Heat

[warfed]

Yeah I know this has been discussed to death. I know the Air gets hot when running flash or something CPU intensive, but I have a more specific questions. I just installed Xcode 4 and pretty much during the entire installation the notebook CPU was running over 90C.

I realize that an installation will push the CPU a bit... but is this much heat normal? I expect this kind of heat when torture testing... but within a minute of doing an install?

The reason I ask is because I believe my first MBA didn't get that hot, although at that time I wasn't paying attention.

It's a 13" i5 if that matters.

TIA

 

[miles01110]

Yes it's normal.

 

[eric/]

It is normal, but if you thought before that your MBA didn't get hot, it may be due to the surface it was placed on/air temperature/etc.... For example, placing the MBA on a surface that conducts heat will have an effect on the temperature.

 

[scarred]

90C is fine. When your CPU is needed, it'll heat to about that. It is as designed.

Like anything in life really, if you are maxing out your Macbook Air for hours and hours and hours on end, it absolutely will shorten it's life a little. Just like if you drive your car close to the red line, your engine is going to wear out faster.

I would definitely not worry about it, unless you are doing this a lot and for a while. At that point, they do sell neat little notebook coolers (a little platform that has a bunch of fans and stuff).

 

[onthecouchagain]

Get fan control apps. Honestly, increasing the fan speed a little doesn't create any noticeable fan noise, yet keeps the laptop a little bit cooler.

 

[warfed]

Get fan control apps. Honestly, increasing the fan speed a little doesn't create any noticeable fan noise, yet keeps the laptop a little bit cooler.

Agreed, I do run smcFanControl. But I wouldn't say the noise isn't noticeable. Anything over 3000rpm is quite noticeable to me.

With regular browsing ( - flash) the laptop stays fairly cool, but as soon as you do anything above that it goes to an extreme. It seems like it either hovers at 45-55C or 80-95C... doesn't really seem to have a middle.

I wish I had an option like in Windows to throttle the CPU by changing the power settings, I really don't need the CPU at 100% when installing stuff... and I certainly don't need the CPU to go up when I'm downloading things.

Has anyone come across a utility for OSX that lets you throttle or undervolt an iX cpu?