Is this too hot?

I

illuminate

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 24, 2007
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I have the 15in 2.52ghz i5 macbook pro. Whenever I render a video using Final Cut Pro or iMovie it uses between 50% - 75% of my processor. Today, I was using Handbrake to convert a video just for my itouch. I was watching the temps go up and was okay with it around 80-85c, but then I saw this:
temp.png


I know it is a laptop and will get hot when doing something like that, but is 95c+ a little excessive and hot?

Thanks!
 
Not for a Crapbook Pro.

If you want it to run cooler (and you really do), try the following:

Best option - waft cool air across the keyboard, and never close the machine even if you have it hooked up to an external monitor. How I have mine set up especially during summer is a small desk fan positioned on the optical side, with the Crapbook sitting on a Griffin stand.

Because the unibody casing now transmits somewhat less heat to the outside than the original Flamebook Pros, they are more dependent in the actual cooling hardware instead of passive radiation they used to be - so coolers are slightly less effective, although forced-air coolers will not be ineffective in taking temps down a notch.
 
WTF?

That is so freaking hot! Are mobile i5s okay at those temps? TJMax is 105 on the Intel site.

I get concerned when I see 60s with a P8400. I would be worried, unless it is a common occurrence. I remember reading somewhere that macbook can run hot, though it was as while back.
 
Ronco said:
Not for a Crapbook Pro.

If you want it to run cooler (and you really do), try the following:

Best option - waft cool air across the keyboard, and never close the machine even if you have it hooked up to an external monitor. How I have mine set up especially during summer is a small desk fan positioned on the optical side, with the Crapbook sitting on a Griffin stand.

Because the unibody casing now transmits somewhat less heat to the outside than the original Flamebook Pros, they are more dependent in the actual cooling hardware instead of passive radiation they used to be - so coolers are slightly less effective, although forced-air coolers will not be ineffective in taking temps down a notch.
Click to expand...

Someones a mac hater. LoL.
 
That seems a little too hot to me. I wonder what the threshold is for it to auto-shutoff. I could understand 80-90 deg celcius, but over 100 seems a little too much.
 
Koko56 said:
WTF?

That is so freaking hot! Are mobile i5s okay at those temps? TJMax is 105 on the Intel site.

I get concerned when I see 60s with a P8400. I would be worried, unless it is a common occurrence. I remember reading somewhere that macbook can run hot, though it was as while back.
Click to expand...

Hasn't changed (running too hot).

As a comparison, the highest-spec Precision M6500s run at 75C (CPU/GPU) pegged to the firewall. That's for a much more potent GPU, plus two more cores. And what's more, the mobile workstation is a heck of a lot quieter under load. Under the same ambients that I tested in, with the same fully-pegged sustained load I could have theoretically boiled water on both the GPU and CPU of the Crapbook with it screaming away in a rather vain attempt to stave off the heat. Which is why I use external cooling when I think the ambients / load might be coming up to that level.
 
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Juts a "from the top of my head" thing here, but - could not Apple take advantage of the solid metal casing to provide better cooling? Just.. I dono - make some fins and whack an extra fan inside?

Do all of the MacBooks run this hot - Pro or not?

They are nice machines, but that temp is just concerning.
 
I have temps like that as well. The Apple Genius said it was normal and I was on my way.

:(
 
Koko56 said:
Juts a "from the top of my head" thing here, but - could not Apple take advantage of the solid metal casing to provide better cooling? Just.. I dono - make some fins and whack an extra fan inside?

Do all of the MacBooks run this hot - Pro or not?

They are nice machines, but that temp is just concerning.
Click to expand...

I don't know about the Macbooks.

No room for another fan - there are already two in there.

Passing more heat from internals to case = lawsuits.

They're engineered to look good. Everything else can go hang because their fanbase will tell you only the lowest temps it registers, the fastest performance it ideally benches, and the highest battery life possibly achievable regardless of reality.
 
Ronco said:
I don't know about the Macbooks.

No room for another fan - there are already two in there.

Passing more heat from internals to case = lawsuits.

They're engineered to look good. Everything else can go hang because their fanbase will tell you only the lowest temps it registers, the fastest performance it ideally benches, and the highest battery life possibly achievable regardless of reality.
Click to expand...

What the?
Surely it would not get THAT hot to burn people? Of course if you don't alow it to go around the whole case, maybe, but if you try to spread it.

I think I recall reading something about somebody suing... somebody - a laptop related thing.
 
Koko56 said:
What the?
Surely it would not get THAT hot to burn people? Of course if you don't alow it to go around the whole case, maybe, but if you try to spread it.

I think I recall reading something about somebody suing... somebody - a laptop related thing.
Click to expand...

The first mag-framed, alu-skinned Crapbook Pro's actually reached 50C+ (i.e. enough to cause a low-temperature burn) - on, get this, just above the top row of the keyboard. Yeah - just where your fingers might stray. 50C was also absolutely possible on the underside towards the rear. And that's without the Magsafe-related heat issues, which produced higher heat around the Magsafe port.

You hear a lot of BS being talked by some these Apple-addled morons about the unibodies running efficiently because aluminium is such a great conductor of heat, but the truth is that if they actually let the aluminium case conduct heat to that level to be actually effective in dumping heat away from the internals, they'd be knee deep in lawsuits.

