MacBook Pro overheating

[MadMatt]

This is my first post here, so apologies if I don't give the correct info or am too long winded.

I have a 6 month old MacBook Pro, mid 2015, 2.8 Ghz i7, 16 GB ram, 1 TB flash drive and am using Pro Tools 12.5.1 and a 003+ interface.

My issue is that my MacBook Pro CPU temps are getting to over 90 C on moderate sized sessions (approx 16 tracks, CPU usage approx 30-35%). This only takes about 1 to 2 minutes to reach these temps. The fan then kicks in quite loudly which is making it hard to track vocals near the laptop. This also can't be good for the long term life of the internal components. Monitoring temps using iStat Menus.

At first I thought it could be the 003+ as searching other posts showed driver issues but on further testing it also does it with internal audio and another borrowed interface.

I'm a graphic designer and also use the laptop for work using Adobe products. I also have overheating on really complex schematic drawings files when using Illustrator. Also loaded something into Garage Band and it did the same thing with temps so it's doesn't seem like a Pro Tools issue as such.

I took the laptop back to Apple and they ran some basic tests and nothing came up as faulty so they wanted to keep it for over a week to run further tests. As this is my work computer / livelihood I couldn't leave it at the time for this long.

After this long description, sorry, does anyone else have these issues with MacBook Pros and any advice? I was going to try a clean OS install next as a last resort before returning it to Apple.

This is obviously very frustrating as I bought, at the time, the most maxed out Mac laptop I could assuming it would be able to handle these sort of sessions with ease.

[musicman691]

You don't mention what OSX version but given the age of your machine I'll assume El Capitan. That shouldn't matter though. Are you running video with your sessions? I've seen that raise temps quite high and fast on various Macs over the years, especially laptops and Minis.

What specific temp are you seeing rise? I know iStat can show different temps in a system.

[MadMatt]

Thanks for the reply. I'm actually running Yosemite 10.10.5, I bought it just around the time El Capitan came out and haven't upgraded, and no video in sessions.

iStats is showing CPU Core 1, CPU Core 2, CPU Core 3, CPU Core 4 and CPU PECI Die are the ones that get over 90 C.

As extra info, plugins used are various Slate, Amplitube and just stock PT plugins.

[Darryl Ramm]

It may be fine/working as expected. It is a lot of horsepower in a tiny space to cool. How hot is the room? You got the laptop lifted up off the desk with some kind of spacers? and the lid fully open for best cooling? There are standard steps for suspect cooling misbehavior, like resetting the smc which you can find online/Apple staff may have already done.

[_JJ_]

Check Activity Monitor (Applications >> Utilities) to see what, if anything, is using a large percentage of your CPU's power. If like me you find ApplicationManager and ApplicationManagerHelper are the culprits, then I highly recommend using the uninstaller (Applications >> Avid_Uninstallers >> Application Manager) to remove this troublesome add-on. You don't need it to run ProTools.

[Stephen Bond]

Get it up off the desk to allow some air to flow under it.

There are bespoke stands or otherwise prop it up with a 2.5" HDD at the back as I do

Stephen

[MadMatt]

Thanks guys, I did buy a stand about a month ago which made no difference to the overheating, although it helps my neck by elevating the screen. Room temp is cool, it's winter down here. I think I did do a smc reset with Apple a while ago but might try again.

Checked Activity Monitor again with Pro Tools running and there is nothing really hogging CPU, Application Manager is only using about 1% CPU. Total CPU including Pro Tools is only 25%.

One weird thing I noticed though, when I minimise the Pro Tools screens but still keep the session playing the temps go down quite a bit from 90 C to roughly 75-80 C after about a minute. Has anyone else experienced this before? Any ideas?

[nikhilmulay]

A long shot, but it might be possible that the thermal compound application might be suspect.
I've seen this happen before and it's not very difficult to rectify.
Since your machine is new, obviously the service centre guys have to do this,bit it's not a very time consuming job.
The temps that you are seeing are definitely not normal for the amount of cpu usage.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[midi sordino]

I have the same Mid 2015 Macbook Pro though my interface is a Fireface 802.

Are you using any external displays? My fans kick in at intervals mainly when I have an external monitor attached. Other than that they're pretty well behaved. Though I've switched over to Logic Pro X for midi composing and mainly use PT for mixing and delivery.

You might try to raise the playback buffer in PT and see if that helps...

[Logichead]

Look into SMC Smart Fan control. It's a free app that lets you adjust the fans to a higher setting, seems to keep my MBP happier.

Also, shut off every app you can when using PT. No browsers, email, etc. (You are probably already doing this...)

Best...H