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85C (185F) Penryn 15" MBP under full load normal?

T

Torm

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 18, 2008
1
0
I recently purchased a 15" Penryn MBP (2.6GHz) and have been quite happy with it. The laptop is warm to the touch, but not unreasonably so. However, iStat Pro shows the CPU (while both cores pegged at 100% doing video encoding) temperatures reaching 85C (185F). This seems pretty hot compared to many of the numbers posted around here.

During typical use, the temperature is anywhere from 58C to 70C (136-158F).

Are these temperatures abnormal? Should they be cause for concern?

Also, the fans seem to run around 2000 RPM regardless of temperature until the temperature reaches 80C, then they slowly work their way up to 4000 - 4500 RPM. They are almost completely silent at any speed.

Thanks,
--Torm:confused:
 
Torm said:
I recently purchased a 15" Penryn MBP (2.6GHz) and have been quite happy with it. The laptop is warm to the touch, but not unreasonably so. However, iStat Pro shows the CPU (while both cores pegged at 100% doing video encoding) temperatures reaching 85C (185F). This seems pretty hot compared to many of the numbers posted around here.

During typical use, the temperature is anywhere from 58C to 70C (136-158F).

Are these temperatures abnormal? Should they be cause for concern?

Also, the fans seem to run around 2000 RPM regardless of temperature until the temperature reaches 80C, then they slowly work their way up to 4000 - 4500 RPM. They are almost completely silent at any speed.

Thanks,
--Torm:confused:
Click to expand...

That sounds awesome.. damnit I want a penryn 17" hi res mbp!!
 
Torm said:
I recently purchased a 15" Penryn MBP (2.6GHz) and have been quite happy with it. The laptop is warm to the touch, but not unreasonably so. However, iStat Pro shows the CPU (while both cores pegged at 100% doing video encoding) temperatures reaching 85C (185F). This seems pretty hot compared to many of the numbers posted around here.

During typical use, the temperature is anywhere from 58C to 70C (136-158F).

Are these temperatures abnormal? Should they be cause for concern?

Also, the fans seem to run around 2000 RPM regardless of temperature until the temperature reaches 80C, then they slowly work their way up to 4000 - 4500 RPM. They are almost completely silent at any speed.

Thanks,
--Torm:confused:
Click to expand...



I was just encoding a movie and that was about the same temps I was getting.
 
my Penyon macboook did about that when doing 3d renders. I got it to go to about 78c by going to the dollar store and getting a plastic mesh basket to put the laptop on. The mesh has a 1 inch openings and really gives it some air. I'll post a picture latter if you like. For now I'm on the iPhone.
 
Thats normal.

What I am really wondering is why my MBP is so hot lately. I think it was when I went to 10.5.2. I was steady at about 110-120*F everyday doing just Adium, iTunes, and Safari. Now I am at about 130*F. I find this a bit odd.
 
I'm glad to hear that's normal. I just started encoding video on my Penryn MBP today and the temp shot up to 80C and the fans kicked on high for a few seconds and now temp is steady at 76C.

My Yonah Mac mini would kernel panic well before reaching 80C, I had to use smcFanControl to up the fan speed when encoding video. I guess Intel has been making their new chips more resilient to heat as well as being more powerful and efficient.
 
In recent models I think Apple upped the threshold for fan speed.

I just replaced my 2.33 GHz MBP (you may have read my other thread about it) with a brand new Santa Rosa, which i got a super good deal on.

After breaking it in for a few hours I ran the "yes" loop with 2 running simultaneously and my compuer shot up to 82 degrees in a matter of seconds. However, my fans decided that it wasnt totally necessary at the moment to speed up and not until about a minute later they were spinning at 3300 rpm and no higher. Temperature dropped to 80 and the fans started slowing and maintaining the ~80C temperature. I did restore a Time Machine backup from my 2.33 so I was wondering if that would have affected the fan speed through that plist file or what have you..

my old 2.33 would kick up fans to 6k whenever it got in the 70 range. Interesting.
 
My MBP 15" also gets very hot, around 85C, according to "Temperature Monitor", when I play Eve Online. The Eve client gets in to a freak-out state (not really relevant here) and then I have to quit it. This last time, the system was in a weird state. Scrolling around in Firefox, the images were kind of "stuck" while part of the screen was scrolling. Terminal.app died and I couldn't use the Inspector at all (it was frozen every time). I have a feeling it is heat related, although EO could be fiddling with bits it shouldn't be able to, I guess. Restarting the computer "fixed" it all.

(Side note, using smcFanControl to send the fans to 6000rpm while playing does not stop the glitching).
 
Enclosure bottom

I have also experienced 85C during encoding with the fans siting at idle, right now i am more concerned with the enclosure bottom and airport card temperatures. Both have seen 40C under normal use, the bottom of this thing can get pretty hot, though at time it is cool to the touch :confused:. I have never heard the fans run and have only seen them hit above 4000 rpm once, when i was encoding and not using a external fan.

The enclosure bottom is warmer than i would like, but i did buy my MPB to be a porTABLE machine not a lap tatter. For a design portable i think the temperatures are acceptable, though more fan assistance would help to lower the enclosure and Airport card temperatures.

A positive in the slow circulation of the fans, there is less dust entering the unit, though what dust dose enter is now at a higher level of crispiness.
 
Fans should kick in around 90°C...
Though if you like you can download and install SMCFanControl this will allow the user to override the default fan settings and force the fans to kick in sooner.

I set mine to 2800rpm or 3000rpm when i'm rendering animation...
keeps the temps modestly low.
 
id say thats normal

people seem to have unrealist expectations of how hot macbook pro's should be

the damn things just over an inch thick and it packs in top of the line intel processors and a pretty decent GPU to boot. im surprised its not hotter!

if you look at the placement as well, all 3 chips sit side by side, if they really wanted to cool things better they'd seperate the heat sources and place them away from each other with their own cooling systems instead of sharing one

but that add's weight and would probably ruin the design, so apple had to strike a compromise. i have friends with dell machines that run just as hot and they have lesser components, more space and more fans... so i think apple did well. always room for improvement though.

im quite impressed it runs as it does, i struggled to keep a full desktop system below 60degrees on the CPU and i had a 1kg copper heatsink hanging off it and a 120mm fan blowing it.
 
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