Is My MBA getting hot to quickly?

[rbn]

Hi all,

I've suspected that my 13" i5 air may be getting to hot / or the fan is kicking in too early.

So I went to the apple store, installed istat on 3 air's and performed the following:
1. monitor cpu temp and fan rpm when system is idle
2. monitor cpu temp and fan rpm when system under load (many apps open, safari, iTunes on with radio streaming and holding down the arrow key in iPhoto cycling through hundreds of photos.

Results were consistent across all Airs.
Results for 1. CPU @ 50 degrees Celsius and fan RPM 1999
Results for 2. CPU between 60 to 80 degrees and fan RPM 2500 to 3000. Only when CPU temp hit low to mid 70s did that cause the RPM to rise. It was still 2000 at around 65-70 degrees. Perhaps because the airs are placed on those wooden tables. I believe enclosure base temps were between 30 & 32 degrees.

10minutes ago, I had transmission downloading at 1.5mb per second and opened a 100mb pdf photography magazine in preview. No other applications were open. Going through the pages of this pdf caused the cpu heat to rise at around low 60's however the fan RPM was hitting 3000rpm plus. This pdf file could be imaged based. I also monitored preview app's cpu% during scrolling through the pages and it rised upto 40% depending on how fast I was scrolling.

Right now as I am typing this, transmission is downloading at 400k, yet cpu is at 58 and fan rpm is at 2600-2800rpm. However the enclosure base temps are at 36 degrees.

My room temperature is mild (low 20's). I live in london so no heat here.

Should I be concerned here? I feel only downloading and viewing a PDF (albeit a large one), shouldn't require the fan to go on.

 

[TheRealDamager]

And...

 

[rbn]

And...

accidently posted this before completing my comments. its updated now

 

[ZipZap]

Concerned about what:

Burning yourself
Burning out the CPU
Noise

MBA's are thin metal laptops. Their CPUs are heat producers. Fans run when they're hot.

Read some other threads and you will see this is nothing new.

You have a year warranty and you can buy more time.

Enjoy it, or return it for a traditional MBP or a 2010 MBA.

 

[TheRealDamager]

Those temps seem totally normal.

 

[rbn]

I agree the temps are normal but unsure why the fan would kick in at those ratings

 

[maka344]

They do tend to get hotter if cooking curry at the same time.

Honestly... Just enjoy!

 

[TheRealDamager]

The fan is working. The CPU is within temp range and working. Are you concerned about whether the fan should be at 2700 rpm at 60C or 2300 rpm? My answer would be it doesn't matter.

 

[iphonsteve4ajob]

Seems pretty normal to me too. Interesting observation about fans not going to higher rpms until about 70+ degrees. I've noticed that it took till almost 80C to get my fans past 2200 rpms.

In fact the darn computer (much to my satisfaction) would never kick the fans higher with the basic apps I run. So just for fun I launched every app I could, loaded some Netflix and watch the temps and rpms rise. It was interesting. However there was the little paranoid side of me giving me Dell flashbacks, where I thought..."gosh what if after the fans kick in and the temp goes up, the damn thing starts to do it all the time."

Even at about 5K I couldn't hear my fan. Thank you computer gods. Though that's certainly not a bad thing. My last Dell was so loud I'm traumatized by fan noise and cpu heat.

 

[rbn]

The fan is working. The CPU is within temp range and working. Are you concerned about whether the fan should be at 2700 rpm at 60C or 2300 rpm? My answer would be it doesn't matter.

I'm concerned why the fans should be on above 2000rpm @ 60C in the first place.

I was expecting fan RPMS to rise post 70C.

 

[GGJstudios]

I'm concerned why the fans should be on above 2000rpm @ 60C in the first place.

I was expecting fan RPMS to rise post 70C.

There is no set temperature at which the fans will increase in speed. Your Mac knows when to run the fans, how fast, and for how long, to keep temps within the normal operating range. If they're spinning up without increased heat, try resetting the SMC. Also, make sure you don't block the vents, which are located at the rear, near the hinge.

 

[VMMan]

Those temps seem normal to me as well. My comps get warm when I am downloading a file. My MBP 17" when driving an external display easily gets to 180 Fahrenheit.