Macbook Pro Overheating Fun

[ericsondr-MBP2.0]

I am typing this here in these forums because I'd like others to see what I'm experiencing. Hopefully this will get indexed in google and people with a simlar problem can see and learn from this.

 

My issue started a few months after I received my Macbook Pro, 2.0ghz core duo, 1gig RAM, 100gig HDD, 15" model. I upgraded my RAM to 2 gigs and my HDD to 160gigs. There is all the technical mumbo jumbo. Now, for as much as we all know I love my MBP and I love OS X, I've been unhappy with this one issue. This is an issue that any laptop could have and an issue that could get fixed quickly by someone that knows what they are doing. I went to the Apple store in Lynnwood, WA and took my laptop in and let them keep it for 2 days (regrettably as I need it for my business... and for the occassional wow playing that enters in my free time).

 

The symptoms I had were as follows:

1.) The machine was always hot. Well, now I have a permanent scar on my leg from the heat because it gradually increased in heat to an unbearable amount. I no longer sit with my "laptop" on my "lap top".

2.) After the machine ran for a while, the speakers would distort and sound like they were litterally cooking in a fryer. Now I doubt that sound was because they were on fire (actually I know it wasn't because after the machine would cool, they would start working normally again). It was still disconcerting to say the least.

 

So I went into to the "genius" bar (I use that term lightly as the guys were all idiots). And talked with the tech. After walking him through the job he should have been doing and giving him my diagnoses, he said he could "tell I knew a little bit about computers" and told me that I should talk to Ian (the store manager) and we'd get it fixed in a couple hours. First off... that is insulting. I told the dude how to diagnose my problem, gave him all my symptoms while he awaited his computer to bring up the information he need to pretend to be a "genius" and fix my machine. Second off, when I finally got a hold of Ian, I was told it would be 24hours from the time I took it in to the shop before it would be fixed. Now that is all well and good if that is policy, just that the employees should ALL be trained in the policies. I told Ian the tech said they could do it in a couple hours. Ian said no. SO....

 

I brought the MBP in when the parts arrived to the Lynnwood store again (keep in mind, Lynnwood is about a 45min. drive for me). So we are up to an 3 hours of travel time (45 mins. both ways)... yeah it's not much, but for me, time is WAY more valuable than many other things. I get there with my laptop and am informed it will take 48 business hours. Well I brought it in Friday night to soften the blow of not having it for the company I own and run from my laptop. I told them this wouldn't be acceptable and I would be wanting it Saturday night exactly 24 hours as it was even Ian's suggestion that I bring it in friday night and pick it up saturday evening. Well we settled on a Sunday night pickup. I lost my work/play machine for 2 days (which is a HUGE inconvience for me... but when {censored} happens, it happens). All of the above would have been fine had it been communicated properly with me.

 

So... I bring it home. I'm excited to get it going. I hop online and go into World of Warcraft (since that generated the issue pretty quickly) and went into an instance with some of the guys. I crashed out in about 1 hour of that instance. Intermittently before that crash, it would pause for about 4 seconds and then continue on. Since I was the tank, it sucked and caused us to wipe a few times. I didn't want to deal with the apple store as I had lost all confidence in their competence. I chose to deal with it for the next couple months.

 

How did I deal with it? I use bread cooling racks my wife has to keep it elevated and aired out. I would use the spray air on the venting by the screen to cool it while in the middle of work so I didn't lose what I was working on. I used a towel on my legs and man-part to keep from scalding and overheating and left my legs open so there was lots of room below. I tried everything. Ice pack underneath the elevated laptop with a fan blowing on it. The only thing that really worked was this ice pack idea. But eventually the ice would melt making a mess from the sweat and causing more issue than it was worth. Beside, who wants to pull out an ice pack to use their computer?

 

Finally, last night (after about a month of struggling with this) I was playing WoW again (WoW was the biggest invoker of this) and I guess I didn't use my spray air quick enough as in the middle of tanking Black Morass, my machine shut off causing us to wipe. That was it. That was the last straw. A couple nights earlier I lost a big photoshopped work project and now tonight my recreation time. So this morning I called Apple. The first tech did the usual 200 questions like I'm an idiot. That is understandable. I probably knew his job better than he did. The second tech I was transfered to (the specialty tech or whatever) chastised me for having opened the case to observe the fans and said I could void my warranty. I told him I didn't do anything but watch yet he insisted so I asked him if replacing the HDD would void it and he stumbled a bit and said... well if you damaged something in the process. Duh... what an idiot.

 

So now I'm sending my macbook pro in. I'll have to be without it for as many as 7 days (although the guy said it's usually 3 or 4) - I've learned to not trust apple's hired employees. They have that mac snob thing going on while still not really having a clue about the product they are supporting.

 

I've attached some screenshots of temperatures on my macbook pro below...

 

PS - Through the writing of this... my temperature has been bouncing between 180ish degrees and 204ish degrees. My fans still have not kicked in...

 

 

I pulled the Temerpature gauge up as smcFanControl also reports fan information... Look what is set to "0" even at over 200 degrees farenheit!

 

 

One thing I forgot to mention... and something that will make this post more specific and relevant for others is the error code I received. I rebooted the machine with my system disk in and held the "D" key which brought it into diagnostics mode. After running the thorough test, I got an error message. This message is stored in your system profiler (apple > about this mac > more info...) and under the title "diagnostics".

 

Here is what mine says and the message I received...

 

Apple Hardware Test:

 

Last Run: 3/12/07 7:29 PM

Version: 3A107

Test Suite: Extended Test

Loop Count: 1

Result: Failed

Failure code: 4SNS/1/40000000: 'TC0P'

 

This failure code shows up on apple's website in the support section and almost always results in sending the machine back to apple for repair.

