Warm up your MacBook (2019)

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kkristianp about 19 hours ago 108 commentsRead Article on z3ugma.github.io

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Discussion (108 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

smarks•about 10 hours ago

Warming up a 2019-era (Intel) MacBook Pro was never my problem. Quite the opposite. Those machines ran notoriously hot. The later macOS releases, combined with company-mandated crapware, made it worse. Doing an ordinary build or starting a videoconferencing session was enough to cause the fans to run. On a warm day the fans couldn’t shed enough heat and so the system would go into thermal throttling. The OS would occupy a core with a 100% kernel_task that didn’t do any work but which would serve to prevent actual work from being scheduled onto that core. When four or five out of the six cores were occupied by kernel_task, I knew I was in for a bag of hurt (to steal a phrase from Steve Jobs). Responsiveness went completely to hell. The machine became effectively unusable.

After a while my normal procedure was to run with the thing sitting on top of an ice pack. That would let me run a 60-90 minute video conference without troubles.

The only redeeming feature of these machines is that they could emulate old x86 hardware at speed. That allowed me to run old apps on old OSes without having to keep old hardware running.

reitzensteinm•about 4 hours ago

I had Windows and Mac laptops back then, and the HN snobbishness around the superiority of the Mac was genuinely baffling.

My i9 2019 MBP with discrete graphics was probably the worst laptop purchase I ever made. Docking it to an external monitor would enable the GPU, so even when idling it would run the fans and drain the battery.

I’d read cautionary tales about Windows laptops being pulled out of backpacks scorching hot as they failed to shut down. But that happened to my Mac all the time, too.

The M series though is incredible. I can’t imagine buying a Windows laptop now.

smarks•42 minutes ago

Oh yeah, I forgot about the graphics.

I had (and still have) a 4k external monitor. Naturally I wanted the MBP to drive the monitor with a resolution that took advantage of all the pixels. Unfortunately with most monitor settings the GPU power consumption would produce enough heat to run the fans even if the rest of the system was completely idle! If I set the output to full HD the GPU would cool down and the fans would turn off. But full HD on a 4k monitor is a waste.

It was very strange. I could drive the monitor at 4k but with the image upside down, and the power consumption would be low. But flip the image right side up and it would run hot and turn on the fans.

It took a couple weeks of fiddling, but I finally found a combination of refresh rate, resolution, image orientation (right side up!), and cabling that let me drive the monitor at high resolution without running the fans. What a pain.

(I used iStat menus to monitor GPU power consumption. At “good” settings it consumed about 5w. At “bad” settings it would consume 17w. At a bad setting you could immediately see the various temperatures go up and the fans spinning up to compensate.)

pja•about 4 hours ago

The i9 was notorious. Would thermally throttle almost instantly & for any sizeable build job would end up slower than the i7 IIRC.

Intel really made themselves unpopular with Apple during that period.

aeyes•12 minutes ago

> Intel really made themselves unpopular with Apple during that period.

You can't tell me that this wasn't known by Apple before shipping the product. Why did they not provide adequate cooling for the CPU?

close04•about 2 hours ago

> Intel really made themselves unpopular with Apple during that period.

Intel just reenacted IBM's history with Apple, particularly the G5 era. That CPU was instantly a no-go for anything mobile. In workstations it was cranked ever higher with very poor power-frequency scaling, needing water cooling for the beastly 200W idle power consumption and close to 1kW full throttle.

That went well so was a perfect role model for Intel's i9.

mfro•about 2 hours ago

It was a truly ridiculous idea to put an i9 in any laptop. That generation of i9 is difficult to cool even with liquid cooler systems in big ATX cases.

carlosjobim•about 3 hours ago

Apple hardware quality on the laptops was bottom tier during the 2016-2019 "butterfly" era. There's no denying.

jorgeleo•about 2 hours ago

i decided to do an experiment and try to run an LLM in my old 2013 MBP. i7, 16 gb mem, 1 tb hd.

Installed Linux mint Xfce Edition for lightness, installed ollama, start to test different models. Gemma4 e4b runs perfectly fine, exposed it to the network, connected to it with my current notebook and use vs code codex to start to run inference.

For about 30 minutes of bliss, this setup work at a reasonable speed... then the MBP shut it self down. It was so hot that it trigger the safety mechanism, the fans sounded like the laptop was about to take off.

I though on leaving it on inside the fridge, but then the WIFI wouldn't reach.

On the other hand, my wife saw all this and offer to buy me an M5... the experiment didn't work as intended, but it did work.

bartread•3 minutes ago

On a laptop that old it might be worth opening it up to blow all the dust out with a compressor or air duster. I’ve often found that to work wonders on old MacBook Pros.

