Warning: new macbook pro i7 gets hot and noisy

I think the original poster has a good point. There is potentially too much power under the hood with the i7 and the GPU.... and whilst people crave such powerful components, I guess the impact is the heat/noise.

Fans that spin to over 6000 revs must be noisy as hell, and I think its disappointing that it gets so high and the older model doesnt yet they both still output the same frame rate etc.

My GF has a macbook air... and its silent. Totally. I could never use a laptop whose fan was spinning at 6000 RPM !

It would certainly put me off an i7 in that model.

Playing CivV on my 2011 2.2 Pro 15 does sound noisy and burns my legs. But I live in the UK so the heat is appreciated. It's the graphics card causing the heat - just been using Word for the last hour and it's quiet and cool right now.. Launch Civ and all hell breaks loose..

shot2bits said:

Launch Civ and all hell breaks loose..

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I believe its a pretty bad port - the Mac version of Civ, which probably isn't helping things, but that discrete GPU sure does a number. Those wanting things to stay cooler could get gfxCardStatus and set it to HD3000 only (and try not to complain when your frame rates goes to hell).

Then again this is all nothing new in some sense - I used to run my late '08 MBP almost always using the 9400M because the 9600GT was a cooker too!

McSad2 said:

Ok here goes: I played WoW on my girlfriends MBP and on my new MBP with the same videosettings here are the iStat numbers

MBP core 2 duo 2,66 GHz, 4 Mb RAM
Fan speed: 3700
CPU temp 82
GPU temp 65

MBP i7 2,2 GHz, 4 Mb RAM
Fan speed 6200
CPU temp 86
GPU temp 76

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I would just upgrade the memory, 4mb is way too little to be running WoW. maybe the fan speed will decrease......

I came from HP Envy 17 to 2011 MBP 15 2.2 Ghz and the HP was getting super hot playing games (well above 175 F). MBP is running much, much cooler. Actually there is no comparison as the HP was running hot even when browsing internet. And all those academic discussions what the MBP is or what it is not are IMO not relevant, it is very powerful, it will generate heat playing games and doing other cpu/gpu intensive tasks. Don't try to play games keeping your MBP on your lap, put it on the cooling pad and enjoy.

lewchenko said:

I think the original poster has a good point. There is potentially too much power under the hood with the i7 and the GPU.... and whilst people crave such powerful components, I guess the impact is the heat/noise.

Fans that spin to over 6000 revs must be noisy as hell, and I think its disappointing that it gets so high and the older model doesnt yet they both still output the same frame rate etc.

My GF has a macbook air... and its silent. Totally. I could never use a laptop whose fan was spinning at 6000 RPM !

It would certainly put me off an i7 in that model.

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Unless Intel produces a low power version down the line. Though I agree that it might have been better if the laptop was cooler and more silent. I guess my Air spoilt me.

I just got a 17' inch...comin from a 6 year old Dell Inspiron. MBP runs a lot quieter and cooler compared to the Dell. not even really a comparison. I usually play CS: Source, DOD: Source and Battlefield 2, all at maxed out settings

I just got my new 15" with the 2.3GHz i7 and been installing things, installing Parallels and the VM etc.

Never went past 48C

Idles around 39-40C

I'm sure it would be higher playing games, but normal to medium work mine has been surprisingly cool.

If anyone is curious, here are some stats on my 2006 Core Duo 2ghz with 2GB RAM:

My left fan is dead. The right one usually idles around 2000 rpm. It blasts up around 6000 rpm when doing heavy work.

With about a dozen tabs open in Firefox, word, and a torrent going, CPU temp is around 70 C. When I add hulu into the mix fullscreen, the fan kicks in and my CPU gets to around 90 C.

I will soon get a new computer! Most likely at 15" MBP and I'll post again as to how I feel the fans/heat issue is. It's got to be better than my current situation!

Confirming terrible heat issue

I want to confirm the original post, I exchanged 3 machines (2.3GHz, 8GB RAM, SSD, and btw - $3100). Reasons for exchange were not only heat. 1 machine had bad display, other was scratched as well. MBP get's more noisy and hotter than my ansient 3-year-old HP ($1200). It's alright when you are gaming, but what about Skype? Have anyone try using videocalls on this machine? CPU temp gets to 100C without custom fan controller as fans never speed up enough. This sounds absolutely ridiculous when some people say that MAJORITY DO NOT HAVE THIS ISSUE. I have tested 3 different machines in a row. 3 of 3 have overheat issue. Which gets even worse with poor fan controller, which is why people have to install third party soft such as FAN CONTROL for MBP. I never ever even thought about controlling FAN Manually when I had PC laptops... THIS MACHINE OVERHEATS AS HELL even compared to cheap $1000 laptops. If you use it on your lap, you can burn your legs easily. Doesn't matter what processor is used, all i7s heat up machine to absolutely unworkable condition. When gaming for around half a hour, GPU perfomance significantly falls down due to overheat (imho) and you can feel it looking at frame rate. And as some guy said "apple hardware is good quality and ready for such temperatures", what I can say for sure - our bodies are not ready.

I have other quality issues, but do not want to off-top here.

finchwizard said:

I just got my new 15" with the 2.3GHz i7 and been installing things, installing Parallels and the VM etc.

