the roll back and walked out with my unit as new. Set up again. High Sierra is running fine. My applications and photo editing programs running fine. Battery is 'normal' and heat is normal.

I need the processing power of the MBPro, otherwise I would return for a refund and wait until they solve the problem. However, I am still convinced that Apple will fix the hardware issues caused by Mojave. My short time with Dark Mode was nice. Looking forward to being able to use that again. In the meantime....

"try a Dell or Lenovo laptop. I hear they don't have design problems."

That's not true. I see similar complaints about heat on forums for similarly thin Windows PC laptops that use similar CPUs, including Dell and Razer. Any laptop this thin is going to get hot if the CPU is used in a high performance mode. There's no way around it given the limited potential for cooling.

Someone above mentioned Lightroom heating up. That's expected because Lightroom is going to build and cache as many previews of raw files as it can in the background when idle. That is a performance behavior so that you don't have to wait as long when moving from image to image. There is a preference to turn it off if you would like to wait a little longer so that the machine can be a little cooler. But ANY raw processing application will heat up a laptop when editing an image, due to the CPU intensive nature of that operation.

Heat during video conferencing can occur because the laptop is encoding/decoding video and audio in two directions, incoming and outgoing.

80 degrees Celsius is not uncommon for these thin laptops. A desktop Mac or PC might idle at 30-40 degrees and max out at 55-60C due to the superior space for cooling with large fans, but it's not uncommon for laptops today to idle at 60C and max out at 100C. They won't exceed 100C because that is the thermal limit for many current Intel mobile CPUs.

Looking at the screen shots in the first post in this thread, Chrome is a prime suspect in that case. I never liked how much CPU, GPU, and battery Chrome consumes.

Just do a search on "Dell XPS heat" "Lenovo heat" "Razer Blade heat" and you'll see that you might not solve your problems by trying a PC. People complain about the same thing! But if one of those runs cooler for you, then that's the right laptop for you.

I just looked at the Windows Central review for the Razer Blade laptop which says "Total CPU usage doesn't seem to reach ridiculous levels, but the temperature will rise quite quickly." The headline is "Razer Blade 15 review: Hot in every sense of the word." The Verge's headline for the same laptop review is "Razer Blade 15 review: Hot under pressure." The grass isn't always greener over there.

I think part of the problem is, industry-wide, that Intel has been so late with its 10nm processors that laptop makers thought they would be working with cooler, more efficient CPUs but they got these instead.

The only time I'm really concerned with high temp is if the laptop should not be busy for reason, or if it's shutting itself down. What should happen during high temp is it spins fans up and throttles back to stay within thermal limits. But it should continue operating indefinitely. If heat causes it to shut down, even when it's properly ventilated, that is a real hardware issue that Apple should look at.

Mojave may be part of the problem. My 2018 MacBook Pro runs High Sierra and it's only hot when I expect it to be, due to the load. Uptime is 9 days since last restart, so it isn't shutting down unexpectedly. Battery life is 6-10 hours depending on load (sometimes I edit video).

One question for all. I have been able to deal with constant over heating using the MacFanControlApp. An app that let you monitor temperature and let set the rpm for the fans. I set manual rpm only when temeperature is unbearable. But I wonder if this can reduce fans life.... if I set rpm about 2500 or 3000 temperature is not an issue, but I am aware of damaging fans...

and by the way, this is one of the reasons I consider this an bad design. It’s ok that cpu heats when is working, but why apple let temperatures goes so high and don’t increase the rpm of fans? This is something that can be solved by software. Sometimes as th original post describes fans don’t start until temp is 60 or 70 Celsius degrees. Exactly what this video shows

thanks

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@denigada The problem is that the OS does not regulate the boost of the CPU frequency, so whenever a somewhat demanding thread appears the temperature explodes, so does the fan speed, but the cpu is ineffective on high temperature, so it slow, and consunes a lot of power, which drains the battery in 1-2 hours.

The new OS should regulate better the clock-rate, and so the power consumption. I really think the MBP has a more powerful hardware than the OS can efficiently handle.

"Would the hardware components life be shortened due to this heating issue?"

Over the past 20 years that's been the #1 question and there's never been a time there ever was a meltdown of components. Computers do get warm depending on the task.

Now, my question to you is what are doing in terms of using your MacBook Pro? What applications are you running when this happens? If your running Chrome....don't. It's the biggest resource hog and it causes Macs and Windows machines to heat up. I only use Chrome when it's absolutely necessary, such as when there's a website that works better with Chrome, otherwise I avoid it as much as possible.

"I would like to know how Apple tests these notebooks in the R&D labs before selling them to the public. Is there some sort of tolerance that Apple allows?"

I have a 2018 MBP 15" and it remains cool to the touch. I do a great deal of video editing which activates the dGPU which can cause the computer to heat up and activate the fan, but even then there's never been a time where I couldn't type on it or it was too hot to put on my lap. You should check Activity Monitor in the Energy tab to see which application is using high resources. That will tell you right away. You can also click the Battery icon in the menu bar and it tells you which app is causing battery drain or using high resources.

Another option is to do a PRAM reset. Shut down the computer. Click the power button and immediately hold down Command+Option+P+R keys. Hold them down until the apple logo appears twice. That will completely clear any apps stuck in memory that are running in the background causing instability.

swthien wrote: "Please be aware that the retina display may be affected by the overheating Touch Bar. Mine had horizontal lines at the bottom of my display after just a week of overheating. "

That is not possible. The Touch Bar is an OLED touch strip that uses very little power, and therefore very little heat. It does not overheat, and even if it did, doing so will not cause lines at the bottom of the monitor.