The other issue is that unless the battery has been replaced relatively recently its charging efficiency may not be that great and the high load being placed on it might be causing it to get hotter than it would have done when new.

tacomagick•23 minutes ago

Could be in need of a thermal paste refresh etc.?

recursivecaveat•about 7 hours ago

My Intel MBP would noticeably raise the whole room's temperature, while the fans ran so loud. We had some corporate security software that would occasionally go haywire and lock up 100% of a core until you rebooted. If you got that at the same time as a video call it would become too physically painful to touch any part of the metal body with bare skin.

blackoil•about 3 hours ago

Those were John Ive era laptops where form ruled function. Poor thermal, less ports, less keys were all features.

philistine•about 3 hours ago

Form always ruled function with Jony Ive, but he always had a good eye for the way compromises shook out. During that era, Ive was creatively checked out but Cook kept him on to maintain the stock price.

alexwwang•about 7 hours ago

Maybe the same type. Each time I call the LLM api the fan starts to work and make big noise. The temperature in the room is going up noticeably for 1-2 degrees.

embedding-shape•about 4 hours ago

> Each time I call the LLM api the fan starts to work and make big noise

So every time you do HTTP calls? Nothing there should spin up your fans, unless you use an agent with an horribly broken TUI, I've heard there is a few of those out there. But remotely calling LLM APIs really shouldn't be taxing on your local device, something somewhere is wrong/bad if that's what you're seeing.

alexwwang•about 4 hours ago

If the horribly broken TUI you mentioned is OpenCode, I’d say yes. That’s exactly what I am experiencing.

Filligree•about 3 hours ago

Is it a local LLM? Sibling seems to be assuming remote, but I have trouble imagining a TUI that inefficient.

alexwwang•about 3 hours ago

No. Simply the rest api call in opencode tui. I don’t know why maybe the mbp is too old, at least it served 6 years +.

dnnddidiej•about 16 hours ago

For those without spacebar heating?

mrtksn•about 15 hours ago

They broke that workflow in a recent update. Software these days is horrendous

thehamkercat•about 9 hours ago

for those wondering: https://xkcd.com/1172/

kingjimmy•about 17 hours ago

"This will start 6 threads that each peg your CPU... "

they're doing what to my CPU????

dnnddidiej•about 5 hours ago

Warming it up. For the eventual electron app it'll be running.

crest•about 16 hours ago

Bend over for big tech!

imp0cat•about 9 hours ago

Fully utilize.

Also, pour one for the death of the analog speedo. Peg the needle, no more!

amomchilov•about 18 hours ago

How big is the risk of condensation when you bring a cold laptop inside?

All their spec sheets say they support up to x% _non-condensing_ humidity, which I’m guessing is about the dew point?

vibcdingenjoyer•about 2 hours ago

I’ve always been told to let electronics and musical instruments slowly warm up in their case after bringing them inside. Supposedly reduces the chances of condensation forming.

ericpauley•about 16 hours ago

The uncomfortable fact about the mentioned Wisconsin winters is that inside dew point tends to be quite low.

ralphc•about 11 hours ago

I still use a 2019 MacBook Pro, in 2026 I found the best way to warm it up was to use it daily and not blow the dust out of it for 7 years. After I opened it up and did that it's running a lot cooler.

Cthulhu_•about 6 hours ago

Modern Macbooks have this issue, the other day I realised I had never heard the fans of it run, so I was wondering if they actually worked.

Found a web based benchmark tool that will run your CPU and GPU at 100% each. While temperatures went up to 90 degrees science... still no fans. Ended up installing a different utility to manually set the fan speed to confirm they worked.

I don't know what they did but it's good.

nickdothutton•about 4 hours ago

May I introduce you to local LLMs?

crefiz•about 3 hours ago

Care to share the name of both tools? Cheers

reboot81•about 18 hours ago

Looking forward to the follow up: How to Quickly Cool Down Your MacBook

sunrunner•about 18 hours ago

Just do the trick in reverse, surely?

  yes no > /dev/null

why_at•about 17 hours ago

No you have to get the yesses back out

  cat /dev/null | yes

kotaKat•about 6 hours ago

You might have to load in maybe.so for that to work though.

crote•about 9 hours ago

Unironically, yes.

My M3 Macbook Pro's palm rests get uncomfortably warm during regular IDE use. It doesn't get hot enough to spin up a fan, but it is enough to be distracting.

asimovDev•about 8 hours ago

interesting. for me only the bottom and the top part above the keyboard gets warm during my work. 16inch model. Is yours the 14inch one?

crote•about 6 hours ago

14 inch, running primarily IntelliJ IDEA and Firefox. Around 10% CPU use most of the time, with of course the occasional spike for compilation.

