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Is my 2020 MacBook Pro past its usable life?

S

spacecadet1968

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 1, 2011
20
1
Hi,

I’ve got a 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 1.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 and 8 GB of 2133 MHz LPDDR3 RAM.

About a year ago, I started noticing the machine was running really slow when using Lightroom, InDesign, Photoshop, and especially Premiere Pro. In the past 6 months, I’ve noticed the fan starts up whenever I have a couple of apps open, even Safari or Firefox.

I’ve tried a clean install, but it’s still running slowly. I’m wondering if this computer has outlived its useful life. I realize it’s going on 6 years old, and it’s got an Intel processor. I'd really appreciate any thoughts.

Thanks!
 
You don't say how much SSD is installed and whether it is close to full. The apps you are using will consume RAM easily and with only 8GB it may be paging out to the SSD, and, if the SSD is full, this may slow things down a lot. If you are installing the latest versions of the apps you will find they are more memory and disk space and speed sensitive.

I would think this machine may be on the edge of its useful life, especially for the kind of apps you are using which require plenty of RAM, plenty of working disk space for scratch usage and a decent graphics capability with plenty of graphics memory. For basic word processing, browsing, emails etc. it might be fine, but I would budget for a new machine. Any of the M based Apple silicon machines (14" MacBook Pro) with 16GB of RAM and some decent SSD space (512GB minimum recommended) would give you a major performance boost and move you onto the latest OS versions. You do not even have to buy the Pro or Max versions to get a major performance boost.
 
raythompsontn said:
That may have true with spinning rust. A SSD is the same speed regardless of of free space. There is no seek or rotational latency increase.
Click to expand...
Not true. SSDs are written to in patterns as they search for space. As the SSD fills the write times change as a result of the need to reorganise and find space. You will find numerous references to the issue with written times as they fill up. I will give you some references later. But it is well known that as an SSD fills up, access times on write slow down.
 
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You posted in another forum, and I answered you there.

The 2020 MBP is "too lightweight" (in terms of RAM and CPU power) for what you're trying to do with it.

It IS time for an upgrade.
This time, MAKE SURE you get enough RAM and a large enough SSD.

I'd recommend 32gb of RAM (minimum of 24).
Also, 1tb SSD.

Buy from Apple's online refurbished store if you want to save $$$.

M5 MBP is available now.
The m4pro MBPs will be coming early next year.
 
raythompsontn said:
That may have true with spinning rust. A SSD is the same speed regardless of of free space. There is no seek or rotational latency increase.
Click to expand...
As already stated by @whitby SSDs are susceptible to write performance degradation as the drive reaches capacity.

At a 10,000 foot level it's because an SSD, unlike a spinning hard drive, cannot update existing data. Changes to a file are written to new space on the drive, pointers updated to reflect the new location, and the old space marked as available. At some point this used, but available space, is erased making it available for writing once again.

If free space is at a premium updates that need to be written have to wait as the drive erases available blocks, a time consuming process in computing time. Keeping sufficient free space means updates can immediately be written and the reclamation (i.e. erasing) of the old blocks can occur when the drive is not busy.

At least that's how I understand it.
 
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spacecadet1968 said:
Hi,

I’ve got a 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 1.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5 and 8 GB of 2133 MHz LPDDR3 RAM.

About a year ago, I started noticing the machine was running really slow when using Lightroom, InDesign, Photoshop, and especially Premiere Pro. In the past 6 months, I’ve noticed the fan starts up whenever I have a couple of apps open, even Safari or Firefox.

I’ve tried a clean install, but it’s still running slowly. I’m wondering if this computer has outlived its useful life. I realize it’s going on 6 years old, and it’s got an Intel processor. I'd really appreciate any thoughts.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Could it be the cpu needs new thermal paste applied?

Perhaps the fans are clogged with dust and debris and are unable to properly move air like they used to, causing heat build-up followed by the fan motors spinning in rather futile fashion?

If you're not accustomed to opening computers for thermal paste or fan cleaning it would be better to send it out for repair, as Macbooks have so many tiny and delicate parts. The batteries are glued in ... quite annoying.

Premiere Pro will make pretty much every computer in the world kick the fans on and get hot especially during export, not much you can really do about that with any computer. Personally I find Final Cut and iMovie to be nicer than Premiere.

What OS are you running? The newer OSes run slower. You may want to consider downgrading to a prior OS for a speed boost. There are many complaints that macOS 26 Tahoe is a total dog when it comes to speed on older machines. I believe your 2020 intel MBP supports Macos 10.15 (Catalina) through Tahoe. The primary downside to using the older OS versions is they do not have the latest security updates. Regardless, downgrading may be a good solution.

If you downgrade, be sure to disable automatic updates in Preferences.

Make sure the Mac in on a hard surface so there's an air gap underneath it for cooling. Are all four rubber footies still in place? They lift the Mac up enough to allow for airflow underneath. You could prop the rear of the mac up with a pencil or something if need be.

Laps are typically a bad place for a laptop since your lap doesn't allow for proper cooling.

Also make sure the computer isn't running in energy conservation mode as that'll slow it down.

Make sure there's enough free space on your ssd/hdd for the computer to use as swap space.

Use Activity Monitor app on mac to check how much memory pressure there is when you're running one or more applications. You'll want the memory pressure to be in the green or yellow zone, not red. For a demanding app you might want to consider running it alone or with just one or two other medium or small apps to reduce memory pressure and/or cpu load. You can also monitor cpu load in Activity Monitor.
 
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Bigwaff said:
What version of macOS is installed? How much free space is left on internal storage? Have you tried removing the bottom panel and cleaning out the dust collected over the years?
Click to expand...
Hi @Bigwaff, It's running Sequoia, and on a 1TB drive it's got 400 GB left. Haven't tried removing the bottom panel, but it a good idea. Thanks!
 
Hey all - thanks for your advice and answers - I guess I've been putting off the inevitable. Time to upgrade, and take this one behind the barn and put it out of it's misery. Or donate it somewhere, I guess.
Thanks!
 
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