I have a 2014 Macbook Air I use for school, but it has a MAJOR heat issue and the fans disturb everyone in my class. My teacher asks me to shut them off, so I do, but then it gets REALLY slow due to the thermal throttling to keep it from overheating. Can anyone tell me how to fix this?? I have tried: SMC reset, PRAM reset, undervolting (i have an intel haswell), overclocking, reinstalling MacOS, cleaning the fan, replacing the battery, wiping the computer (twice), and trying all sorts of software to help the fans. Help would be greatly appreciated because the next thing on my list is paying 180$ for it to be torn down and inspected.
Make sure you've gotten rid of the overclock and whatever software you tried. If you've got several programs open, and/or a lot of chrome tabs that can be an issue too. Use Task Manager (or whatever the apple equivalent is) to see what's hogging resources as well. I'm assuming this is an issue pertaining to the fan itself or maybe the thermal pad (both are 7 years old at this point). On most laptops these are relatively easy things to replace, and while I've never disassembled a MacBook before, $180 seems like way too much for such a job. If you're unwilling to buy the proper tools and follow an iFixit teardown tutorial to fix it yourself, maybe go to different repair shops and see if you can get a better price.
I have dissasembled part of my mac before, and there seems to be no problem with the fan. I think this is an issue with the GPU, whenever I do something that uses the GPU, the computer goes from 135 degrees Fahrenheit to 203 degrees in a matter of seconds. But what in the GPU would be causing the computer to heat up 70 degrees in thirty seconds?
You should replace the thermal compound on the GPU/CPU, if the MacBook is from 2014 i can almost guarantee that the thermal paste is dried out and no longer makes good contact with the heatsink. Get som Arctic MX-4 or other non-conductive thermal compound.
That seems like a good idea, I have heard about thermal paste and have never replaced it on any computer I've had
