MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) high temperature

cpuhardwaremacbook proprocessortemperature

I know there are plenty of articles here about CPU reaching very high temperatures but I am still concerned about mine.

I bought a used MacBook Pro Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015 (i5, 2.7 Ghz) computer this week. This is not my first MacBook Pro (I had 2012 non retina model) but it has never reached 100C unless I played games or did some video rendering.

What makes me really worried is that CPU temperature easily reaches 100-105C when I open Adobe Bridge and click "Space" keyboard button to generate a 100% image preview. I know that it's using CPU graphics processor for this task but is it really normal for the temperature to get critical when doing such a simple task? The fan runs at around 2000 RPM until the CPU temperature reaches <100C. Then the fan starts running really fast and keeps the temperature at around 95-100C if I continue doing my tasks.

I know that MacBooks are built to work under high CPU temperature but I also know that high temperatures are not good for the lifetime of hardware. Should I be concerned about CPU temperature getting critical values so easily?

The temperature of my MacBook is around 40C when idle, 50-70C when I am browsing or watching online videos, I can never hear the fan until the temperature reaches critical 100-105C values.

Is it really normal? I don't want to believe that a 1 year old MacBook Pro can have a big amount of dust inside the fan or thermal paste to be dried out so quickly.

Thank you and I appreciate your comments.

Best Answer

As a starting point I would reset both your NVRAM and your SMC. See below for instructions.

Reset your NVRAM

Newer Macs use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM). It may be worth you resetting this. Here’s how to:

  1. Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
  2. Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
  3. Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
  4. Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. mouse speed, time and date/timezone, etc).

Reset the SMC

Your computer's System Management Controller (SMC) can also be reset. To reset this on your particular MacBook Pro, here’s what you do:

  1. Shut down your computer
  2. Keep the power cable plugged in.
  3. Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
  4. Let go
  5. Turn your computer back on with the power button.

After doing both these, let us know how you go.

Compare CPU temperatures

Also, as a point of reference, this resource (which can be filtered) will give you an idea of the wide range of temperatures that Macs can work with. However, after you've reset both the NVRAM and SMC you can monitor your CPU temperature and then use this resource to compare your temps to other comparable models.

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