2020 macbook air slowdown scandal?!
Discussion
OK maybe not but it could be...
i have a 2020 macbook air, one of the final intel models. It's a 16Gb quad core i7 model. It's just started running like s
t, seems very hot a lot of the time, fans going crazy constantly.
Nothing in activity monitor that looks to be causing it, although I do use Chrome browser so quite often chrome and windowserver are up top of CPU and RAM usage.
I've taken the back off of it and gently hoovered the fan and the innards for dust, restored macos with a fresh copy, and have had it into the apple certified repair shop and threw £95 it for them to do detailed diagnostics, check components, blitz the thing and i had to set it back up from scratch from a timemachine backup. The found nothing wrong with the hardware.
It's still doing the exact same thing.
I kind of think it might be something in the install, or maybe software causing it... i have like 7 tabs open in chrome there is no way it would kill a machine like this surely? Other than that I am hardly running anything. Calendar, notes, messages, whatsapp and signal and that's pretty much it.
Any ideas?
I have a new mac air M3 coming next week so it's kind of academic but would be really interested to know what i could be doing wrong or how to establish the problem so i don't do the same thing again with the new one!
cheers
i have a 2020 macbook air, one of the final intel models. It's a 16Gb quad core i7 model. It's just started running like s
t, seems very hot a lot of the time, fans going crazy constantly. Nothing in activity monitor that looks to be causing it, although I do use Chrome browser so quite often chrome and windowserver are up top of CPU and RAM usage.
I've taken the back off of it and gently hoovered the fan and the innards for dust, restored macos with a fresh copy, and have had it into the apple certified repair shop and threw £95 it for them to do detailed diagnostics, check components, blitz the thing and i had to set it back up from scratch from a timemachine backup. The found nothing wrong with the hardware.
It's still doing the exact same thing.
I kind of think it might be something in the install, or maybe software causing it... i have like 7 tabs open in chrome there is no way it would kill a machine like this surely? Other than that I am hardly running anything. Calendar, notes, messages, whatsapp and signal and that's pretty much it.
Any ideas?
I have a new mac air M3 coming next week so it's kind of academic but would be really interested to know what i could be doing wrong or how to establish the problem so i don't do the same thing again with the new one!
cheers
Whataguy said:
I've found Chrome can be a big user of resources.
If possible uninstall and try safari or one of the others to see if that's the case. I still have Chrome as a backup on mine but it's not running in the background.
yea it's definitely on my mind that I need to migrate away from chrome but it's going to be a PITA as all my passwords are in google password manager. I still don't think that Chrome on its own with 5-7 tabs would be causing it surely... i could be wrong thoughIf possible uninstall and try safari or one of the others to see if that's the case. I still have Chrome as a backup on mine but it's not running in the background.
Blown2CV said:
yea it's definitely on my mind that I need to migrate away from chrome but it's going to be a PITA as all my passwords are in google password manager. I still don't think that Chrome on its own with 5-7 tabs would be causing it surely... i could be wrong though
It just needs to be one tab with a script or advert that is written inefficiently so it keep a core pegged. Have a look in Chrome's task manager.Kind of obvious question - if you leave it with nothing running, is it OK? If so, what changes to make it get unhappy?
xeny said:
Blown2CV said:
yea it's definitely on my mind that I need to migrate away from chrome but it's going to be a PITA as all my passwords are in google password manager. I still don't think that Chrome on its own with 5-7 tabs would be causing it surely... i could be wrong though
It just needs to be one tab with a script or advert that is written inefficiently so it keep a core pegged. Have a look in Chrome's task manager.Kind of obvious question - if you leave it with nothing running, is it OK? If so, what changes to make it get unhappy?
the last of the intel models weren't very good for a start, and now that developers have shifted their attention to apple silicon, the optimisation of intel based chips running macOS will get worse. I had an intel 2020 MacBook Pro for work, and even with minimal build of safari and MS office apps, you could fry an egg on it.
Move to a M chip.
I had a 2020 16GB MBP with the last intel chips. Swapped over to the M2 8GB Air while prices were still quite high on the old intel chips, and it's a night and day change. Those old intel machines are really awful, even when new the fans would start going on max when using excel.
I had a 2020 16GB MBP with the last intel chips. Swapped over to the M2 8GB Air while prices were still quite high on the old intel chips, and it's a night and day change. Those old intel machines are really awful, even when new the fans would start going on max when using excel.
Jiebo said:
Move to a M chip.
I had a 2020 16GB MBP with the last intel chips. Swapped over to the M2 8GB Air while prices were still quite high on the old intel chips, and it's a night and day change. Those old intel machines are really awful, even when new the fans would start going on max when using excel.
M3 air arrives wedsI had a 2020 16GB MBP with the last intel chips. Swapped over to the M2 8GB Air while prices were still quite high on the old intel chips, and it's a night and day change. Those old intel machines are really awful, even when new the fans would start going on max when using excel.
Blown2CV said:
CorradoTDI said:
Have you spoken to Apple directly? they would look at it and run the diags for free!
yep, exhausted all of their abilities fairly quickly.There is a chance it could be something simple like RAM or the SSD drive but the diags should have picked up on this and the RAM is most likely built into the board - if not, it might be worth a swap out though,
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