Running Hot! Do I need more memory?
I bought mid 2014 Macbook Pro Retina's for my husband and I in October of 2014 and mine has been running extremely hot since I bought it. It gets so hot I have had a wooden dining table finish damaged from the heat. I've touched it with my hands and my hands get pink marks where I touch the hottest area. The exterior has started to warp a little where the heat is. I am a student, so I admit I do use it heavily, but when it gets that hot it should shut down and not burn the user. The fans run on it constantly, it's very annoying. I use Chrome, Word, Notes, and Spotify at once. I have 8 gb of ram. I am going to see if Apple will replace my laptop with the 16 gb to see if that makes a difference. I don't mind paying the difference.
Is this a good question?
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3 Comments
As for Apple swapping out your system with larger RAM, I don't see them doing that. You will likely need to buy a complete new system if that is the direction you want to go.
by Dan
Don't get your hopes up about the memory upgrade, I believe that could only happen during the first 14 days of ownership.
As for the heat problem, install a temperature and fan speed monitor and keep an eye on CPU usage. If you're not getting sufficient cooling then there may be a problem with a temperature sensor, the heat sync or the fans. Also note that some fan control utilities can cause their own problems. MacsFanControl can give you greater control over the fans but requires that you do an SMC reset to get the fans back to normal. On my mid 2014 15" rMBP, smcFanControl 2.5x reports low temperatures but v2.4 works fine.
Geekbench has a stress test feature that can give you a good idea if there are problems. Run 10 iterations and if you see a big difference between the first and last scores that means that the CPU is throttling itself down due to insufficient cooling. A trip to an Apple Store may help. The techs can test the fans and reapply the heat sync compound.
by mpias
Hmm... Interesting! They let us do it with an iPad several months after purchase last year (as far as the ram is concerned). Guess we were lucky? Nah, they suggested it. Maybe the Apple store we have has nicer employees? Likely.
I've looked at the processes. My RAM isn't even running more than 5.5 GB at a time and that's when I have the most apps I ever use open. So there's still over 2 GB available. The fans run hard anyway. Yesterday I put the laptop on my lap for about 60 seconds while the fan was on... I wasn't blocking the vents at all. I had to take it off my lap because it was so hot it hurt really badly. I truly believe I just have a defective product. I will be taking it back to Apple when I get a chance. I'm taking Full Time Classes and can't catch a break yet. Also, I just admitted that the RAM upgrade wouldn't even matter. They'll probably replace it.
by Bethany K