I recently got a MacBook Pro 2012 non-retina with duel Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics a while ago and I got it a keyboard cover, rubber caps for the ports and a hard shell cover for the front. I've been using it for school work, photoshop and video editing and very often it will overheat to the point where I'm afraid to use to more. I was told that the MacBook gets ventilation from openings in the body like through the keyboard.
So by getting it all these covers am I actually causing more hard than good? or was I sold a lemon? and is there something I can do to stop it from overheating to much?
Any help is appreciated, thanks
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Okay, first off, unless it has shut down out of the blue while you were using it (chances are it never happened), it has NEVER overheated.
Overheated is a words that gets thrown around on here by people who don't know how computers work. ALL computers have built-in self-protection. Should things ever get too toasty, the processor will throttle down its power to alleviate the situation. If that doesn't work and temps still climb, it'll shut off, plain and simple.
With that said, all ventilation on a unibody model is done through the hinge. The fans push out air at either end while cool air enters through the middle. There is a sheet of plastic beneath the keyboard, blocking pretty much any airflow that'd come through there.
I'll give you a brief thermodynamics/heat transfer class, let's start with thermodynamics.
Whenever you need to generate power, the process is never 100% efficient. All inefficiencies usually generate heat as a byproduct. So to make the story short: Power generates heat, electronics need to be kept reasonably cool to work properly, fans work harder to extract said heat.
Now the heat transfer part.
Every material out there has a certain conductivity to heat. That is the material's ability to transfer/aborb heat to/from another object. If you leave a block of metal on a table in a room, both are at the same temperature, but if you touch both, the metal will feel cooler to the touch. Most metals have high conductivity, which means that they can easily absorb or giveaway heat, in the case of the block of metal, it is taking heat from your skin, making it feel cooler, as it is effectively drawing heat away from your body faster than your body produces heat.
Where am I going with this? Well, the MacBook Pro's body is made out of aluminum. Aluminum, as you know, is a metal. For any given internal temperature, a metal-bodies laptop will ALWAYS feel warmer to the touch than a plastic one. MBPs get warm, or even hot to the touch, and it's perfectly normal.
TL;DR version: Your computer isn't overheating, the temperatures you are experiencing are both normal and safe for the computer, and no ventilation is done through the keyboard.
