Core shutdowns, high temps after 10.5.8? Rev. A

[slapguts]

Hey folks, anyone else having issues all of a sudden? My Rev.A has been flawless, never gets very hot, runs great.

Until today. Suddenly my MBA is going nuts. I've turned off every extra that is usually running, only using Safari and Activity Monitor. I tried disabling and re-enabling Coolbook, and it made no change.

Only thing I've changed since yesterday is updating to 10.5.8. Any advice (besides get a Rev.B)?

 

[JonB3Z]

Hey folks, anyone else having issues all of a sudden? My Rev.A has been flawless, never gets very hot, runs great.

Until today. Suddenly my MBA is going nuts. I've turned off every extra that is usually running, only using Safari and Activity Monitor. I tried disabling and re-enabling Coolbook, and it made no change.

Only thing I've changed since yesterday is updating to 10.5.8. Any advice (besides get a Rev.B)?

Did Activity Monitor not show anything hammering the CPU?

I had iCal maxing out the CPU. Something to do with syncing a subscribed calendar via MobileMe. Not sure yet what that's all about (I deleted the subscription for now).

 

[slapguts]

Nothing besides kernal_task. Even Safari is barely making a dent.

Retarted a third time now, seems to be doing ok. If it starts up again, like it has 5 minutes or so after every other restart, I'll try to post some screenshots.

5 min. later: Seems to be doing better, that was strange. Of course, Spotlight decides now is the perfect time to index my drive. Pretty sure that was my first core shutdown since I've got this thing.

 

[mmezher]

core shutdown

this ascually happend to my macbook air rev:a yesterday while using it,severel firefox windows was open and then the comp become really slow and choppy. (this never happend before the update).
i turned on coolbook=no change , but then again coolbook has never done any differance at all in my computer.

 

[Miker2k]

Mine seems to be running a bit warmer but I haven't had 10.5.8 loaded long enough to determine if that is the issue or not.

 

[ayeying]

kernel_task kicks in when the system gets too hot. It eats up all of the CPU, basically to downclock it to 800MHz so the system can be cooled down to prevent overheating

 

[duky]

Oddly enough my Rev. C seems to be running so much better and I haven't heard my fans kick in even as I've been using it on my bed for the past hour (usually blocking these vents even a bit causes it to start screaming). I don't get it..

 

[GeekGirl*]

Perfect Rev A here no problems at all with update.

 

[MacModMachine]

Oddly enough my Rev. C seems to be running so much better and I haven't heard my fans kick in even as I've been using it on my bed for the past hour (usually blocking these vents even a bit causes it to start screaming). I don't get it..

i have the opposite happening, i cover my vents and never have a moderate temperature rise...maybe 2-3c ...nothing major.

never above 55c, i did reapply my thermal paste the "proper way"

 

[6SSD4]

I´m kind off having the same issue. Since installing 10.5.8 my Air rev. a has run slower. After restarting, it´s fast as hell for like 15 minutes, then it slows down majorly. Even youtube lags. Any advice?

 

[icymountain]

Hi gang,

I have been using a Rev. B Macbook Air for about 9 months now, and I think I have the same issue. I upgraded to 10.5.8 about three weeks ago and everything was fine until then. Now the situation is definetely bad, BUT I cannot confirm it was due to the 10.5.8 upgrade. The situation did deteriorate after the upgrade, but I did not remark anything special until at least one week after the upgrade. Could be it; could be something else.

Past situation:
- the machine was working very well with firefox, vmware running Ubuntu and image processing software on the side (I was amazed!).
- everything was snappy and fast.
- I could never turn the machine off and just put it to sleep (uptime up to 30 days).

Current situation, with just firefox running (no vmware, no image processing software):
- fan is running almost all the time.
- nothing is snappy, the machine runs slow and often lags even if I reboot about three or four times a day.
- top and iStat do not show anything hammering the CPU.
- the Activity Monitor looks bad, with about 70 % System, 20 % User (how come this does not show in top ? are there processes that are invisible to top).
- kernel_task about 130%...

Any ideas what I could do ?

 

[ayeying]

are you blocking the vents? using it on a bed? dirty desk? yadada?