The case material is there for two genuine reasons:
- Looks
- Tactile sop for people who don't understand the compromises of an all-aluminium body, but think 'whee! metal!'
Everything else is ultimately marketing BS of the type that Apple does oh so well. It's certainly not for durability, despite many press elements regurgitating the BS about 'high torsional rigidity' of the unibody contruction method. Look at what Dell tried to do, ape the construction method but tried to make it actually properly roadable. The result? Grossly overweight for what it is.
 
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Koko56 said:
What the?
Surely it would not get THAT hot to burn people? Of course if you don't alow it to go around the whole case, maybe, but if you try to spread it.

I think I recall reading something about somebody suing... somebody - a laptop related thing.
Click to expand...

My grandmother has a Macbook Pro with an C2D and an 8400m. You can not use it as a "laptop" because it will literally burn your legs if it's on your lap too long. Even when I had the thing propped up you could feel the heat wafting from it, and the table was hot to touch.
 
Ronco said:
The first mag-framed, alu-skinned Crapbook Pro's actually reached 50C+ (i.e. enough to cause a low-temperature burn) - on, get this, just above the top row of the keyboard. Yeah - just where your fingers might stray. 50C was also absolutely possible on the underside towards the rear. And that's without the Magsafe-related heat issues, which produced higher heat around the Magsafe port.

You hear a lot of BS being talked by some these Apple-addled morons about the unibodies running efficiently because aluminium is such a great conductor of heat, but the truth is that if they actually let the aluminium case conduct heat to that level to be actually effective in dumping heat away from the internals, they'd be knee deep in lawsuits.

The case material is there for two genuine reasons:
- Looks
- Tactile sop for people who don't understand the compromises of an all-aluminium body, but think 'whee! metal!'
Everything else is ultimately marketing BS of the type that Apple does oh so well. It's certainly not for durability, despite many press elements regurgitating the BS about 'high torsional rigidity' of the unibody contruction method. Look at what Dell tried to do, ape the construction method but tried to make it actually properly roadable. The result? Grossly overweight for what it is.
Click to expand...
Wow... of course I must hold out reservations of a final judgement until actually experiencing it myself, but, that sounds pretty heavy. :/

King Icewind said:
My grandmother has a Macbook Pro with an C2D and an 8400m. You can not use it as a "laptop" because it will literally burn your legs if it's on your lap too long. Even when I had the thing propped up you could feel the heat wafting from it, and the table was hot to touch.
Click to expand...

despondent.jpg
 
Koko56 said:
Wow... of course I must hold out reservations of a final judgement until actually experiencing it myself, but, that sounds pretty heavy. :/

despondent.jpg
Click to expand...

Well - that depends to what level you're susceptible to becoming a born-again Mactard. Some experience the overall ownership experience, and compared to whatever piece of crud they had before, or if their tech egos were getting constantly bruised by a Windows/hardware combo... they're converted however actually somewhat crappy-in-use the hardware might be.

Me, compared to what I normally use (price-comparable, or usually slightly more expensive, flagships) Apples were always a sidegrade at best - and a pretty poor one at that after the fact - but there's no other way of running supported OS X. But clearly there's far more potential born-again Mactards out there than people like me.
 
I see. I did not mean that I;m intending to get a Macbook of any sort btw.

What do you have? Mac/PC wise?

this is turning into a bit of a thread hijacking...
 
The problem is the fan programming. Apple wants their machines to be dead quiet, so they sacrifice temp for low noise.

Download SMCFancontrol and set up some profiles. By default, my macbook was at 2000rpms. Right off the bat I figured out I could turn the fan up to 3200rpm without being able to hear it. That lowered temps without any sacrifice. Set up a profile for "high" for the times you are doing the big cpu work, and the temp should stay lower.

Without SMC, I noticed my fan never spun up even with high temps, and that was the problem.
 
ryken said:
The problem is the fan programming. Apple wants their machines to be dead quiet, so they sacrifice temp for low noise.

Download SMCFancontrol and set up some profiles. By default, my macbook was at 2000rpms. Right off the bat I figured out I could turn the fan up to 3200rpm without being able to hear it. That lowered temps without any sacrifice. Set up a profile for "high" for the times you are doing the big cpu work, and the temp should stay lower.

Without SMC, I noticed my fan never spun up even with high temps, and that was the problem.
Click to expand...

Very much this.

I use iStat menus to control my fan, but I found unless you were in the upper 70s the fan really doesn't kick in. I have my machine running at 3000rpm as the default speed, and under normal usage the CPU will be +/- 2* of 45*C. Before making this change the CPU being in the upper 50's / lower 60's was not uncommon. Comparing this to the high 30's of my work Latitude D830 or my Girlfriend's ThinkPad T61 I would very much agree that cooling is one of the weakest parts of the apple design.
 
ryken said:
The problem is the fan programming. Apple wants their machines to be dead quiet, so they sacrifice temp for low noise.

Download SMCFancontrol and set up some profiles. By default, my macbook was at 2000rpms. Right off the bat I figured out I could turn the fan up to 3200rpm without being able to hear it. That lowered temps without any sacrifice. Set up a profile for "high" for the times you are doing the big cpu work, and the temp should stay lower.

Without SMC, I noticed my fan never spun up even with high temps, and that was the problem.
Click to expand...

The fan does ramp up - but much more suddenly than by using SMC. It can't hurt, but the only really effective way to ramp down temps under load a tad is to run the fans screaming at 6K - and even that results in a high temp anyway as the cooling is crap, but you also have a machine that's basically even noisier than most cheap-rattly desktops these days under load.
 
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