I have a Mid 2012 Retina Macbook Pro that since I got it has issues with heat. If you try and play any game the area around the awsd keys is so hot its enough to burn and is really uncomfortable. I think other people at the time had this issue. I had a coworker that said he didn't have this problem on his 2013 rMBP. Do the newer rMBP's really not have this problem? It's really restrictive and feels dangerous to use for an extended time. I had to get a wireless keyboard and mouse just to play games on the thing.
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Do the newer Retina Macbook Pro's have heat problems on their keyboard?
- Thread starter Trojita
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My old 2012 15" cMBP got hot around the awsd keys, to the point where my fingers were sweating when playing games. Eventually I had to get a keyboard cover. On my 8/256/2.0GHz/Iris Pro Only 15" Late 2013 rMBP I have no issues playing games. I was quite surprised how cool it was. It might be different for models with dGPUs though.
I purchased a 2015 13" Macbook Pro a few weeks ago. The first thing I did was convert 200+ lecture videos for a friend. The thing was running all night and the fan was kicked in, but even in doing that the spot that gets warm was never in the territory I'd consider "hot".
The processors are located below the back center edge of the keyboard. The 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro includes two large cooling fans below the side edges of the keyboard, while the current 13-inch Retina has one large fan and the older 13-inch Retina has two smaller fans. Heat pips transfer heat from the processors to the fans. That is the basic heat footprint and where you should expect the enclosure to feel the hottest. However, if you have the laptop plugged in to external power and it is charging your battery, or if you have a Thunderbolt connection with a large amount of data transfer then that can also generate a significant amount of heat. If you want to see the layout of laptop components then you can checkout iFixit://www.ifixit.com/Device/Mac_Laptop
Since the laptop enclosure is made of aluminum and acts as a large heat sink, it is normal for the enclose to become hot closest to the heat source. Gaming typically places fairly significant demands on both the CPU and CPU, so you should expect the enclosure to become hot, and that there maybe enough of heat build up that the fans are running on high for an extended period of time and processor speed throttling could be reducing your CPU and/or CPU performance.
Since the laptop enclosure is made of aluminum and acts as a large heat sink, it is normal for the enclose to become hot closest to the heat source. Gaming typically places fairly significant demands on both the CPU and CPU, so you should expect the enclosure to become hot, and that there maybe enough of heat build up that the fans are running on high for an extended period of time and processor speed throttling could be reducing your CPU and/or CPU performance.