 

[icymountain]

Nothing special: I am using the MBA on a flat desk, with the vents unobstructed. Nothing has changed in the last month regarding to how and where I use my MBA.

Yes, we are in the middle of the summer, but that was the case one month ago too (actually, the temperature was significantly higher here), and my MBA was working quite a bit better....

 

[ayeying]

Nothing special: I am using the MBA on a flat desk, with the vents unobstructed. Nothing has changed in the last month regarding to how and where I use my MBA.

Yes, we are in the middle of the summer, but that was the case one month ago too (actually, the temperature was significantly higher here), and my MBA was working quite a bit better....

are you using an external monitor also? I noticed that kernel_task will kick in easily if the GPU is taxed also.

 

[icymountain]

No external monitor (never used one). I am currently using wireless, but this afternoon at my office, I was running on ethernet with the USB adaptator. This seems to make no difference though. No other external devices.

I did manage to get the MBA a bit cooler a few minutes ago by putting it to sleep until the fan stopped and then resuming work. After about 15 minutes, it is still ok. I think I will continue like this this week, and I hope the temperature will drop next week and that this will help... Otherwise, I think I may get an eee-PC to use until the winter.

 

[ayeying]

That does seem a bit weird.

My MBA doesn't have the kernel_task shoot up unless I'm using it on the bed or if my vents are blocked or if I have an external monitor running dual screen. Otherwise, the kernel task doesn't pop up even if I'm watching HD videos

 

[stoconnell]

Have you looked in /var/log/system.log for odd error messages in Terminal.app (or fired up the Console.app)? You might look through some of the older copies (e.g. /var/log/system.log.2.bz2) using bzless to compare from when the system was behaving as your expected.

Other things to try would be to run a repair permissions within Disk Utility (I do this after every update -- probably overkill).

You could also try resetting SMC and PRAM.

Other things could be environmental factors like dust or cat hair in your system

 

[icymountain]

No dog, cat @ home...
And no dust either...

A funny experience I just did right now, this morning: I had left the MBA in sleep mode overnight (it was working fine last night, after going back to sleep for a while as I said in my previous post), and when I woke it up this morning, I experienced the kernel_task issue (steady 140%). I did put the MBA to sleep again, wake it up after 10 seconds roughly, and it behaves normal again.

There was no real reason why it should go to that level today, since temperature is much cooler. And the fan did not even start nor did the internal temp go up on the first awakening with kernel_task at 140%. So my only guess is that, beyond the cooling problem which sometimes occurs indeed, there must be a software problem. Hence I do not believe getting Coolbook will help me much.

Thanks for all your replies. I will check the log messages too, and report back if I find anything, or if my MBA behaves differently.

 

[stoconnell]

curiouser and curiouser

No dog, cat @ home...
And no dust either...

A funny experience I just did right now, this morning: I had left the MBA in sleep mode overnight (it was working fine last night, after going back to sleep for a while as I said in my previous post), and when I woke it up this morning, I experienced the kernel_task issue (steady 140%). I did put the MBA to sleep again, wake it up after 10 seconds roughly, and it behaves normal again.

There was no real reason why it should go to that level today, since temperature is much cooler. And the fan did not even start nor did the internal temp go up on the first awakening with kernel_task at 140%. So my only guess is that, beyond the cooling problem which sometimes occurs indeed, there must be a software problem. Hence I do not believe getting Coolbook will help me much.

Thanks for all your replies. I will check the log messages too, and report back if I find anything, or if my MBA behaves differently.

That's interesting -- especially that the behavior continued across reboots and then just started working okay again.

 

[ayeying]

That's an OS problem. I'd recommend a full reinstall (after back up of course) and see if it still happens.

 

[icymountain]

Thanks for the replies.
Now that I have identified and understood the problem (and the kernel_task role), which this thread helped me a lot for, I am keeping kernel_task level and fan rates under close scrutiny. Since yesterday morning, I have not seen any of these slow downs with kernel_task bumps. If the situation seems stable, I will not bother in the short term (high temperatures should be mostly behind for this year at least). Otherwise, I may have to reinstall the system indeed.