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MacBook Pro 15 High CPU Temperature, normal ?

inket

inket

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 23, 2009
151
102
Hi there,

I recently bought a MacBook Pro 15inch, the 2.66Ghz model;

Nice laptop, but I'm worried about something: I play some games from time to time and I have been noticing that the CPU Temperature goes very High.

My record is 92°C just moments ago while playing World of Warcraft.

You can see a screenie here: http://drp.ly/6gW9a
(In this screenshot the Fans speed was about 2600rpm although under 90° they drop to 2000rpm)

The laptop itself is not hot though, it's warm. (And I like it <3)

So, I'd like to know if this is normal and I don't have something to worry about.

Thanks.
 
Having the temps in the 90s (Celsius) and the fan speed not ramping up over 3k is definitely not normal and those temps are way too high. When my MBP's temps start inching into the 70s, 80s, my fans really start cranking up. I've never seen 90c on my MBP.

Try resetting the SMC or downloading smcFanControl so you can at least manually adjust the fan speed to maintain better temperatures.

While the CPU is rated for 100c, that doesn't mean all of the components are and if you continually hit temps that high, I would wonder about the longevity of the MBP.
 
miles01110 said:
The components are probably rated even higher. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Not from what I've read, beside heat and electronics don't mix. Running the MBP that high with the fans not ramping is certainly not normal or good for the MBP
 
maflynn said:
Not from what I've read, beside heat and electronics don't mix. Running the MBP that high with the fans not ramping is certainly not normal or good for the MBP
Click to expand...

It's puzzling why the fans aren't going higher, but standard components undergo sustained exposure to higher temperatures than a mere 100 C without damage during the PCB population process in the first place.
 
Now that you mentioned it, my Fans speed is really awkward.

I got the CPU to go 89° C again but they kept running at 2000rpm http://drp.ly/6iC3t

Moments later, the CPU was at 77° while the fans were at 2300rpm. ><

I think I'm going to try resetting the SMC thing for now.
Meanwhile, more opinions are welcome.

Thank you for your answers. :)
 
inket said:
Now that you mentioned it, my Fans speed is really awkward.

I got the CPU to go 89° C again but they kept running at 2000rpm http://drp.ly/6iC3t

Moments later, the CPU was at 77° while the fans were at 2300rpm. ><

I think I'm going to try resetting the SMC thing for now.
Meanwhile, more opinions are welcome.

Thank you for your answers. :)
Click to expand...

Sound to me like you might have a bad sensor. Take it to the Apple store and have them see if they can stress test it.
 
Ok, good news:

After resetting the SMC, the maximum temperature the CPU reached was 89° under heavy stress. (was between 79°-85° for the rest of the game time)

and fans speed reached around 3300rpm which is good.

Is it ok ?

Otherwise:
-Which temps other people have while playing on their MBP 15" (2.66Ghz w/ 9600M GT) ?
-How much is the maximum fans speed ?
-@pcorajr: Is there an app to stress test it by myself ? ;d

(Sorry for my bad english)

Thanks again.
 
I still recommend downloading and using smcFanControl. That way you can blast the fans at 6,000rpm if you wish and keep the MBP even cooler
 
Why don't you just use SMCfancontrol - I run mine at 4,500 rpm when playing wow and I never get above 74C and this is on a first gen MBP with chunks of thermal paste.

No wonder you're at 90C - the fans are barely spinning!
 
it's a known issue ...
You can keep temperature under control simply using FanControl or smcFanControl.
 
Thanks for all the replies.

I installed smcFanControl and now everything is fine.
I can play all day with the fans running @ 4000rpm and the CPU temp staying under 60°.

Problem solved; However, I'm curious as to why Apple made it like this.
Is it because they don't care about the gaming market ?
Or because they want their laptops to be extremely silent ?


Again, thanks for all your help :)
 
inket said:
Problem solved; However, I'm curious as to why Apple made it like this.
Is it because they don't care about the gaming market ?
Or because they want their laptops to be extremely silent ?
Click to expand...


Just a guess, mind you, but I'd imagine it's probably the desire to keep their laptops super-silent. While it's definitely true to say that (WoW notwithstanding), Mac OS and gaming don't exactly go hand-in-hand, gaming isn't the only thing that can cause those sorts of temperatures.

So my money's on "Silence > Sense". :)
 
Collider said:
Just a guess, mind you, but I'd imagine it's probably the desire to keep their laptops super-silent. While it's definitely true to say that (WoW notwithstanding), Mac OS and gaming don't exactly go hand-in-hand, gaming isn't the only thing that can cause those sorts of temperatures.

So my money's on "Silence > Sense". :)
Click to expand...

