# Mac Os X: Overheating?



## Murikami (Jun 19, 2010)

Not quite sure where else to ask this sorry :/ I've had my computer for awhile now and it runs smooth enough considering how old the thing itself is. It's been getting really warm where I am though and I'm getting paranoid with how hot the computer itself is getting. My question is..is it possible for it to overheat and I dunno..melt or something? :/ And is there a way to fix the whole -too- warm business without having to take apart the computer. I'm not computer savvy at all.

Basic computer stats if it helps:
Mac Os X
version 10.4.11

Using a temperature widget:
ambient air: 30c, CPU a temperature Diode: 46C, CPU core 1: 43, CPU core 2: 41c, graphics processor Temperature D: 66c, hard drive bay 1: 50c, memory controler: 50c, optical drive: 42c


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## Syradact (Jun 19, 2010)

Is this a laptop or desktop computer? If it's a laptop it should be quite easy to take it to the Apple store and have them do their diagnostics to see if anything's amiss. I took my lappy in for a broken headphone jack, they found a heat sensor malfunctioning. 'Course, post-repair they neglected to plug the keyboard backlight back in and I have to take it back in less than an hour OMFG RAGE. "Mac Geniuses" indeed, lol.

Overheating is not good. My (first) laptop came with 10.5 Leopard, and I upgraded to 10.6 Snow Leopard at release. Right after updating the OS it started overheating something serious, fans going thousands of RPM and burning hot to the touch. Other folks on the net had the same problem. Eventually, the hard drive died and they replaced the whole laptop for me (the HDD was 7200rpm and could not be replaced as easily, whatevs), and the replacement came with Snow Leopard with no overheating problem.

Check Activity Monitor and see if any applications are taxing the processor at 100% usage. Kill those processes, reopen, is it the same result? Try updating those apps to the latest version.


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## Aden (Jun 19, 2010)

Yeah, I have an old 2006 MacBook Pro and the temps regularly get up to 80C. I've had high 90s when I'm rendering. Been fine for over four years, so I dunno.


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## Murikami (Jun 19, 2010)

It's a desktop sorry one of the older OS designs. Old enough, its about two and a half years old itself. I have not upgraded to snow leopard. I should, I have the disc but I haven't. I cant find my original mac discs and I'm paranoid about leopard deleting stuff I guess.

Did the activity check monitor and the highest running program currently on there was at like, 8 percent which is..firefox. :x So I'm not sure if its any of those.

EDIT:
Alright I just wasn't sure if there was a high chance of it going explodie and meltie on me or anything. I can't really afford a new computer and canadas having some freaky heat wave here :/


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## Riv (Jun 19, 2010)

Yeah, you're fine. Certain parts of my three year old polycarb macbook got up to 90Â°C once, and it's still running fine. The computer should shut itself down entirely if any thermometer detects overheating.


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## Runefox (Jun 19, 2010)

Those temperatures are OK, but you should probably grab a can of compressed air and dust out the vents every month or so to keep things working as they should (not sure about what you can do regarding opening up your Mac to clean specific areas considering the general form factor).

As far as it melting... Generally, if the temperature hits a certain threshold, first the computer slows down to preserve itself, and if the temperature continues to rise, it shuts off altogether. This is a feature of pretty much every computer in the past decade (shutting down by a certain temperature has been around since the Pentium III; The P4's brought throttling in to help avert crisis before shutting down), PC and Mac alike.


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