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Hi there folks.
I’ve had a 2019 2.3GHz i9 MacBook Pro for a few years and, despite this vintage of Apple laptops being infamous for thermal constraints, it has served me well these few years (mainly for using >50 instantiations of virtual instrument plugins within Logic Pro).
Over the past few months I noticed odd behaviour once in a while, such as laggy window resizing, low framerate on the (simplest of) screensaver — and inexplicable audio overloads in (my fully optimized set, maximum buffer setting etc.) Logic Pro.
It’s gotten quite worse in recent weeks. Using the Intel Power Gadget I can see that if the temperature approaches 90c the chip throttles way WAY down (I know its cutoff is 100c). If I don’t relieve the pressure both the core requests (which go as high as 4GHz!) and operating frequency will tank right down to 1GHz. If I relieve the pressure on the CPU, it will recover after a little while.
I installed two utilities to try and lighten the load. One enables full-blast fan operation all the time. The other toggles Turbo Boost. With that off the mission-critical work I do in Logic operates perfectly fine within the 2.3GHz ceiling (Logic loves cores over clock rate), with the i9 ignoring the insane demands of the core requests. Temperature ranges between 60 and 80c.
And, okay, the poor thing is six years old and has never been taken in for a cleaning. And the original thermal paste is probably in cinders.
At present I’m in the middle of three commissions and don’t have time to take it into a shop.
But here’s a weird concern — why I’m posting here. Even If the laptop sits idle for a period of time, the CPU gets “locked” at 1GHz. No matter how cool it is (<60c), it won’t provide higher clock speed. Only a shutdown brings it back to baseline.
THIS behaviour got me wondering if the CPU is somehow damaged.
Is it? Is it fried? Will a fan etc. cleaning and new thermal paste bring this old girl back up to speed… or am I screwed??
Thanks for any insights!
I’ve had a 2019 2.3GHz i9 MacBook Pro for a few years and, despite this vintage of Apple laptops being infamous for thermal constraints, it has served me well these few years (mainly for using >50 instantiations of virtual instrument plugins within Logic Pro).
Over the past few months I noticed odd behaviour once in a while, such as laggy window resizing, low framerate on the (simplest of) screensaver — and inexplicable audio overloads in (my fully optimized set, maximum buffer setting etc.) Logic Pro.
It’s gotten quite worse in recent weeks. Using the Intel Power Gadget I can see that if the temperature approaches 90c the chip throttles way WAY down (I know its cutoff is 100c). If I don’t relieve the pressure both the core requests (which go as high as 4GHz!) and operating frequency will tank right down to 1GHz. If I relieve the pressure on the CPU, it will recover after a little while.
I installed two utilities to try and lighten the load. One enables full-blast fan operation all the time. The other toggles Turbo Boost. With that off the mission-critical work I do in Logic operates perfectly fine within the 2.3GHz ceiling (Logic loves cores over clock rate), with the i9 ignoring the insane demands of the core requests. Temperature ranges between 60 and 80c.
And, okay, the poor thing is six years old and has never been taken in for a cleaning. And the original thermal paste is probably in cinders.
At present I’m in the middle of three commissions and don’t have time to take it into a shop.
But here’s a weird concern — why I’m posting here. Even If the laptop sits idle for a period of time, the CPU gets “locked” at 1GHz. No matter how cool it is (<60c), it won’t provide higher clock speed. Only a shutdown brings it back to baseline.
THIS behaviour got me wondering if the CPU is somehow damaged.
Is it? Is it fried? Will a fan etc. cleaning and new thermal paste bring this old girl back up to speed… or am I screwed??
Thanks for any insights!
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