6000 RPM fans while idle, normal?

Question

Hello friends,
A few days ago my MBP started spinning up the fans like I was doing something really intensive.  Only I wasn't.  I installed smcfancontrol and it reported both fans at close to 6000rpm (5899 is the highest I've seen it) and a cpu temp of 75 c - 85 c while idle.  iStat Pro reported the same. No apps running after a reboot and the fans instantly spin up and the cpu temp hovers around the 80 mark.  I'm of the understanding that 50 - 70 is considered normal with the fans in the 2000-3000 rpm range. Yes?
Heres a screen cap with only Activity Monitor running. You can see the most intensive process is 3.5% and the temp and fan speed can be seen in the upper right.
Never had any issues before, just out of the blue.  I did swap out the HDD a few months ago, but the problem JUST started.
I've reset the SMC per these instructions: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964?viewlocale=en_US  but didn't change anything.
Thanks as always for any insight.

Answer 1

The simplest (but not quickest) route would be a reinstall of the OS.
Although, if the problem doesn't appear in safe mode, you could check the differences between safe mode and a normal bootup:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564
The most important things are:
- disables all login and startup items (you could test that by adding another account)
- loads only required kernel extensions
That last one is somewhat trickier. On the commandline, you can check what 3rd party kernel extensions are installed, check out this article:
http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/03/list-all-third-party-kernel-extensions/
For instance, when I type the command mentioned in the article, I get the following output (edited for brevity):
$ kextstat | grep -v com.apple
Index Refs ... Size       Wired      Name (Version)
  114    0 ... 0xc000     0xc000     com.parallels.kext.prl_netbridge
  115    0 ... 0x4000     0x4000     com.parallels.kext.prl_vnic
  118    0 ... 0x7000     0x7000     com.parallels.kext.prl_usb_connect
  119    0 ... 0x4e000    0x4e000    com.parallels.kext.prl_hypervisor
  120    0 ... 0x4000     0x4000     com.parallels.kext.prl_hid_hook
  122    0 ... 0x1a000    0x1a000    org.pqrs.driver.KeyRemap4MacBook
  123    0 ... 0x4000     0x4000     org.pqrs.driver.PCKeyboardHack
$
So obviously, I have Parallels installed, as well as KeyRemap4MacBook and PCKeyboardHack. Removing the software for these 3rd party kernel extensions could perhaps solve your problem.