MBP 2018 i9 fans going when idle

[Gr1f]

over the past while I've noticed the fans on my MBP are going off constantly. 5500-6000rpm when nothing specific is open or running bar Cloud services etc. They turn on for 30min or so then go idle. Probably started with Venture but can't be sure.

Finder is using 65% CPU
WindowServer ~20% CPU
Load average is about 2.9

Anyone else experience this? Worth trying a fresh OS install?

 

[ignatius345]

Is there a chance it's gotten dusty inside? That will totally do it.

 

[Gr1f]

Is there a chance it's gotten dusty inside? That will totally do it.

Hmmm... never thought of that.

 

[iMacDragon]

Finder really shouldn't be using that much when not doing anything, that'll be enough to ramp up fans a bit on an intel.

I've noticed it occasionally getting stuck into such usage, restart it usually seems to help for a while, but not always.

 

[ignatius345]

Hmmm... never thought of that.

If the fans are kicking in disproportionately to what Activity Monitor says is happening, could be worth looking into.

Back some years, I blew an ungodly amount of dust and cat hair out of my old black polycarbonite MacBook -- it was overheating a ton, and that totally fixed it. Well, the bottom still got hot as hell, but that was "normal" for that thing.

That said, if your Finder is routinely running that hard, something might be up there.

Good troubleshooting step is to make a brand new user account, restart, and then log into only that vanilla account and see how things go. (Don't bother signing into iCloud there because it will only slow things down as it syncs and whatnot).

 

[Gr1f]

created a new user account and all is quiet on the western front.