It's not hot, but with 22C ambient it is enough of a rise to be annoying.

nottorp•about 7 hours ago

I have the 14 inch and i've never felt it go warm.

I think the real question is what IDE we're talking about.

ge96•about 18 hours ago

Strap a thermopile and a peltier on that bad boy

HDBaseT•about 17 hours ago

For years at work I've been just using Cinebench as a hand warmer on various Macbooks.

hakkoru•about 15 hours ago

I always enjoyed using the power brick to warm up

dasKrokodil•about 8 hours ago

Speaking of cold weather and warming up computers... I've had my fair share of long bicycle commutes during cold winters and I always wondered whether booting up the laptop right after arriving has any effect on the long-term reliability? Like, are there any components which suffer from being activated when they're really cold?

Filligree•about 3 hours ago

It increases the chance of solder cracks, which is one major cause of failure. Thermal cycles in general will do that, however, and home computers are designed to survive a lot of them.

So overall it’s not something I’d worry about.

Tade0•about 5 hours ago

The battery might need warmup, but it would have to be significantly below freezing outside to affect it.

Electrolytic capacitors can freeze up but again, you'd need a Yakutia-like environment for it to actually pose a concern.

Lastly I've heard of circuit boards warping from going from really cold to really hot, but those were power components.

ivanjermakov•about 6 hours ago

At the first half of your comment I thought you would suggest using laptop as a back heater during cold weather rides!

nottorp•about 7 hours ago

I always leave the laptop untouched for at least 10 minutes when coming in from the cold. Don't know if it helps but it makes me feel better.

lebuin•about 6 hours ago

I try to leave my laptop untouched for as much as I possibly can. Definitely makes me feel better too.

waterhouse•about 17 hours ago

Multithreaded:

  seq 1 20 | xargs -Iqq -n1 -P0 yes >/dev/null

mexicocitinluez•about 4 hours ago

Slightly quicker way to do this is opening Microsoft Teams.

jvuygbbkuurx•about 18 hours ago

I just need to build our monorepo

Onavo•about 18 hours ago

I think any next.js project will do the trick

p0w3n3d•about 8 hours ago

Does this work with M series ? M series is much colder and my fingers hurt <sob>

paul_knox•about 6 hours ago

Just run Intel (x86) apps via Rosetta 2 in the background. You’ll feel that classic Intel warmth coming right back.

gizajob•about 7 hours ago

Running an LLM in the background is the contemporary version of this.

Hobadee•about 15 hours ago

I'm from California... What is this "cold" you speak of?

nottorp•about 7 hours ago

You don't know how right you are. I don't think Apple ever tests their hardware outside the CA climate.

xgkickt•about 1 hour ago

“Designed in California, for Californians” was too long.

isomorphic•about 10 hours ago

Floridian. I thought "frozen lake" was some sort of Intel CPU reference.

int0x29•about 15 hours ago

The Donner Party begs to differ

jerlam•about 15 hours ago

I think my last Macbook was Wisconsin-locale instead of California. Closing the lid and putting it to sleep actually caused it to heat up (until the battery died).

simulator5g•about 9 hours ago

It had the soul of a PC

splittydev•about 15 hours ago

Alternatively, you could try compiling an Xcode project. That should do the trick as well.

kristianp•about 16 hours ago

Or you could get a laptop that doesn't have an metal shell, like a thinkpad.

simulator5g•about 9 hours ago

Or just leave the machine plugged in and turned on for like 5 minutes while you grab a coffee or have a conversation. It doesn't really take that long to warm up to room temperature. Unless this guy is like biking 15 miles to work in the winter in which case, he is doing Wisconsin wrong, you're supposed to drive to work with a beer to warm you up.

Cassell•about 16 hours ago

they often have a magnesium bottom shell

niklasbuschmann•about 6 hours ago

> openssl speed

mark242•about 17 hours ago

npm install

daneel_w•about 16 hours ago

  while true; do openssl speed ecdsap384 -multi 2; done

mcfedr•about 10 hours ago

yes only writes y, not the whole word yes

fnord77•about 10 hours ago

unless you type

      yes yes

moralestapia•about 18 hours ago

Won't work on M processors, (un)fortunately.

dajonker•about 18 hours ago

I recently installed an app to manually activate the fans on my MacBook Pro M1 Pro as I've never been able to trigger them over the past 4+ years. Just to check whether the fans even work (they do).

amluto•about 17 hours ago

You must be using only lame languages like C or Go or Python that aren’t optimized for laptop warming during compilation. Try using a Real Language with a Real Compiler, like C++ or Rust or Swift, and build decent-sized projects using all cores.

