Macbook Pro fans running even constantly even at idle

My Macbook Pro is 1st gen unibody. The fans seem to run a lot even with updating the flash payer. Also at times when it's not in use and in screen saver mode the fans will start up and run for a while. I have done hardware test and it passes every time. Any ideas?

Does the screen saver do anything graphically intensive?

My bet would be that the machine isn't necessarily idling when you think it is.

One of the best ways to check is to simply open Activity Monitor (Applications => Utilities). Sort the process list by % of CPU and see which processes rise to the top. That will tell you what's making the CPU throttle up, and in turn, heat the machine up.

Thank you. I haven't thought of that, when it comes to the screen saver. Also, does flash use that much CPU? It seems a bit odd that a Macbook Pro will have it's fan run, even when watching a youtube video.

arclander505 said:

Thank you. I haven't thought of that, when it comes to the screen saver. Also, does flash use that much CPU? It seems a bit odd that a Macbook Pro will have it's fan run, even when watching a youtube video.

Click to expand...

Yes, Flash is well known for being a pig - which is incidently one of the reasons that Apple hasn't allowed it on the iPhone/iPad (it eats battery).

You can switch YouTube to use HTML5 here:

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

cwa107 said:

Yes, Flash is well known for being a pig - which is incidently one of the reasons that Apple hasn't allowed it on the iPhone/iPad (it eats battery).

You can switch YouTube to use HTML5 here:

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Click to expand...

Thank you for your help.