Mid 2012 MacBook Pro 13" spiking to 103c when doing anything intensive.

[Jhonjhon236]

Howdy,
I have a mid 2012 MacBook Pro 13" unibody (pre retina) and when doing anything intensive it almost immediately spikes to 103c and throttles the CPU. I have replaced the thermal paste which made little to no difference. Everything is clean and no dust is found. The fan seems to be working fine and it maxes out to 6100rpm so I don't think it is a fan issue and it also outputs a lot of hot air. Does anyone have any idea of what the issue is? Thanks in advance.

 

[rovostrov]

Howdy,
I have a mid 2012 MacBook Pro 13" unibody (pre retina) and when doing anything intensive it almost immediately spikes to 103c and throttles the CPU. I have replaced the thermal paste which made little to no difference. Everything is clean and no dust is found. The fan seems to be working fine and it maxes out to 6100rpm so I don't think it is a fan issue and it also outputs a lot of hot air. Does anyone have any idea of what the issue is? Thanks in advance.

Have you tried a PRAM & SMC reset? What OS are you running and do you have a SSD installed?

 

[Jhonjhon236]

Have you tried a PRAM & SMC reset? What OS are you running and do you have a SSD installed?

Tried both NVRAM and SMC reset countless times. It happens under Windows 10, macOS Catalina, and Ventura. I do have an SSD. Under normal use such as web browsing it rarely exceeds 80c.

 

[DarkPremiumCho]

I experienced the same issue on my 2012 MacBook Pro Retina. I had to downgrade to High Sierra which is the last macOS that does not spin up the fans to 8000RPM. It just doesn't have sufficient compute power to run an unsupported, newer OS I guess.

 

[tomcatrr]

I experienced the same issue on my 2012 MacBook Pro Retina. I had to downgrade to High Sierra which is the last macOS that does not spin up the fans to 8000RPM. It just doesn't have sufficient compute power to run an unsupported, newer OS I guess.

Is not Catalina the last macOS?

 

[avz]

Something is not quite right here. Are you sure that your Mac has not been hijacked by some extracurricular activities?
I replaced a thermal compound in mine in 2018 and use it in a clamshell mode and I don't see any extreme temperatures.

 

[DarkPremiumCho]

Is not Catalina the last macOS?

Yes, sorry, I mean on my machine, High Sierra is the last usable macOS. Mojave and newer will spin the fans to 6000-8000 RMP even on light load. That was unbearable for me.

 

[Jhonjhon236]

Something is not quite right here. Are you sure that your Mac has not been hijacked by some extracurricular activities?
I replaced a thermal compound in mine in 2018 and use it in a clamshell mode and I don't see any extreme temperatures.

View attachment 2188526

Yep. Have installed macOS probably 5 times with zeroing out the drive and Windows even more so unless something is rooted into the firmware I don’t think anything could survive that. My late 2012 Mac mini with almost identical specs only gets up to around 85°C on the same load. And it has the stock paste from 2014.

 

[tomcatrr]

My Wife 2012 rMBp, running a fresh Catalina install and new thermal past, was also running hot...
Even after spotlight indexing???

I make the Monterey upgrade and he get a lot worse.
But, since OCLP 0.6.3, she says,that he is running not so hot.

I recently found, that if I turn off "MS Onedrive" he runs a lot more fresh.