Chosen Solution

Hey guys, my machine: rMBP 15’’ late 2013 (2,6 i7; 16GB Ram; Geforce 750M 2GB, 500GB SSD) with macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 (clean install) The main problem: The fan goes nuts without any obvious reason (at least to me) just when I plug in an external display. This wasn’t the case a year ago, but gradually became worse over the time. My setup and usage hasn’t changed, though. I’m a webdeveloper and use the following applications on a daily basis: Safari, Chrome, Mail, Evernote, Slack, Trello, Mamp Pro, Sublime Text 3, Dash, CodeKit – Dropbox, BetterTouchTool, Bartender 3, Alfred 3 For a couple of years now the system get’s annoyingly hot. And when with a second screen (full hd) the fan kicks in, although the CPU activity is lower than 15% Some more background: On average the machine goes 7-9 hours a day for the last 5 years.Roughly half a year ago I made a clean install of High SierraI regularly open the back and clean out the dust with a lil camera air blower450gig of the 500gig HD is full (but he didn’t care about that for years..)About 2 years ago I made a PRAM reset Wild guesses on what’s causing the heat-issue: Broken battery?Processor heat conductive paste worn off?operating system sucks up more performance? (please nooh..)SSD drive worn out? I don’t want to try every trick I find on the web, I rather get advice from you guys for my specific situation. My questions:

  1. Is it worth letting a diagnostic tool run over the Mac to see if the hardware is okay?
  2. Could the hardware just be worn out like this?
  3. How would you suggest I proceed in order to reduce the heat (remember.. the CPU activity is low when the machine is hot) Looking at the touch bar, butterfly keys and immense raise in price, I find these new MacBooks really unattractive. But leaving macOS is not an option for me, and a Hackintosh Laptop is just too unsafe. I hope to use this beauty of a laptop for at least 2 more years. Thank you very much, René EDIT: Here is the coconutbattery

Here is the DriveDX Report

EDIT2: Here the TG Pro screenshot

Update (08/01/2018) As you asked: I added a screenshot from TG Pro; to me the temperature doens’t look so high. Correct me if I’m wrong. (Why are there 2SSDs? One A, one B?) – I now have 80gigs free space (424/500) and still the machine is hot, fan is active and the overall performance doesn’t feel as responsive and smooth– I am making a rough spring cleaning right now, although it’s not so easy, because I’m pretty organized already; I don’t like my current external drive solution (normal SATA3 hdds with an usb docking station) but will make room for at least 125gigs of free space. I will see how it performs then; but are you still positive that a new SSD is the solution to the problem? I just don’t see why else hardware should degrade to this point; .. or is it really the software that became this much more demanding over the years? .. but then again: my cpu isn’t really working, neither is the GPU.. , I guess? So why the !&&* is it getting so hot :D

How many times was the logic board removed to clean dust from fans and heatsink and replace thermal paste ? With a 7/9 hrs a day of professional use, for 5 years, I’d have recommended that a couple of times to be on the safe side ;)

While cleaning the dust build up is important I don’t think thats it. And as your CPU is not running heavy re-pasting the thermal paste is not called for here either. I’m suspecting you likely have two issues: The first we can check out using CoconutBattery as I’ve stated above. Given the systems age you may need a new battery. Once we know its health we can see how much more life you have in it. The other is the system has something running hot this is likely your SSD drive. As you have such a full drive I think you’re SSD is going nuts trying to even-out its wear. Apple does not over provision their SSD’s very well so you end up needing to replace them more often when you are running tight on space as you’ve been doing. A 500 GB drive needs about a quarter left free for the OS to use for virtual RAM and paging. That means you need around 125 GB free. So what happens here is the 50 GB of space gets over worn. You should be able to see this by using two methods. The first is seeing the temp of the drive using TG Pro. The next method is to use a SSD evaluation tool like: DriveDX Using the “SSD Lifetime Left Indicator” function. I would strongly recommend you make a full backup of your SSD using TimeMachine then using an external USB thumb drive reformat the drive and re-install the OS. Here’s how to setup the OS installer drive: How to create a bootable macOS Sierra installer drive I would stick with Sierra as your drive is SATA based. If you think you want to replace it (it may need it). Here is a good reference for the Apple SSD’s The Ultimate Guide to Apple’s Proprietary SSDs Your system is a Generation 3 SSD.