(All joking aside, this is why I have a MacBook Pro. Compilation easily hits the Air’s thermal limits and the performance boost on the Pro with its fan is impressive.)

asdff•about 15 hours ago

I get them going full blast in 2 minutes from cities skylines.

woozlewuzzle•about 16 hours ago

You could also build Chromium from source. It makes my M1 Max's fans sing.

tom_•about 15 hours ago

I left my Mac Studio running at 100% CPU on all cores for 14 hours, and the case ended up noticeably warm to the touch. It is possible!

asdff•about 15 hours ago

Try increasing to 10 cores. Works on my m3 pro.

mjmas•about 18 hours ago

https://xkcd.com/1172/

nullbyte•about 18 hours ago

sanest emacs user

RAZKOM•about 18 hours ago

There really is an xkcd for everything

therein•about 18 hours ago

Honestly m1 was very cool no matter what workload you threw at it but at this point m4 max does get pretty hot even with just web browsing.

gpm•about 18 hours ago

I've definitely had my m1 air get uncomfortably hot to touch - particularly right above the keyboard. (While doing developery things)

inventor7777•about 15 hours ago

Can't say I've ever thought of a word like "developery", but now that I've seen it I like it a lot :-)

Traubenfuchs•about 10 hours ago

In homeoffice I always work in the nude and the cold metal of my macbook pro hurts my thighs…

diimdeep•about 10 hours ago

Or something useful, save space, compressing some talk or edu video, just 6 fps is usually enough for slides or code, opus audio can go as low as 32k and still be decent compared to source quality, expect 10-15x size reduction

  ffmpeg -hide_banner -y -i in.mp4 \
    -vf "fps=6,format=yuv420p,scale=960:-2:flags=lanczos" \
    -c:v libx265 -tag:v hvc1 -crf 32 -pix_fmt yuv420p -preset fast \
    -c:a libopus -b:a 82K -application 2048 \
    -c:s mov_text \
    out.mp4

can go more crazy with this soup

  -x265-params "keyint=800:min-keyint=24:scenecut=20:ref=8:bframes=16:b-adapt=2:rc-lookahead=80:rd=4:subme=5:deblock=1,1:aq-mode=3:aq-strength=0.4:psy-rd=0.4:psy-rdoq=1.0:qcomp=0.7:qg-size=64:rect=1:amp=1:strong-intra-smoothing=1:limit-modes=1:limit-tu=4:rdpenalty=2:tu-intra-depth=4:tu-inter-depth=4:me=star:no-allow-non-conformance=1" \

fastjack42•about 8 hours ago

Now do the opposite for the summer! Show me a command line that cools down the machine! ;)

Scubabear68•about 18 hours ago

Needs 2019 in title, this is Intel MacBooks not Apple Silicon.

dunham•about 16 hours ago

I've found that Baldur's Gate 3 will warm up my apple silicon (everyday tasks do not).

Analemma_•about 16 hours ago

Is that running on Rosetta 2? Rosetta 2 does (or did, maybe it's removed now) a fine job running x86 code on Apple Silicon, but boy was it cycle-hungry to do it.

asimovDev•about 8 hours ago

BG3 is a native game, they dropped x86 support shortly after launch on macOS (or maybe even in beta)

dangus•about 16 hours ago

Apple Silicon is not really the simultaneously silent and quiet and cool system it was in the M1 days.

If you get a MacBook Air it will get quite toasty at throttling limits. After all, it has no fan.

MacBook Pro models and Apple computers in general tend to favor quiet operation over keeping the laptop surface cool.

Many PC gaming laptops go out of their way to keep warm air off the keyboard deck with a high willingness to use fan noise to accomplish that since the assumption is that you’re resting your hands on the computer for an extended period and you have headphones on for your game anyway.

1e1a•about 18 hours ago

Another (more useful) option is to render an animation in Blender, or run a local LLM.

ale•about 18 hours ago

Honestly i prefer my macbook frosty

villgax•about 10 hours ago

This is now running Cyberpunk or an LLM locally

traceroute66•about 5 hours ago

To be fair, the fundamental problem here is the author's resting of wrists to type.

This applies to any computer, Apple, Windows or Linux. Desktop or laptop.

If your typing on any computer is dependent on you resting your wrists whilst typing then it is indicative of poor typing technique and/or posture.

And ironically the very thing you think you're trying to prevent by resting your wrists (carpel tunnel and/or strain) is likely to be aggravated by over-reliance on wrist wrests due to the added pressure on the wrist.