High CPU (kernel task) and Fan after new SSD and Power Supply

Hello all,

I’ve probably read just about every post on the internet regarding my issue and cannot find an answer so I am hoping the ifixit community can help.

I had issues with my late 2012 iMac randomly powering off, and the culprit of this seems to be a broken power supply. So I ordered a new LiteOn powersupply through ifixit and decided that if I am opening the iMac, I might as well change my 3TB HDD drive, with a 2TB SSD to speed up my old Mac. I purchase the Crucial MX500 2TB SSD.

Installation was not nearly as difficult as I expected, and had no problem installing all the items based on the guides provided. As suggested, I installed the thermal adapter on the SSD as well.

Hooked everything back up, installed Catalina and my computer all of a sudden was SLOW and super loud fan noise. Thinking it might be that Catalina doesn’t run on my old iMac, I reformatted the drive, and installed what came with my iMac, Mountain Lion, then updated to Mojave (which I ran on the old Hard drive). Neither Mountain Lion nor Mojave have affected the speed. It still runs super slow.

So, I bought a case for my old hard drive, plugged that in and booted the computer using the old hard drive using USB 3.0 to rule out the SATA cable. No change in speed. It’s even slower.

I have enabled TRIM, reset PRAM, reset SMC, tried to boot apple diagnostic pressing d or Shift + D but my computer is no longer supported, start up in safe mode using shift but there is no change.

Checked the activity monitor for both the HDD and SSD and the kernal_task is running extremely high. It never falls below 600%. This is on a clean install. Besides Mac Fan Control to lower the fan speed (it’s set to take the temperature from the SSD which seems to work), there isn’t really anything I have installed on the computer.

I’m attaching the EtreCheck, and some screenshots but hoping someone can point me in the right direction. Willing to open my iMac back up, but not sure what to do.

Really appreciate the help in advance

Sandra

hope this pastes ok.

EtreCheck version: 5.5.5 (5111)

Report generated: 2020-06-13 15:19:49

'''Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com'''

Runtime: 16:57

Performance: Poor

Sandbox: Enabled

Full drive access: Disabled

Problem: Computer is too slow

Major Issues:

    Anything that appears on this list needs immediate attention.

    No Time Machine backup - Time Machine backup not found.

    Runaway process - A process is using a large percentage of your CPU.

    Poor performance - EtreCheck report shows poor performance. This is unusual.

    Software performance problems - Software seems to be causing performance problems.

Minor Issues:

    These issues do not need immediate attention but they may indicate future problems or opportunities for improvement.

    32-bit Apps - This machine has 32-bits apps will not work on macOS 10.15 "Catalina".

    Limited drive access - More information may be available with Full Drive Access.

Hardware Information:

    iMac (27-inch, Late 2012)

    iMac Model: iMac13,2

    3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 (i7-3770) CPU: 4-core

    24 GB RAM - Upgradeable

        BANK 0/DIMM0 - 8 GB DDR3 1600

        BANK 1/DIMM0 - 8 GB DDR3 1600

        BANK 0/DIMM1 - 4 GB DDR3 1600

        BANK 1/DIMM1 - 4 GB DDR3 1600

Video Information:

    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX - VRAM: 2 GB

        iMac 2560 x 1440

Drives:

    disk0 - CT2000MX500SSD1 2.00 TB (Solid State - TRIM: Yes)

    Internal SATA 6 Gigabit Serial ATA

        disk0s1 - EFI (MS-DOS FAT32) [EFI] 210 MB

        disk0s2 [APFS Container] 2.00 TB

            disk1 [APFS Virtual drive] 2.00 TB (Shared by 4 volumes)

                disk1s1 - I****x (APFS) (Shared - 16.38 GB used)

                disk1s2 - Preboot (APFS) [APFS Preboot] (Shared)

                disk1s3 - Recovery (APFS) [Recovery] (Shared)

                disk1s4 - VM (APFS) [APFS VM] (Shared - 2.15 GB used)

Mounted Volumes:

    disk1s1 - I****x

        2.00 TB (Shared - 16.38 GB used, 1.98 TB free)

        APFS

        Mount point: /

    disk1s4 - VM [APFS VM]        2.00 TB (Shared - 2.15 GB used, 1.98 TB free)        APFS        Mount point: /private/var/vm

Network:

    Interface Bluetooth-Modem: Bluetooth DUN

    Interface en0: Ethernet

    Interface en1: Wi-Fi

        802.11 a/b/g/n

    Interface en2: Bluetooth PAN

    Interface bridge0: Thunderbolt Bridge

System Software:

    macOS Mojave 10.14.6 (18G103)

    Time since boot: About an hour

Notifications:

    Notifications not available without Full Drive Access.