Never went past 48C

Idles around 39-40C

I'm sure it would be higher playing games, but normal to medium work mine has been surprisingly cool.

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Maybe it's really cold in your room. But Idles are always around 50C-55C for this model. Even Apple confirmed that. Of course this is hardly affected by environmental temperature. But still, your example is not what people experience in normal room temperature.

My computer gets hots when I run games. So does every other computer I own. Fans spin up to cool down computers that are hot. Same with every other computer.

I don't really see the issue.

17" 2.2, flat surface, WoW at Max, 70-75C on CPU. 60C GPU. Fans vary depending on the surface i play on. no complaints here.

who the hell buys a macbook to play games on?

phas3 said:

who the hell buys a macbook to play games on?

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Some of us are full time designers...

vaderhater245 said:

Some of us are full time designers...

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and? You don't buy a macbook to play games on it. Gamer and Designer = two different areas.

Even then, a laptop is just that a laptop its not meant to be a desktop replacement.

vlad-miami said:

I want to confirm the original post, I exchanged 3 machines (2.3GHz, 8GB RAM, SSD, and btw - $3100). Reasons for exchange were not only heat. 1 machine had bad display, other was scratched as well. MBP get's more noisy and hotter than my ansient 3-year-old HP ($1200). It's alright when you are gaming, but what about Skype? Have anyone try using videocalls on this machine? CPU temp gets to 100C without custom fan controller as fans never speed up enough. This sounds absolutely ridiculous when some people say that MAJORITY DO NOT HAVE THIS ISSUE. I have tested 3 different machines in a row. 3 of 3 have overheat issue. Which gets even worse with poor fan controller, which is why people have to install third party soft such as FAN CONTROL for MBP. I never ever even thought about controlling FAN Manually when I had PC laptops... THIS MACHINE OVERHEATS AS HELL even compared to cheap $1000 laptops. If you use it on your lap, you can burn your legs easily. Doesn't matter what processor is used, all i7s heat up machine to absolutely unworkable condition. When gaming for around half a hour, GPU perfomance significantly falls down due to overheat (imho) and you can feel it looking at frame rate. And as some guy said "apple hardware is good quality and ready for such temperatures", what I can say for sure - our bodies are not ready.

I have other quality issues, but do not want to off-top here.

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When you get to 5 tell us

I had a number of mbps when they got released at first run hot on games. Wait for driver updates and game updates, it will settle down. My 2009 mbp would get black screens of death . Though if your concerned your might be faulty, return it and try another one. If it's the same result, maybe the mbp is not for you.

Yes, the MBP get hot to the touch, but they do not overheat. People need to stop spewing lies about MBPs overheating.

Current temp whilst iTunes, Mail, Safari, Quicktime and VLC are running. You guys must not have owned one of the MBP Classic models...especially the Core Duo ones.

If you're not happy then the solution is simple. Sell and buy something else because you and i both know ranting/screaming won't change anything in this revision or even the next. As long as Apple is obsessed with thinness MBP and Heat will continue to coexist in the same sentence.

This might help

Wow this turned into a lengthy bunch of useless posts.

There is an issue with the fan noise on the Macbook Pro i7. I took mine to the Apple store and the did this http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964. It helped a lot. It at least help with the fan running wide open when the computer was barely doing anything.

Has anyone else noticed the sudden influx of people who are dragging up ancient threads?

Man, I wish the 2012 MBPs would come out just so all these people would have something better to do.


-P

The next generation of the MacBook Pro will have chips with lower power consumption.

Let's see how this will influence the temperature.

By the way: Someone mentioned that having not enough RAM in the MBP might increase temperature (insinuating that the CPU has to work harder).

True?

Nostromo said:

The next generation of the MacBook Pro will have chips with lower power consumption.

Let's see how this will influence the temperature.

By the way: Someone mentioned that having not enough RAM in the MBP might increase temperature (insinuating that the CPU has to work harder).

True?

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This isn't correct, IB will consume the same amount of power as SB (45 Watt) and in some cases, they will run ALOT hotter.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/28/1221223/ivy-bridge-running-hotter-than-intels-last-gen-cpu

Looon said:

You're missing the point, people are always saying the reason Macs cost so much more is that the build quality is so much superior than almost all windows laptops. I fail to see how this is true considering all the complaints on this board recently regarding overheating. Just wondering how people are defending the thousand dollars their mac costs now since build quality is obviously out as a factor

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its not f*&$@^g overheating!!!!!!!!! you've got a whopping big intel i7 processor kicking out a ton of heat, do you see any fans on the macbook? no (their behind the hinge) where do you expect all the heat to go. aluminium is a great heat conductor so why not take advantage of it and use it as a heat sink. their not overheating their getting rid of the heats so they don't overheat!!!!!!!!! you should be worried when the fans stop and it starts to get cooler cos then that means your not using it propperly i often run my adobe flash fireworks and photo sop on mine then it gets warm. it annoys me when people moan about how expensive they, the reason people buy them is because some applications run better on mac than windows like the adobe suite. i can get a 5 min clip rendered in bou 2o mins compared to the 1.30 hours it took on my alienware