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macbook pro goes up to 80 Celsius playing Starcraft 2

K

krzkrzkrz

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 29, 2010
32
1
I've got a Macbook Pro unibody. Purchased it a few months ago (Feb or Apr 2010). Running on Snow Leopard (10.6.4) 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4gb 1067 MHz DDR3 Ram.

I set the Macbook Pro for "Higher Perfomances" (System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Higher performance), which I believe sets the video card to use the NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT (512 MB).

I started playing Starcraft 2 online and realised that iStatMenus reports the CPU temperature at 80 Celsius. Depending on the day. I can play for 3-4 hours straight. The game runs smoothly at medium settings and no delays at all. The top left part of the laptop gets hot. However, not hot enough to feel uncomfortable. The fans kicks in at 5000+ RPM. I understand that there's a forced shutdown fail-safe built in, in the event of extreme temperatures. If it's too hot the machine will just shut down. I am more concerned about having it run too hot and prematurely wear down components in the future. Should I be worried about this or should I put my trust in the machine and firmly believe that 80C is just fine for this task?

I know of smcFanControl (3rd party software). But havent had the need to use it since the fans are at appropriate speeds. Or is it not?

The post at this forum suggests, that this is normal. Even for other tasks (encoding and etc).
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/963809/

I could get a cooling pad to lower down the temperature a bit.

What are your thoughts?
 
Those temperatures are normal, as the CPU is used during those intensive tasks, thus it draws more power and therefore more heat is generated and radiated from the CPU.

Those C2D CPUs can handle temperatures of up to 105°/120°C, thus 80°C is okay and no ned to be a worry.
 
So I shouldn't worry about hardware damage or wear-down over time? These macs are built for that?
 
mine runs @around 80 when on my wooden desk and @75 when elevated with a book playing wow....i remember my last 15 was reaching 90 odd few years back.
 
Mine runs in around this as well when playing SC II on both boot camp and OSX. If you feel that it is a bit too hot, just run SMC and crank your fans to max, though, they will run at max while playing generally.
 
yea, i've got one of the originals and it gets too hot so it really doesn't work after 40 minutes. Even without any other apps running, i've see it freeze and start crashing. Any suggestions on a cooling pad for the mbp?
 
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