tape the ports and intakes to keep bugs out is so wrong you got me to laugh thank you.
at the op. running any gear at 100% max endlessly is bad for the gear. heat is a gear killer. fans running at top speed 24/7/365 will wear the fan out.
the best fans have a 50,000 hour rating.
but an hour hear and an hour there. say 20 hours a week max you should be okay.
as for evidence i have been in IT since 1975 and have used 1,000 plus pcs laptops extra along with 2500 plus bitcoin mining machines.
100 percent heat and 100 percent fan speed for 24 hours a day every day kills gear.
I agree with what you are trying to convey here but I’d argue a few points further. You mention fans rated at 50,000 hours. Why would anyone need to be mindful if they are running hard “an hour here or there.” Im not even being snarky but posing it rhetorically to everyone so to show a full time job is c considered 2000/2080 hours a year. If it is a full time job on the computer then it would take more than 20 years to burn them out.
Now that is just discussion of fans and I have a new monster pc gaming laptop that I think has a fan on the fritz I may need to replace. But at the worst case, it is a very cheap part of the computer. I’m not familiar anymore with Apple MacBooks and if they need to be sent in due to proprietary architecture, but fans are cheap and not remotely difficult to repair so it shouldn’t be on one’s radar in my opinion.
Regarding the CPU, or I suppose the SoC or APU or whatever it is in Macbook products, they are engineered and tested to run at the limits of their performance and are benchmarked and advertised as such. Temp worries have long been a concern of forum goers for 2 decades and I was one of them. I’m not saying don’t monitor things, or that higher temps don’t degrade quicker. However it is likely that the computer will outlive the users use case before upgrading down the road.
In 20 years of high end laptop gaming and desktop building, I haven’t had a CPU die out. It is anecdotal for sure but these silicon components work for long times in much more stressful environments in giant racks with awful cooling. These SoCs that integrate a unified architecture with all the components are very efficient.
Finally to use the car example as I’m a car nut, mechanical things benefit from being in motion and used. The cars that have the most issues are not the ones with the most miles, they are the ones with the least. Cars that sit, typically have the gaskets break down, seals become insufficient and no history or “muscle memory” of being properly started, warmed up, driven etc. thermodynamics are essential in racing and while one can argue the track used cars are the most at risk due to heat cycles, it matters more how one properly uses the machine. Same for these computers. Run it for whatever uses are needed, take care of the computer, don’t run a simulation on a pillow whilst leaving a full coffee next to your cat that could knock it over!
The advice from Best Buy is just awful in this instance. I also use compressed air (controversial to some I realize” and carefully blow dust out of the exhaust vents by going through the intake while the system fans are running. I always have a few cans nearby to use on my electronics because dust really can be problematic but that also was more of an issue with mechanical hard drives.
