[PlankySmith]

Hi. My mac has been running extremely hot, and the fan is whirring like it's about to take off lately. I use Firefox, and while I know FF is a resource hog, on my PC (which has lots of fans) the fans never whir like on the mac and the PC lags but no where near as much as my macbook.

Here are my specs:

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook2,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MB21.00A5.B07
SMC Version: 1.13f3
Serial Number: 4H649440WGM
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

I got this mac about 2 or so years ago. Are there any items I should upgrade? And if so, with what? I'd like to go with a lower price if possible. I usually use newegg to buy hardware.

Thanks!

[mike555]

My Macbook ran very hot till I installed "smcFanControl" , it's free and controls your fans, so if you set the minimum fan speed up your Macbook should not get hot .......... it also tells you the temp.

[Typhoon14]

mike555 said:

My Macbook ran very hot till I installed "smcFanControl" , it's free and controls your fans, so if you set the minimum fan speed up your Macbook should not get hot .......... it also tells you the temp.

Except that all smcFanControl does is allow you to change the threshold for when the fans activates. The poster is complaining that his fans are already active all the time, so fan control would do nothing for him.

Your fans definitely should not be running constantly unless you are in a very hot climate. I take if from the tone of your post that the Macbook has not always been this hot or loud?

Try opening Activity Monitor in the utilities folder when the fans are running loud and the system seems sluggish. Tell it to show "all processes" and sort it by CPU usage. Is there any process or set of processes that is using a large portion of the CPU?

If you were going to upgrade anything, RAM would be your best bet. 1 gig of RAM is pretty much the minimum for any half-decent experience on the Mac, and more would definitely improve performance when running multiple applications. Still, I somewhat suspect that your problem with the fans and the lag comes from elsewhere.

[rdsck]

Hi all

My 30 months old MacBook Pro gets very hot too (even with 2 Gigs of RAM )

* I bought two "little feet" in order to "lift" the back of my Mac

* I bought an external Fan from Kensington ( plugged via USB ) it gives me good results. Although noisy.

* for the moment, I live in an expedition vehicle in NW Argentina which is a dusty desert. The Apple guy told me that sometimes the dust might stop the fan. Although I can hear it working.
I'll make it open next week while changing the DVD player under Apple care warranty, and I'll tell you if there is dust
inside or if we find any other pbm

Sry for my approx English.

best, richard http://homepage.mac....otoAlbum24.html

[maflynn]

What's too hot? Not to sound flippant what might feel hot to the touch, may be within operational parameters.

My unibody MBP runs between 45 - 70c depending on which GPU I have and what I'm doing. As I type this post the temps are on the lower end of 60s celsius, I'm running vmware fusion, a TM backup is chugging, and I have a rapidweaver session running, as I work on a website.

To the OP, I'd consider it a good thing that your fans are running because w/o them ramping up your macbook would shut down. Intel CPUs will shut the system down if the temps reach a 100c which is extremely hot but I guess those chips are meant to run a tad hot.

I don't think upgrading to a newer macbook will solve this issue for you, it will provide you with a faster machine within a cool looking unibody case but I'd not recommend upgrading just because of the heat since you'll have the same issue on the newer laptops.

Like the other poster, I run smcFanControl, it allows me to see the temp on the menu bar and manually adjust the fan speed so my liking.