Security:

    Gatekeeper: Enabled

    System Integrity Protection: Enabled

    Antivirus software: Apple

32-bit Applications:

    One 32-bit app

System Launch Agents:

    [Not Loaded] 15 Apple tasks

    [Loaded] 180 Apple tasks

    [Running] 105 Apple tasks

System Launch Daemons:

    [Not Loaded] 38 Apple tasks

    [Loaded] 178 Apple tasks

    [Running] 118 Apple tasks

    [Other] One Apple task

Launch Daemons:

    [Running] com.crystalidea.macsfancontrol.smcwrite.plist (Ilya Parniuk - installed 2020-06-13)

User Internet Plug-ins:

    User Internet Plug-ins need Full Drive Access

Audio Plug-ins:

    AppleTimeSyncAudioClock: 1.0 (Apple - installed 2019-09-20)

    BluetoothAudioPlugIn: 6.0.14 (Apple - installed 2019-09-20)

    AirPlay: 2.0 (Apple - installed 2019-09-20)

    AppleAVBAudio: 760.6 (Apple - installed 2019-09-20)

    BridgeAudioSP: 5.52 (Apple - installed 2019-09-20)

    iSightAudio: 7.7.3 (Apple - installed 2019-09-20)

User Audio Plug-ins:

    User Audio Plug-ins need Full Drive Access

User iTunes Plug-ins:

    User iTunes Plug-ins need Full Drive Access

Time Machine:

    Time Machine Not Configured!

    One local snapshot

    Oldest local snapshot: 2020-06-13 12:50:32

    Last local snapshot: 2020-06-13 12:50:32

Performance:

    System Load: 13.00 (1 min ago) 13.45 (5 min ago) 13.52 (15 min ago)

    Nominal I/O speed: 1.16 MB/s

    File system: 121.53 seconds (timed out)

    Write speed: 112 MB/s

    Read speed: 137 MB/s

CPU Usage Snapshot:

    Type Overall

    System: 85 %

    User: 5 %

    Idle: 10 %

Top Processes Snapshot by CPU:

    Process (count) CPU (Source - Location)

    Other processes 705.26 % (?)

    EtreCheck 9.32 % (App Store)

    Activity Monitor 5.45 % (Apple)

    Macs Fan Control 0.28 % (Ilya Parniuk)

    Dock 0.10 % (Apple)

Top Processes Snapshot by Memory:

    Process (count) RAM usage (Source - Location)

    EtreCheck 453 MB (App Store)

    Finder 84 MB (Apple)

    Spotlight 68 MB (Apple)

    accountsd 68 MB (Apple)

    NotificationCenter 60 MB (Apple)

Top Processes Snapshot by Network Use:

    Process Input / Output (Source - Location)

    Other processes 97 KB / 13 KB (?)

    SystemUIServer 0 B / 64 B (Apple)

    mdworker_shared 0 B / 0 B (Apple)

    backgroundtaskmanagementagent 0 B / 0 B (Apple)

    cfprefsd 0 B / 0 B (Apple)

Virtual Memory Information:

    Physical RAM: 24 GB

    Free RAM: 17.06 GB

    Used RAM: 4.04 GB

    Cached files: 2.91 GB

    Available RAM: 19.96 GB

    Swap Used: 0 B

Software Installs (past 30 days):

    Install Date Name (Version)

    2020-06-12 OS X (10.8.5 (12F45))

    2020-06-12 macOS Mojave (14.6.01)

    2020-06-12 SU_TITLE (10.14.6.1.1.1569030045)

    2020-06-13 XProtectPlistConfigData (2123)

    2020-06-13 CompatibilityNotificationData (1.0.6)

    2020-06-13 Gatekeeper Configuration Data (181)

    2020-06-13 MRTConfigData (1.62)

    2020-06-13 EtreCheck (5.5.5)

Diagnostics Information (past 7-30 days):

    Directory /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports is not accessible.

    Enable Full Drive Access to see more information.

End of report