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15" MBP i7 - Heat and Fan Noise compared to i5.

entatlrg said:
My concern about ordering the 15" with i7 is heat and fan noise it with such a powerful component in a small (aluminum) case.

i5 should run noticeably cooler/quieter, yes?
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Apple is not using the quad core i7 chips.

i5 is prolly cooler, but it's not like with the i7 quad chips where the fan would be on mid speed always and high speed when in use.
 
The heat and noise (fans) would impact the battery life. Since Apple doesn't specifically list different battery life estimates for i5 and i7 models, I would expect the difference to be relatively minimal.
 
I have the 15 inch i7.... yes, it does get warm on my lap, but thats pretty typical for all laptops these days.

It is not excessively hot, and there is no fan noise to speak of.
 
The new 15'' mbps have the exact same fans as the older 2008-9 ones. So daily tasks they should stay almost inaudible ~2000rpms like the previous gen. Even at 3000rpm's, these fans are only slightly audible in a completely quiet room. No worries.
 
Jottle said:
The new 15'' mbps have the exact same fans as the older 2008-9 ones. So daily tasks they should stay almost inaudible ~2000rpms like the previous gen. Even at 3000rpm's, these fans are only slightly audible in a completely quiet room. No worries.
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I thought the latest ones have two fans vs one fan in the last generation. Could have sworn i saw that on the tear down pics
 
The question here, though, is about the difference in heat between the i5 15" and the i7 15" -- any actual information about this?

Thanks!
 
eklkrl said:
The question here, though, is about the difference in heat between the i5 15" and the i7 15" -- any actual information about this?

Thanks!
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Finally unpacked my i7 15" which spent all night migrating from my old MBP.
While I've only spent an hour or so on it and I cannot compare to an i5 because I don't have one of each I can say (repeated from another thread for you all):

Things NOT to worry for all those pondering out there:

1) It's dead silent. The CPU runs 37-40C for normal surfing. When running Netbeans and programming it got up to 55C but still stayed silent. This is 10-15C cooler than my 2008 Penryn MBP.

2) It's not hot on the bottom. Not at all. Got a little hot while charging in the upper left corner but in use it's fine. The 2008 could fry eggs in comparison.

3) The internet is not laggy. Speakeasy test is the same as yesterday's test with the 2008.

4) The menus are not too small. But just barely. I just turned 50 and just started needing the reading glasses so I would tell you if they were too small.

5) Anti-glare not too dim. Running 50% and seems fine. Off-angle viewing is not as good but I'm rarely off angle. Very nice not to have reflections especially as compared to my iPad which is very mirror like.

Shows 4 cores in the activity monitor. You might want to give the Apple store salespeople and genuises a break. I know it's 2 cores with hyperthreading but it displays as four and for the average person it will look to them to be a quad core machine.

Is not as uber-zippy as I thought it would be. Firefox first load took 4 to 5 bounces. However, subsquent loads take 2. Don't know if that's because I did not reboot and it keeps things in memory or if it built some kind of system cache.

No read on battery yet, I've been doing my first hours worth of work plugged in.
 
Scott, thanks for the info. I'll likely be getting one. One question, what are the fans like at load? Currently they get up to 4500 or so with the better graphics on in my Macbook Pro 2009, hoping for a little more silence when Photoshopping, viewing websites and so on.
 
I didn't want to start a new thread so I'll just ask this here. Would the fans kick in while watching a show on Hulu? My MacBook (much lower specs, of course) goes crazy while watching a show in high-res full screen.
 
ppayne said:
Scott, thanks for the info. I'll likely be getting one. One question, what are the fans like at load? Currently they get up to 4500 or so with the better graphics on in my Macbook Pro 2009, hoping for a little more silence when Photoshopping, viewing websites and so on.
Click to expand...

I've done some Netbeans running Glassfish, Adobe Illustrator, Time Machine back up, MAMP Apache/MySql, VMWare, pretty much all at the same time.

All these together did not put a dramatic load on the CPU. Max CPU temp I've seen is about 70C. Stays between 55 and 65 with 20-30% load. With less load stays at about 50C. Only seen the fans go to 2300. Have never been audible.

Some warmness to the bottom but 10% of what I had with my 2008 MBP.

I have not HandBraked or Hulu'ed. Have visited website with moderate Flash. I could Hulu but I don't want to press my luck so far :)
 
OK. I did some Hulu for you. At standard size in the window (playing Family Guy), the CPU went to 65C and stayed there. CPU was constant 25%. Also doing a Time Machine initial backup at the same time. Fans were 2000-2300. Did about 5-6 mins of this. Stayed stable.

Went to Full Screen, CPU load went to 35% constant. CPU went to about 80C. Fans kicked in to 3500 or so to keep the CPU at 80. Fans were audible but not overwhelming. Heat built up within the first minute or so of going full screen.

Note as well this is the hi-res version so full screen was pushing plenty of pixels I assume.
 
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