But gaming isn't the only thing that can put your MBP "on fire" :eek:

If you build in xCode some big app ( like Chromium ), your MBP will stay at 100% some time, and the temp will high up.

I don't know why the sensors don't do their task and put the fans up & running when needed.
 
inket said:
Thanks for all the replies.

I installed smcFanControl and now everything is fine.
I can play all day with the fans running @ 4000rpm and the CPU temp staying under 60°.

Problem solved; However, I'm curious as to why Apple made it like this.
Is it because they don't care about the gaming market ?
Or because they want their laptops to be extremely silent ?


Again, thanks for all your help :)
Click to expand...
It seems to me that Apple is more focused on keep their computers silent that on keep their computers cooled ...
BTW my Mac Mini shows same behavior ...

Collider said:
Just a guess, mind you, but I'd imagine it's probably the desire to keep their laptops super-silent. While it's definitely true to say that (WoW notwithstanding), Mac OS and gaming don't exactly go hand-in-hand, gaming isn't the only thing that can cause those sorts of temperatures.

So my money's on "Silence > Sense". :)
Click to expand...

I second that ;)
 
inket said:
Thanks for all the replies.

I installed smcFanControl and now everything is fine.
I can play all day with the fans running @ 4000rpm and the CPU temp staying under 60°.

Problem solved; However, I'm curious as to why Apple made it like this.
Is it because they don't care about the gaming market ?
Or because they want their laptops to be extremely silent ?


Again, thanks for all your help :)
Click to expand...

It's staying under 60°C at 4000rpm? That's really cool. Mine stays at around 89C even with the fans set to 7000rpm.
 
ViciousShadow21 said:
running YouTube videos causes the temp to go up about 10-15 degrees. i cant believe that so much CPU power goes into something like that.
Click to expand...
there are about 1 million thread in the web speaking of this issue: it is the Flash implementation in Mac OSX that is poorly written. Not Apple's fault

voyagerd said:
It's staying under 60°C at 4000rpm? That's really cool. Mine stays at around 89C even with the fans set to 7000rpm.
Click to expand...
Under full load, with FanControl installed, mine stays under 83°C with fan at 3400-3600 rpm.
 
What OS has a good implementation of Flash? Flash is absolutely awful on all OSes.

It is a bad platform and people ran with it.

I can't wait until H.264 can be embedded into webpages rather than running Flash videos. (The latest Firefox supports <video> tags)
 
Clete2 said:
What OS has a good implementation of Flash? Flash is absolutely awful on all OSes.

It is a bad platform and people ran with it.

I can't wait until H.264 can be embedded into webpages rather than running Flash videos. (The latest Firefox supports <video> tags)
Click to expand...

That has sadly become apparent on Facebook when playing Cafe World of all things. Some little dude making food for customers takes an insane amount of CPU power. How Google thinks cloud-based anything will take over the world with crap like this is beyond me.
 
So, what are reasonable temperature settings and fan speeds for gaming on a MacBook Pro? The only thing I do that really tends to ramp up the fans are games (WoW, X3, going to be trying Dragon Age Origins).

I used to monitor the temperature of my MacBook but it never seemed to get too high so I stopped. Now with a few problems with the 3.3 WoW patch and the threads I've seen regarding Dragon Age and heat, I'm planning on tracking this a bit better.

Using smcFanControl, should I be aiming for keeping the temp while gaming under 90c and adjusting the fan speeds until I can hold it there? Is 90c still too high?

I've looked around and recommended temperatures seems to be more anecdotal than anyone having a particular objective set of standards.

I'm also assuming that when people reporting temperatures they're reporting what smcFanControl is showing. I used to have a different temp monitor app that reported the temperature of the various components/sections of the laptop.

Thanks for any advice, and happy holidays!
 
vsp said:
So, what are reasonable temperature settings and fan speeds for gaming on a MacBook Pro? The only thing I do that really tends to ramp up the fans are games (WoW, X3, going to be trying Dragon Age Origins).

I used to monitor the temperature of my MacBook but it never seemed to get too high so I stopped. Now with a few problems with the 3.3 WoW patch and the threads I've seen regarding Dragon Age and heat, I'm planning on tracking this a bit better.

Using smcFanControl, should I be aiming for keeping the temp while gaming under 90c and adjusting the fan speeds until I can hold it there? Is 90c still too high?

I've looked around and recommended temperatures seems to be more anecdotal than anyone having a particular objective set of standards.

I'm also assuming that when people reporting temperatures they're reporting what smcFanControl is showing. I used to have a different temp monitor app that reported the temperature of the various components/sections of the laptop.

Thanks for any advice, and happy holidays!
Click to expand...

I'm using FanControl, and I can keep temperature below 85°C under full load (2 cores).
I think this is an acceptable value for a notebook
 
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