Gradually over the last couple years I've felt my macbook was slowing down. I'd be in an ableton session and start getting glitches/dropouts/lag and the fan going absolutely hammer way earlier than I used to. Chalked it up to both getting old and/or using more CPU heavy stuff than I used to. I would always ask people, and I'd tell them my current specs, and they'd say I should be able to do what I want to do just fine with it, but I couldn't, very frustrating.
I was asking someone about this and they told me to get SMC fan control and check the temp while in a heavy duty project. I did this, and god damn, I was reaching ridiculous temperatures, like nearly 90C and maxed out fan speed. They asked if I had ever cleaned my fan, and I hadn't since I got it 4.5 years ago, since when macs (and probably all laptops) can't cool themselves, they throttle the cpu and turn down performance, thus lag n other boolshyt.
So I opened my mac up and lo behold, 4.5 years of dust from shitty student housing and cat/dog hair was crammed in the fan.
I removed the fan, cleaned it with compressed air and alcohol as well as the area underneath it which was even more crammed with shit.
Put it all back together squeaky clean, and voila, big projects my temperature is like 15C cooler (~mid 70's) and runs just fine, fan is much quieter and doesn't ever go nearly as ham as it used to.
This was a huge relief, the anxiety of having to buy and setup with all my stuff new computer and the frustration of a laggy daw was driving me insane and really fucked with my work flow always playing with buffer sizes and CPU load. Not to mention its very satisfying cleaning all that crap out of there lol.
Submitted January 01, 2017 at 01:40AM by distortionwhat https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/5ldkjp/macbook_users_if_youre_experiencing_lag_in_your/?utm_source=ifttt
Javier Rodriguez
Saturday, December 31, 2016