How high can it go?

[Luis Ortega]

I have a 13 inch unibody macbookpro bought about september 2009.
The fan was acting up a lot so my son opened the case to replace it and damaged the fan connector and we had to remove the fan altogether since there is no longer any way to connect a fan.
I doubt that Apple will help even though it has several months left in the 3 year apple care since we opened it and broke a piece off.

My question is how hot can these mbp models run and be ok?
If it gets up to 80C after a couple of hours and I close the lid, it goes back down to around 50C after a short while, so it's' not impossible to work on it.
But how high can I let it get before starting to damage the hardware?
Will it stabilize at some temperature if run without a fan?

I took out the broken fan to leave some air space in the computer, in case that helps to cool it, and I have a small lap stand for the mbp that has a little fan that runs off a usb port, so it is never directly on a surface, but I don't know if it can run ok without a fan.
Thanks for any advice.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

100° C. If it gets too hot, the MBP will shutdown itself.
And the fan is always running, at least at 2000 RPM. If it would not run, the CPU would be hotter, and the more CPU gets used, the more power it has to use, which generates more heat.

Btw, have you already used the Advanced Search feature to search for hundreds of similar threads?

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[thundersteele]

I think his problem is somewhat different. 80C is fine, if it stays at that temperature you can keep using it. As the previous poster said, the laptop will shutdown before it overheats. Since you are working without any form of cooling, you might consider taking a break when the temperature gets above 90C, and let it cool down again.

You are lucky with the 2009 13'' CPU, that only uses 25W.

Of course it was not such a good idea to have your son fix the laptop when it was still covered by applecare.

 

[Luis Ortega]

I think his problem is somewhat different. 80C is fine, if it stays at that temperature you can keep using it. As the previous poster said, the laptop will shutdown before it overheats. Since you are working without any form of cooling, you might consider taking a break when the temperature gets above 90C, and let it cool down again.

You are lucky with the 2009 13'' CPU, that only uses 25W.

Of course it was not such a good idea to have your son fix the laptop when it was still covered by applecare.

Yes, he was too enthusiastic. I had the top off and was reading the fixit guide on my desktop and he tried to pull off the fan cable himself.
So far, it seems to run mostly at 65-70C, but it's good to know that it can reach 100 before having problems.