Chosen Solution
I have a Macbook Air (2013). It is overheating and shutting down. It seems to shut down at around 100+ degrees C on the cpu (using magican poster to track it, but don’t know how to generate a temperature log file to see the exact temp at shutdown). It gets there when the cpu operates at around 50-60% (again not sure about this because I don’t have a log). I’ve opened it up and cleaned the fan and exhaust, and there doesn’t seem to be a problem with the thermal paste (the paste that is exposed is still soft, and the exhaust feels as hot as the area around the CPU when rubbing in a high load). It also seems to run well by forcing the fan to run at max rpm (6500) but don’t want to do that long term. I’m told that macs are supposed to be able to handle temperature well on their own so I’m wondering whether there’s some other reason, either that the cpu is heating excessively or that the fan isn’t running at the speed necessary to keep it cool. Any thoughts on this? Or should I just manually increase fan speed whenever I have a high cpu load?
First of all, a cpu temperature above 100 degrees is not normal!
I think a heat sensor is broken, because you mention that your cpu is fine when the fans go on max speed. The computer is supposed to run those fans at max speed automatically if the cpu get’s a high load (what increases the temperature). Another thing that could be a problem too is that your airflow isn’t that good anymore. It maybe doesn’t seem like it, but maybe one of your fans (or fan motor) is damaged?