If your Touch Bar is hot, it's not a cause, it's a symptom. The real cause is that the main ventilation slot is under the Touch Bar, so hot air from the inside of the unit blows out back there.

Horizontal lines due to heat have not been reported in the media or any forums that I have seen. A similar symptom has been reported, but the known cause of it is not heat: It's the flex video cable failing early...a different and true cause.

Be careful what you report as cause and effect, because if you misdiagnose your problem, you don't help anyone. Not you, and not others. We need accurate diagnoses to get accurate solutions.

FrederikBonde wrote: "I just got my Macbook pro 13" touch bar i7 16GB ram. Same problem as all the mentioned. i'am very disappointed with these."

What is the exact problem with the computer? Have you let it complete initial Spotlight indexing, which can cause high CPU and heat only in the first day or so, as it sets up the computer?

Is it running hot? During what kinds of activities? When you check Activity Monitor, what is using high CPU when it's hot?

I am using a 2018 13" i5 with a normal heat profile. Yes, it gets hot, but only when it is expected to: When the CPU four cores are all very busy. It cannot be avoided with "thin and light" laptops, you will see similar heat issues on Windows PC laptops that are thin and light.

I read the reviews before I bought, and they said that it's not worth buying the i9 on the 15" because the heat limit will drop CPU speed to compensate, so that is isn't any faster than the i7. I read the same thing for the 13": The i7 is not able to achieve top performance because of heat, so I bought the i5 and am very happy.

If the computer is not crashing, it isn't overheating. The CPU itself will drop clock speed if it thinks it's getting too close to the internal temperature limit. Normal temperatures should be 65-80C when not busy, and 85-99+C when busy. If this is what you are getting then things are normal. If you're getting something different, state which processes are using too much CPU which results in heat, so we can see if it should be that busy if nothing is going on.

One poster mentioned "explosions." That is a ridiculous non-possibility and another example of non-constructive reporting. The Intel CPU will limit itself at 100C without crashing the laptop. If the laptop is getting hot AND crashing, you have a hardware defect that Apple should fix. If the laptop is getting hot and not crashing, it's probably working as all Mac and PC laptops of this type (ultralight) can be expected to behave. They run hot when busy.

I fixed these issues by removing the mshelper virus. Google for that

Not. It is a characteristic of this MacBook machines.

i had to manually setup the fan speed n order to maintain a normal temperature in the machine

Hey,

I'd had the same issue too: the keyboard was too hot, fans were too loud, working time was too short.

What I've done to fix the problem: run CleanMyMac and removed tons of automated updaters for different apps.

Now I have 8+ hours of battery work, 35-42C proc temperature.

If you think it is malfunctioning while under warranty, then make an appointment at the Apple Genius Bar for service. If you need to find an Apple Store - Find a Store - Apple. Also, see How to find your nearest Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) or Distributor (AAD).

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I feel the same way. I called tech support Several different times. Responses:

1. my 2018 15” MacBook Pro is not meant to be used on your lap.

1. This is normal behavior
2. people want thin computers and no fans can cool this thin of a computer
3. Go buy a cooling mat w th fans.

Why would I need to buy a cooling fan mat to carry around with my brand new MacBook Pro?? Not to mention it is USB powered. So much for portability. Btw he told me exactly what to look for on Amazon.

Hi Network 23, thank you for your input. Your information is consistent with what Apple support has shared with me. Utilizing Mac Fans App which I know is 3rd Party, I have experienced temps above 93C. The funny thing for me is that I am not driving

any external monitors, nor running any CPU intensive apps such as Photoshop, video etc... My machine is not crashing, but certainly you can see energy from the battery being utilized at a much heavier clip. For me it is a comfort issue (the heat does

not allow you to keep the laptop on your lap) and battery longevity issue. I am a long time Apple user. I have recreated the exact same browser windows on my 2013 MacBook Air (i7 8GB RAM, running same version of Mojave) and the MacBook Air exhibited "none" of the heat issues or battery degradation. CPU utilization on both machines is under 5% and RAM use is higher at 7GB for the Air and 6GB for the Pro. When the machines are plugged in, the scenarios do not seem to happen. Very weird. Seems tied to when my MacBook Pro is being used in battery mode. Thanks for any additional input.

Thanks for the detailed response. I have the same problem with my new 2018 15 inch i7. Macbook is getting over heated even with a regular day to day activity. I can observe this heat issue even with the 20 - 30% CPU utilization’s. It’s very difficult to have it on your lap. I have the latest version of operating system which did not solve the issue. Another annoying point is in 1 hours it drained almost 50% of my battery. I am not sure it’s relates to the heat build up. I am very much surprised to see that with the same load my other thinkpad laptop is working perfectly fine which is way almost less than $1000 than this. Apple you definitely need to resolve this issue.

Same issue here.

I spent four...thousand...dollars....on this MBP! Fans are always blasting under minimal load. CPU never reaches 10%. I've uninstalled nearly all other software to see if something has been running under the hood somewhere causing this. Activity monitor never shows anything hogging resources anywhere. The only time fans are not blasting away is when I close everything and look at a blank screen. I'm about to return this and stick with my 2015 MBP. PLEASE FIX APPLE!!!