Web browsing temps of 70 Celcius?

I've got a 2008 Macbook Pro (stats in signature). I've installed SMC fan control to both monitor temps and occasionally increase fan speed. I've been noticing for the past few weeks that the machine is running somewhat hot (70 degrees, give or take three degrees), even when it's near idle (web browsing). It's not always like this, but it often is. Switchable graphics are switched to the dedicated GPU. I think it might be related to Starcraft II play...even a couple hours after I quit playing, the temps are high. But it might be coincidence, and it's simply that I tend to be in dedicated GPU mode instead of integrated GPU mode on evenings where I've played some SC2.

I cleaned all the dust out of the machine about a month ago, when I installed the 7200 rpm HDD, so I know it's not dust blocking the vents.

I use an iLap aluminum stand to keep my machine off the desk when I work.

Is this cause for concern? Or is this normal? Those temps seem pretty high to me. I mean, I'm only hitting around 75 degrees after an hour of SC2, so I would have assumed idle temps would be in the 50s or something, not just five degrees cooler.

 

Just because you are not actively doing something, doesn't mean its actually at idle. You need to open up Activity Monitor and see what might be using up a lot of CPU time... usually when its hotter than it should be at idle, there is something running still using a decent amount of CPU time.

 

Have you really cleaned the dust? People here usually just go on spray and pray over the fan and call it even. However the dust actually accumulates between the fan and the metal fins, thats where it is.

Another thing it might be heating trapping as well

 

i had a similar problem but found it was because i had tons of programs running - simply closing all the ones you dont need should solve the issue, give it a try.

 

I'm currently running it on integrated graphics, not dedicated graphics. I've just been web browsing for the past half-hour, no YouTube, music, or videos. Two applications are open (Chrome and MS Word), and twenty processes appear in the Activity Monitor (most of which appear to be related to OSX, Word, and Chrome). CPU is hovering around 90-96% idle according to the Activity Monitor. Ambient air temperature is probably around 80 degrees Farenheit (27 degrees Celcius).

SMC Fan Control is recording temperatures of 67-68 degrees Celcius. This seems awfully high considering what I'm doing with it.

 

My computer reaches 70C if I have like 15 Chrome Tabs open, 10 Firefox tabs open (when I full screen on an external monitor its glitchy w/o two browsers) Microsoft Word, Mail, Itunes, Skype, Ichat, Preview etc. "Heavy duty normal use".

The only way for me to get it down is to switch to IGPU mode. Then its under 50C. Which is why its odd that you are at 50C in IGPU mode. I don't know if the 9400 runs hotter then other IGPUs though because for an IGPU it is pretty good.

 

his pc is like that because there is dust or the paste is gone.
He could try a reformat so that it leaves the mac brand new, so that it wont clog the resources

 

chrome is good for making computers work harder than needed. I would switch browsers to firefox or safari

 

I have a 2008 MBP triple booted with 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7 for development purposes, and I will admit that machine has always run much hotter than my 2010 or 2011... 70s isn't that abnormal. maybe there were quite a few with bad paste or something?

 

I really am quite confident that it's not dust; I thoroughly dusted it with compressed air not long ago, including between the fan blades. I was afraid the paste has given up the ghost. Sounds like that's the most likely culprit.

Now here's the real question...if I'm only trying to get three more months of life out of the machine (buying a new machine in December with my end-of-the-year bonus), do I need to address it? Are temperatures of 70 while web browsing going to cause any sort of imminent failures, or are they just bad for the long-term health of a machine? Ideally, I'd just like to slide through December without having to worry about any repaste jobs or anything, but I can't afford for this machine to go kaput before the next is up and running.

 

as long as you stay under 90c you should be fine most components of your computer have a max temp of around 100c so as long as your under 90 most of the time your computer should be fine

 

Sweet. It actually handles Starcraft 2 pretty well--I've never seen anything higher than the low 80s when I'm quitting out of SC2. And that's the highest it gets. It was the light-load temps that surprised me, not the full-load temps. I'll just not worry and slide on through December then...

