MacBook Pro 2015 13' Performance Drop
I own a MacBook Pro 2015 13’ with i5-5257U 2.7GHz CPU. Recently I found out that my MB won’t use more than 30 Watts of power even if it is connected to AC. When running Cinebench R23 or GFX Bench GL, the computer total power consumption keeps at around 30 Watts, sometime it peaks to 35W but only for 1 or 2 seconds.
My old battery was replaced by Apple with original one back in Nov. 2019, and the new battery is in pretty good shape, 99% battery health reported by CoconutBattery.
I cleaned the internal of the MB and reapplied the thermal paste with MX-4, the temperature during Cinebench R23 or any other benchmarking software stays around 80 Degree C with about 70% fan speed. This is far below the limit of thermal throttle. Score of Cinebench R23 around 1800 points. The GPU won’t go above 600 MHz under any situation, only in GFXBench GL it goes to 850MHz. But the internal Iris GPU is rated by Intel up to 1050MHz. CPU power draw during Cinebench is around 18 to 20 Watts maximum, significantly lower than data published by Intel (28W or aTDP 23W). In this review article the author even got 32Watts consistent power draw of the CPU alone (under Energy Management-Power consumption)https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacB....
I tried reset SMC, NVRAM and PRAM, nothing changed. Power supply is 60W, works normally, I don’t have other device to try it on so I can’t say if it is ok or damaged. I also tried to unplug the battery and PSU for 30 Mins to reset any possible chip.
I was running MacOS Big Sur 11.2.3 but it was too laggy so I downgraded, formatted the SSD and did a clean install of High Sierra with no TimeMachine involved because I stored my data on an external drive. On HighSierra is is a bit better than Big Sur.
I ran Apple Diagnostics, nothing found.
I also see no performance difference when the MB is running on battery or PSU (same power draw and co.), so I assume it could be a software issue limiting the performance of the MacBook? That the machine stuck at battery aka. low performance mode even it is connected to AC?
Could that be a faulty or failing Power Supply which caused those issues? Or failing DC-In board?
Or it is on software Level? .kext or SpeedStep issue? Firmware issue? Boot-Rom of my MBP is 426.0.0.0.0, SMC Firmware is 2.28f7.
It is sometimes painful to have that low performance, I would even get lags when I’m entering or exiting full-screen on YouTube or Netflix.
Anyone has an Idea how to solve this issue?
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댓글 3개
What is the size of your SSD and how much free space do you have no it? Also what is the SSD make and model.
Dan 의
@danj
I have 500GB of WD SN550 installed with 470GB free.Original SSD was a 128GB one and because I have all of my data on external drive I had also 85G+ free space. I still have Big Sur on my 128G SSD and I installed HighSierra on the SN550 so if I need I could swap the drive to get to BigSur.
Micron Hegerlich 의
Little update:
A friend of mine who works in a repair shop checked my MBP and he suggested that could be a CPU soldering issue. Because at his workplace there’s a BGA Plattform and he do this quite much, he re-soldered the CPU for me. As he already disassembled the MB, I also let him do a RAM upgrade, changing 4x2GB modules to 4x4GB, although some resistances on the MB have to be removed. For roughly 120 USD and some beer I am getting 16GB ram and the performance like before. The MBP could definitely still last a couple of years.
Greetings.
Micron Hegerlich 의