 

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?m...90

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?m...4220572#4220572

 

those are a couple I had bookmarked.

 

ALSO - I have been to the apple store 4 times total at 1.5 hours round trip, that is now 6 hours of time and the corresponding gas price.... Rediculous. I should only have to do the trip twice.

[INFNITE]

there's obviously a serious problem with your MBP. I would demand to have it exchanged.

[erbic]

That's a ridiculous amount of heat. The highest temperature my MBP's ever hit was around 176 Fahrenheit, and that's when I was REALLY working it with Power Fractal. It shoots up to the high 150s whenever I play Warcraft III, for some inexplicable reason. I've never had anything 180 or above, though.

 

Frankly, I'm surprised something hasn't actually fried (CPU, GPU, memory, etc.). I suppose the spontaneous shutdowns are some indicator of that, but with no fans I'm not sure what else to expect. I've never seen my fans go below 2000 RPM - they're always on, albeit slowly and quietly. Yet yours are showing zero. That's an extremely serious problem.

 

If you do get it replaced, you might run into an issue with the hard drive... they might not (probably won't) send you an upgraded HDD with the replacement. That could suck...

 

Maybe put the old one back in before you send it. Just my

Edited March 14, 2007 by ErBiC

[nrgexplosion]

This sounds almost similar to a problem that I'm having where my macbookpro suddently reboots, it happens after the computer heats up and I'm running a processor intense application like parallels or anything with opengl... eg even the visualizer in itunes. Someone suggested zapping the pRam, which I did, we shall see if that helps. Somehow I doubt it. I've heard of a lot of mac notebooks having these problems.

[ericsondr-MBP2.0]

Yeah opengl seems to be the clincher for me. WoW takes it down in about 30 mins. I bought a cheapy cooling pad for the time being. I'm just frustrated because I love my mac. I'm attached to it and with most machines, you'd expect the manufacturer (or store representing the manufacturer) to just fix it for you. I spent of $3k for this. I'd really just like to have it fixed. Well, my box should come today to send it back in. I'll let you all know how it goes when I'm done. I'll post up new SS's of the fixed temps... or not fixed temps... I'm hoping for the former.

[nrgexplosion]

http://www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl/index.html

hopefully it won't kill my fans but my macbookpro that used to burn me actually runs cold since I installed it. Base speed 1700 rpm

lower threshold 46c upper threshold 70c

Not sure if those are the best settings but its made an enormous difference.

[ericsondr-MBP2.0]

<on my wife's macbook> yeah... the problem is that my fans don't turn on at all. I can't throttle them using smcfancontrol or even editing the kext files to have them run all the time. Heck, I even opened the case and tried disconnecting the heat pipe sensor so they'd run all the time... never once did they turn on.

[nrgexplosion]

Wow, two bad fans huh... yeeks...Here's a piece of advice from having run a chain of cell phone stores. At the customer service level and even at the lower management level you're likely to get the runaround, go over their heads, way over. Steve might be a little busy but there are plenty of people before you get to him. Make a huge stink, if they still don't get it fixed write to the newspaper or better yet your local fox network. Just my 2 cents. But apparently from what I'm told there are whole batches with major issues. Apple knew that and yanked all the Core Duo mbp's from the shelf when the CD2's arrived. Good luck! I might have flipped out at them by now. Or at least flipped the store manager the birdie. Incidently I have a close friend from Lynwood who seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

[ericsondr-MBP2.0]

well I'm back and I'm happy to report that my fans are running and working. I'm crossing my fingers that no more problems will happen. I do love being able to have my laptop on my lap (as long as I'm wearing heavier pants at least). My fans are running and I throttled them WAY up with smcfancontrol and dropped the temp below 100F. I'm goin' good. Unfortunately, I had 3 totally unproductive days at work because my wife's macbook didn't suffice.

 

I'm spoiled.

 

Sry to hear about your friend too. Us Washington people march to our own drumbeat anyhow...

[ironmanjg]

I am glad to hear your laptop is back and working as it should be! I went through a logic board replacement earlier this year and was without my MBP for 2 weeks. I was thrilled when I got it back, but needless to say was jacked during the entire two week period. Anyways, I am having exactly the same problem you were having, except my left fan is still working. It started when I was running WoW (which seems to be the purveyor of all MBP downfalls) and about 45 minutes into a session it sounded as if my laptop had turned into a blender. I ran the Apple Hardware Diagnostic tool and got the same error "4SNS/1/140000000 TCOP." In smcFanControl I'm getting a zero reading on the right fan, same in iStat, etc. etc. My question for you is; what exactly did they replace when they repaired it? I am really hesitant to send it into Apple, especially if it is just a dead fan that needs replaced (thanks iFixit!). I look forward to your response!

[OSXtasy]

SMC FAN CONTROL.....SET IT AT 3800-4000rpms for normal operation, and 6000rpms for gaming cpu intensive operations.....IT Works and its not going to hurt anything.

[ericsondr-MBP2.0]

ironman -

 

I actually just had both fans replaced. My guess is that the first time when they replaced the logic board, they fried the fans somehow or Disconnected them. I had that blender sounding noise the first time around as well. It sounds like a fire in a blender and the speakers distort like crazy (assuming you are having the same issue). I'm glad I splurged for the apple care at this point. I'd be nervous as my year of standard support is almost up. It's still running like a dream.

 

I set SMCfancontrol down to 1000k minimum and my fans usually don't go higher. In WoW, they well get up to around 3500 but I throttle them on high because it just runs better and I still enjoy having a "laptop" and not a desktop. Without throtteling the fans, I as able to get up to 170F but no higher and that was with photoshop running an intensive filter on a 3gig image and trying to run WoW at the same time (choppy lol). So I'm happy.