Macbook Pro Retina 13" Overheating?

[sealbhaigh]

I bought a 13" Macbook Pro Retina last month and noticed when watching things full screen it gets very hot to the touch in the crease where the screen meets the base. It's my first Mac so I'm not sure I should be concerned or if this is normal. I should also mention I keep it on hard/flat surfaces when this is occurring.

 

[maxsix]

Macs run hot, that's Apple's preference. I've never heard of a heat related failure, not that it's impossible, but very unlikely. Building a thin light aluminum cased laptop has it's drawbacks. Over all they are fine.

 

[Gav2k]

I bought a 13" Macbook Pro Retina last month and noticed when watching things full screen it gets very hot to the touch in the crease where the screen meets the base. It's my first Mac so I'm not sure I should be concerned or if this is normal. I should also mention I keep it on hard/flat surfaces when this is occurring.

Where your touching is the vent for the cpu fan which I'd expect to be hot. What video are you watching? Certain types of video YouTube (non hyml5) would cause the cpu to work harder.

But as above its fairly normal. Modern cpu's will throttle and power off long before any damage occurred. Hell when building a system I offen do a post test without a heat sink before transferring the components into a case.

 

[sealbhaigh]

Macs run hot, that's Apple's preference. I've never heard of a heat related failure, not that it's impossible, but very unlikely. Building a thin light aluminum cased laptop has it's drawbacks. Over all they are fine.

OK, thank you. Yes, where it is metal I had a feeling it would be hotter to the touch than say a plastic ThinkPad. I just wanted to make sure something wasn't wrong that I'd need to get apple care involved with.

 

[sealbhaigh]

Where your touching is the vent for the cpu fan which I'd expect to be hot. What video are you watching? Certain types of video YouTube (non hyml5) would cause the cpu to work harder.

But as above its fairly normal. Modern cpu's will throttle and power off long before any damage occurred. Hell when building a system I offen do a post test without a heat sink before transferring the components into a case.

Ahhhh ok. I was watching Hulu full screen at the time. I haven't really noticed it be THAT hot unless I'm on battery power and have something HD fullscreen.

 

[Gav2k]

Ahhhh ok. I was watching Hulu full screen at the time. I haven't really noticed it be THAT hot unless I'm on battery power and have something HD fullscreen.

From memory both the browser and app based Hulu runs flash hence the heat. Nothing to worry about. Obviously the higher biterate the hotter things will get.

 

[RoboWarriorSr]

From memory both the browser and app based Hulu runs flash hence the heat. Nothing to worry about. Obviously the higher biterate the hotter things will get.

Yeah flash will do that. Though watching 60 FPS or 4K HTML5 youtube will definitely heat up the mac similarly.

 

[snaky69]

I bought a 13" Macbook Pro Retina last month and noticed when watching things full screen it gets very hot to the touch in the crease where the screen meets the base. It's my first Mac so I'm not sure I should be concerned or if this is normal. I should also mention I keep it on hard/flat surfaces when this is occurring.

If you'd done a quick little search of this forum, you'd have found several thousand threads regarding this.

The gist of it is that Apple crammed a lot of power in a thin aluminum chassis. Aluminum conducts heat very well, so for any given internal temperature, the body'll always feel warmer to the touch than a plastic body.