 

As I said before dusting like that dont work. You have to remove the fan to remove the dust that accumulates between the fan and the aluminum fins.

Thats where the dust accumulates, not on the fan.

By servicing the company laptops in a 99% the laptop itself is quite clean, although its overheating, so I just go and pop the heat sink out a see the dust there, between the fans and the copper/aluminum fins. Sometimes it can get quite thick. Like my 2006 lenovo, its was througly clean on the inside, however one day I was servicing it late at night using Q tips to clean the fan when I snagged into something. So I disassembled the notebook, and guess what, the overheating issues that I was having for 3 months where all there. The temps in idle got down from 50c to 30c ish.

However since you can put it under load and you dont want to go through any hassle, dont do it.

 

Okay, I misunderstood what you were saying. I now get it. After watching this video on how to remove the 2008 MacBook Pro's fans, I'm hesitant to do it myself; it's a lot more involved than just swapping out the HDD was. If it gets worse, I'll consider it, but I don't think I'll do it at the current time.

Macbook Pro 15" Repair - Fan Removal - YouTube

 

70 degrees celsius is fine I think 105 is throttling temperature. If your really worried just blast SMC RPM at 6000+ RPM. I think my MBP stays around there with the discrete GPU on anyways, its around 68 to 70 at 6000+ RPM in Starcraft 2.

 

for a few month... 70 is nothing. Mine is still going strong and I gamed on it for a few years... some things I left running for several hours at close to 90ºC. It always run most of its life at high temps. I don't think you'll have any problem getting years more out of it, let alone having no issues through December.

 

The 2008 MBP models do seem to run hotter than 2009, 2010, and 2011 MBPs. Although 70 degrees is a little hot, I wouldn't worry about it too much if you are just trying to get another 3 months out of this. One of my friend's has a 15" 2008 MBP (not sure which configuration) and SMC is always reporting about 68-72 degrees whenever I see it running (and this is just with Word). Things have been like this for the past 1.5 years and his MBP still works without major issues related to excess heat. His MBP's battery and hard drive have died but the battery was due to natural causes and the hard drive died because he essentially throws his MBP around.

I would recommend a re-pasting job only if you were trying to get another 6 months to a year out of this but I wouldn't worry too much for the 3 month duration so long as you continually backup any data on your MBP's internal hard drive (that way you won't have to take it out and put it in an enclosure when the time comes to replace it).

 

intel chips will shut down the computer before they get damaged and they have done this for a long time. you will know if your machine is overheating because it will shut down abruptly . anyone that has had a high end laptop with crappy cooling has had this happen and its extremely annoying when gaming. but it protects the chip. if your not randomly shutting down i wouldnt worry about it

 

Update on this: I'm wondering if the thermal paste is fine, the fan itself is fine and not blocked by dust, and it's simply a glitch with the default fan speed controls. With fan manually set to 6000 RPM, I could play Starcraft 2 with the temps staying in the upper 70s. With the fan manually set to 3000 rpm, I can have a half-dozen web browser and Word documents open, and iTunes playing, while staying under 50 degrees Celcius.

However, when I set smc fan control to just use the computer's default settings, and then web browse with YouTube playing in the background (Iron Maiden FTW), temperatures slowly but steadily climbed until they hit at least 85 degrees Celcius (and still climbing at the point I intervened). At that point, the fan was only going 2500 rpm! I manually set it to 6000 rpm, and temps soon dropped into the 60s. I then manually set it to around 3000, and temps stayed well-controlled.

Anyone heard of this happening before? It was shocking to me that the temps would be reading 85 degrees and the fan on automatic setting would be going only 2500 rpm, just barely above idle.

 

^ In that case I'd recommend resetting the SMC:
Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

 

Thanks, I'll give that a shot.