Normal Idle Temperatures?

jclardy said:

What kind of temperatures are you guys getting when your MBA is either idle or running a very light load?

My new MBA 11" seems to be idling around 60 degrees celsius, which seems a bit hot for not doing much - Safari (no flash - 5 tabs), Mail, Xcode (with open project, but no building or debugging), and Terminal (also not doing anything). My 15" MBP doing the same tasks is only running at 40 degrees celsius.

It might be a little hotter because of Mail and Dropbox, Mail seems like it is still creating a search index and Dropbox is downloading my files...so maybe it is a more of a medium load. I guess I will see once both of them are finished with what they are doing.

Are you guys getting lower temps when doing basic tasks?

I understand the MBP has a lot better airflow, but is it really that much worse on the Air?

Click to expand...

Idling a computer is leaving it on the desktop, on, without having anything running. By a stretch it could mean having a word document open as well, or something very small, but really its true meaning is exactly what it is: to leave the computer idle.

You left multiple programs open, with multiple tabs in safari, and a project open on Xcode. You also had terminal open. That is going to leave you with a temperature of around 60 celcius. That's normal.

Idle temperatures (true idle) will vary much more depending on the ambient temperature of the environment, as well as how long ago you booted the computer up (or if it came on from sleep). Also whether your computer is sitting on your lap matters (quite obvious I suppose). My true idle temperatures are in the range of 40 to 50 celcius, usually staying in the mid 40's.

When my MBA is truly idle it's running between 40-50 degrees Celsius. Doing some light browsing (no flash) or email takes it up to around 50-60.

So, temperatures around 50-60 degrees celsius are considered normal while doing light browsing (no flash), emailing and music?

13" i5. Thanks!

Call it light load temps to be more accurate.

With...

• Safari
• Mail
• Spotify
• Twitter
• Reeder
• iCal
• iChat

The temperatures are...

13" 1.7/4g/128 SSD: idles between 37-40

11" 1.8/4GB/256GB

Idle: 35-40 C
Typical use (iTunes, Safari Mail, Calendar, iChat, Pages, Tweetdeck, Dashboard): 50-60 C

Absolutely normal. Just like mine.