Macbook Pro: Why So Hot???

the only time i have felt my mbp getting hot is while using hulu desktop. i had it on my bed while it was hooked to my lcd tv and i could hear it running which wasn't normal. i picked it up and the bottom was really warm verging on hot. i moved it to the top of a really large container of cheese balls where the back of the macbook where it vents was completely exposed once i did it almost immediately cooled down and the fans got much quieter. so if when its on your lap i would really make sure you are not blocking the vent. this was my experience and my 2 cents.

You could also look into a cooling pad. I recently purcahsed the Logitech N100 and am very happy with it. I did 2 solid hours of video encoding yesterday and my Macbook was still cool. Check out the reviews for it on Amazon. It costs less than £20 (GBP), so a bargain.

Heat - battery dying or when iPod plugged in

I've noticed that (on the original MacBook Core Duo - the one with the 2GB memory limit) that the "port block" on the left side seems to get extremely hot when either the battery is charing but about to die (meaning it's at 400+ cycles or so), or when I have an iPod or something else that's pulling power from the USB port (or Firewire).

I installed smcFanControl and I set the fans to run at 4000, which would be high. But smcFanControl tells me the temp is 80C and the fan is stuck at 6000 rpm anyway, so it seems smcFanControl isn't speeding anything up.

Is there a problem? My computer is very hot and the fan is running very fast. It is even hot after it has been sleeping awhile.

were cove

guess the smart thing to do would be to have check Activity Monitor for runaway processes. In this case, HPShortcutManager was maxing out CPU. There are various threads on fixing this if anyone so happens to have this installed. Seems to have levelled out at 54C 4000 RPMs. Still a bit high I think...

urbanmojo said:

I installed smcFanControl and I set the fans to run at 4000, which would be high. But smcFanControl tells me the temp is 80C and the fan is stuck at 6000 rpm anyway, so it seems smcFanControl isn't speeding anything up.

Is there a problem? My computer is very hot and the fan is running very fast. It is even hot after it has been sleeping awhile.

Click to expand...

If I am not mistaken 6000 is the max speed the fan can run.

It depends on what I'm doing but normally if I'm just surfing and doing email etc. My MB Pro runs around 50C to 60C max. If I'm converting VOB files to MP4 then it can get up to 98C which converts to 200F. I highly recommend getting the SmcFanControl that others have suggested. I would also get the istat menus iStat Menus, a Mac app by Bjango which adds a set of gauges and menus at the top of your MB. You can monitor temps on your CPU, GPU, Heatsink, etc. They're great to keep tabs on whats going on.