[SOLVED] MacBook Pro early 2015 terrible temps and CPU usage

[Phazoner]

For some reasons I'm now working in a 13" MacBook Pro (Early 2015) with a pretty simple i5-5257U (just 14nm dual core...) and its behavior CPU wise is pretty bad in terms of usage and temperatures. I'm on Catalina 10.15.5.

Using Skype with my webcam activated pushes the CPU temperatures from 60 degrees to over 80 using the fans at 100% via Macs Fan Control. If I don't use it it just sits arount 95ºC, it's crazy. When I navigate in Chrome, each time I load a page, the CPU spikes like 10 degrees. And this is the improved performance after I changed the thermal paste (Noctua NT-NH1). Activity monitor also pushes the temperature 10 degrees as it draws constantly a lot of power. And this is the "normal" behavior.

Abnormal behavior: Sometimes Chrome some chrome tab starts draining power like crazy for no reason When temperature seems over usual I just start closing random tabs until suddenly temperature drops 10ºC. This is happening to me only in this laptop and in well known websites so it is not malware, it is some kind of bug. Is there any way to control or fix this?

I also wanted to undervolt my PC but it looks like they dropped unsigned kexts support in 10.15.4 so I think I'm not even able to do this via Volta or VoltageShift.

 

[edantes]

I have the same issue (same exact model and same paste used). It had some heating up issues so I decided to replace the original thermal paste as it's 5 years old and it was smeared all over the CPU and GPU, and pretty dry and cracked. Now it heats up a lot more to the point it gets too hot above the top row of keys to even touch.

 

[Phazoner]

I have the same issue (same exact model and same past used). It had some heating up issues so I decided to replace the original thermal paste as it's 5 years old and it was smeared all over the CPU and GPU, and pretty dry and cracked. Now it heats up a lot more to the point it gets too hot above the top row of keys to even touch.

I've read about resetting the SMC but I'm an absolute noob Mac-wise and I'm a little scared of doing it in my job's laptop LMAO I don't know how harmless it is.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...efault-settings-regardless-of-how-hot-it-gets

 

[edantes]

I've read about resetting the SMC but I'm an absolute noob Mac-wise and I'm a little scared of doing it in my job's laptop LMAO I don't know how harmless it is.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...efault-settings-regardless-of-how-hot-it-gets

I will do it on mine. I've done it before for other issues and it helped then. I just swapped out the SSD with a 1TB NVMe drive so I should do it anyway. I will let you know if it made any difference.

 

[Phazoner]

I will do it on mine. I've done it before for other issues and it helped then. I just swapped out the SSD with a 1TB NVMe drive so I should do it anyway. I will let you know if it made any difference.

Thanks a lot! I've also studied about making it undervolt but I think VoltageShift doesn't work in current OS versions and Volta isn't free if it was my own laptop I would definitely pay the license, in my desktop 6700K undervolting results in 10-15 degrees less!

 

[edantes]

Thanks a lot! I've also studied about making it undervolt but I think VoltageShift doesn't work in current OS versions and Volta isn't free if it was my own laptop I would definitely pay the license, in my desktop 6700K undervolting results in 10-15 degrees less!

So I think it's pretty safe to reset the SMC. I don't think that would affect your system negatively. I've done it before and I did it now and no obvious changes.

That said, the Mac still heats up a lot. The fans seem to keep the temperature at both CPU cores ~90C while spinning at ~2500-3000 RPM. I don't think that's terrible. BUT I also realized Dropbox is syncing a bunch of files ~8GB worth and it has been ever since I swapped the SSD and changed the thermal paste. I will report back when it's done syncing because right now it's using a lot of resources, including CPU and energy.

 

[edantes]

@Phazoner As soon as I killed Dropbox everything went back to normal. I didn't have the patience to wait for the sync so I just killed the app and voila! If you keep getting this I would do the SMC reset and check if you have an app that is using the CPU heavily. Chrome has been a hog for me but it's usually RAM not CPU. With Dropbox I could see in the Activity Monitor that it was using a lot of Energy, CPU, and Disk. Just my 2 pennies...