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Comment by xmpirate | Hacker News Reader

I feel the same applies to Macbook as well. I've a Macbook Pro Retina 13 inch, early 2015 at a battery cycle count of 1001. From the last few weeks, the system is terribly slow. I randomly see the fan speed going berserk. :/

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Dust-clogged fans and degraded thermal paste can also be a factor, particularly after 3 years.

iFixit guide for removing your heatsink: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+Disp...

My favorite thermal paste: https://noctua.at/en/nt-h1.html

Might be something wrong with your SMC or thermal throttling going on. Either way I'd suggest resetting the SMC and if that doesn't fix it check out Activity Monitor to see what's wrong.

Nothing really. I did reset the SMC couple of times and also check the Activity Monitor every time the fan speed increases, but to no avail.

Did you try running the hardware test? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257

I had a old Air which ran very slowly and fans spinning like crazy due to a issue with the cable from the keyboard/touchpad. Apparently if the SMC does not get proper signals it will go into a "failsafe" where things work but slowly.

Probably not the same issue, but just a little anecdote on a similar symptoms caused by different issues so that nobody gets tunnel vision on the battery, which might very well be the cause in this case.

Could be dirty. Google a cleaning guide for your model, the fans get all sorts of dusty and it causes thermal issues.

Looks like I need to replace the battery as it's near it's end of life - https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT201585

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