Installing Parallels 6 right now on my 2011 MBP (17", i7 quad)

[thermodynamic]

In the VM:
2GB RAM
40GB HD (Expandable)
1 CPU
Win XP

Use: Solely Office 2010

Temps recorded so far (install's status reads it has another 20 minutes or so to go):

42C idle, up to 61C while installing, frequently ends up being 55~56C, going back down to 42 and then 58~61 then back to 56 then 42 then 53 and so on. (I'm tallying manually... no way to precisely log, but it spiked to 61C only twice.)

I have SMCFanStatus set to run both fans at 4000RPM and am keeping a close eye on it, should the CPU get to 70 or higher. (70 is still a fairly low temp, especially as my token Sony quad laptop gets up to 76C when playing UT2004; 80C when doing UT2004 and Prime95 for an hour.)

When installing Office later, I'll keep the RPM at 3000 and see how warm it gets.

When actually using Office, post-installs, I'll go back to default 2000RPM and see how warm it gets.

Even at 4000RPM, this runs fairly quiet. There's a bit of noise at the max allowable level (5500) but it's by no means noisy at that point either.

I wonder if the low-end GPU is running; there is no need for the 6750M to kick in yet, but I did enable 3D acceleration and allow the VM to use 256MB RAM. When installing the guest additions prior to Office's install, that'll reveal more info down the road but, so far, the temps I'm seeing are rather good.

It just rebooted and is now applying my personal settings and with the Parallels Tools additions (the final lap of the install). Temp reads 42~45C, 4000RPM fan speed.

More to follow later today.

Has anybody else used a VM in the 2011 MBP? If so, please share - especially temperature information!

 

[thermodynamic]

I made a few more tests.

With 1 CPU being used in the VM, apart from playing one game, temps never got above 61 (average temp was 48C).

Unreal Tournament 2004, in full screen mode, 1920x1200 res, with every AA feature enabled maxed, and SMCFanControl set to 3000RPM, the 17" MBP gets up to 74C. (which is nice as my quad core Sony laptop always got up to 76C and the Sony's fan was on and quite loud.)

No lockups or anything else weird happening while playing.

The only way I could get this machine close to 80 or 90C is to load it with Prime95 and run it while doing a full render in Bryce or Poser. Hopefully that won't be the case. Cool is cool; even if 105C is the maximum operating temperature, lower is still better.

What I did find interesting were these:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review...1-2-0-GHz-Quad-Core-Matte-Screen.49689.0.html

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-17-inch-Early-2011.49757.0.html

The 15" model got up to 90C during their testing, and the 17" model got up to... drumroll... 97C. (Maybe the 17" MBP they got had poor application of thermal compound... they did report the Dell Envy 17" - with the same tests applied - didn't get as hot, nor did the Dell throttle the speed down to prevent thermal overload. Again, that's a synthetic benchmark that real life apps, even 3D rendering, won't duplicate, but it's still interesting to note.)

One other cool thing in Apple's favor: On my PC laptop, UT2004 used one CPU (1 real core and its virtual core to allow 2 threads to be ran). On the MBP, Parallels 6 ensured that all four cores (and thus all 8 threads) were being used to execute the VM and the game within. In essense: Grand Central Dispatch was showing just how freakin' awesome OS X truly is.

Last update for a while (addendum):

Prime 95 running at full while playing UT2004 at maxed-out settings, with the fans set to maximum (5500RPM), managed to get the system up to 92C, though the usage was between 87 and 92. I suspect 3D rendering, code compiling, fractal creation, and other system-stressful apps will get it up there as well.