CoreGuardthe export that only looks scary
healthy — only looks scaryA long Final Cut Pro export drives the CPU to ~700%, the die to 96°C, and the fans to a full 6,200 RPM. This is a recorded replay of a completely healthy Mac doing exactly what it's built to do — and how to tell that apart from trouble.
a long Final Cut export · hot by design · ~50 min real time
cpu temperature · full recording
- 14:07observedexport starts — Final Cut Pro climbs to ~700% CPU (all performance cores)
- 14:15observedCPU die reaches 96°C and plateaus
- 14:20observedfans at maximum: 6,200 RPM
- 14:26interpretedhot ≠ broken: a sustained export is SUPPOSED to look like this; the chip holds its design limit while kernel_task trims clocks a touch
- 14:48observedexport finishes — CPU load collapses
- 14:55interpretedback under 60°C within minutes. The question is never "did it get hot" — it is "did it recover". It did.
hot ≠ broken: a sustained export is SUPPOSED to look like this; the chip holds its design limit while kernel_task trims clocks a touch
Drag the slider to replay the whole incident. Every value here is a recorded, hand-authored example — not telemetry from a real Mac.
Recorded timeline — 14:07 export starts — Final Cut Pro climbs to ~700% CPU (all performance cores) · 14:15 CPU die reaches 96°C and plateaus · 14:20 fans at maximum: 6,200 RPM · 14:26 hot ≠ broken: a sustained export is SUPPOSED to look like this; the chip holds its design limit while kernel_task trims clocks a touch · 14:48 export finishes — CPU load collapses · 14:55 back under 60°C within minutes. The question is never "did it get hot" — it is "did it recover". It did.
1 What you'd observe
The export starts and Final Cut Pro climbs to ~700% CPU — every performance core busy. The CPU die reaches 96°C and plateaus; the fans hit their ceiling near 6,200 RPM. Every number is “high.” Read in isolation, this is indistinguishable from a thermal emergency.
2 What it means
Hot ≠ broken. A sustained export is supposed to look like this: the chip holds at its designed thermal limit and delivers full performance while kernel_task trims clocks a touch to keep it there. That plateau near 96°C isn't damage — it's the safety system working exactly as intended. CoreGuard reports the numbers and the context instead of raising an alarm that isn't warranted.
3 How it resolves
When the export finishes, the load collapses and the die is back under 60°C within minutes. The question is never “did it get hot” — chips are built to get hot. The question is “did it recover.” It did. That single distinction is the difference between panic and a shrug.
The full dataset. Every reading in this recorder — temperatures, fan RPM, the process series, and the event log — as one sanitized JSON file. It's a hand-authored example, not telemetry; reuse it freely.
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