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MBA 2011 i7 Overheating Issues - interesting new findings on page 3

At least for the MBA, it's common to see the system run hotter when plugged in and charging. After the battery is charged, the temperature should be the same regardless.

I noticed this on the 2009's 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MBA when I had it. It ran hotter on AC then Battery by quite a bit.
 
I went ******* with my i7 MBA last night for several hours. Copied over a ton of data, played some flash video, played some local encoded video, skyped with my dad in AZ for an hour, and tested out Civ 5 (it plays just fine on recommended settings--all low). The MBA only got hot with skype and Civ 5 and the fans only kicked in when gaming. This is a great machine. Don't sweat the deets.
 
SteelWheel said:
Does smcFanControl work on MBAs? I always have it running with the fans cranked up to 6000 rpm on my 2008 MBP.
Click to expand...
I have the 11" i7. I downloaded smcFanControl the other day and at first i had trouble using it. Now that i have it working well i can boost up the fan speed to 4.5k rpms and then start streaming video, running 2 windows of safari, mail, and xcode and the temp never rises above 65. But i had it plugged in all the times i did that so i dont know how it affects battery life.
 
theSeb said:
Some interesting new findings:

So I thought that I would try again today to make sure my findings are consistent. Unfortunately I missed all of the drama at the beginning, because I was occupied. The CPU went up to around 95 again and the fans kicked in, but I also noticed that the CPU Usage Idle went to quite high and then the temps started to stabilise. I am not sure if the Idle number going up means that the CPU is actively throttling itself, or not.
Click to expand...

Hello, nice with some good testing going on 🙂
I did some full load tests (13" 1.7 GHz i5 in apple store) with cputest where after I ran geekbench to check performance afterwards. The geekbench was about 1000 points lower directly after the "full load" run than when idle, so I suspect thermal throttling. Have you done any benchmarking after having handbrake on for some time? It also would be interesting to monitor cpu frequency while encoding in handbrake.

cheers
 
I would love to monitor CPU core frequency, but I have no idea how to do it in Lion. I've tried MSR Tools and it displays a blank page. From what I've read it only works in 32 bit Snow Leopard and previous versions.
 
theSeb said:
I would love to monitor CPU core frequency, but I have no idea how to do it in Lion. I've tried MSR Tools and it displays a blank page. From what I've read it only works in 32 bit Snow Leopard and previous versions.
Click to expand...

I could try tonight to download Handbrake for Windows and use CPUID to monitor core frequency from within Boot Camp. It would be nice if there were a Mac equivalent, though.
 
In those screenshots, what is the name of the program which is running/showing on the desktop with all those temps, speeds and etc?
 
qwerf123 said:
In those screenshots, what is the name of the program which is running/showing on the desktop with all those temps, speeds and etc?
Click to expand...

I have the program he uses. I think its called desktop monitor. Sold in the app store. Just wish there was a way it can be in the menu bar like istat.
Click to expand...

read a few posts up...
 
KPOM said:
I could try tonight to download Handbrake for Windows and use CPUID to monitor core frequency from within Boot Camp. It would be nice if there were a Mac equivalent, though.
Click to expand...

Handbrake for Windows is 32-bit only. That said, it seems to be oscillating between 1.8GHz (native speed) and 2.6GHz (Turbo Boost at dual core). It has temporarily hovered at different speeds (1.4 GHz, 2.4GHz), but it mostly splits time between 1.8GHz and 2.6GHz. I can't tell the load on each core since CPU-Z doesn't reveal those details, but Norton Utilities was kind enough to throw out a warning that one of the cores was at 100% utilization.

I'm encoding a standard resolution DVD and am getting an average FPS of about 70fps.

The fan is going at a fast clip, but again, I don't have the exact speed.

Update: About 20 minutes into what would be a 60 minute encoding, the CPU is staying at 1.8GHz more, but still occasionally boosting up to 2.6GHz.
 
Just did 1 minute video in iMovie. Got all the way up to 95C and fan at 6500 rpm. Seems rather hot. But it climbed back down to 53C. Seems like it got very toasty rather quickly.
 
this wasnt a very good test of the CPU you basically just ran one video and some low intensive programmes

A better test of the fan noise would be running 1080p youtube video

or a HD video offline with a more intensive programme like garageband and iphoto, imovie and exporting something

Another good challenge is to import from an SD card
 
I have not read how Apple handles it, but all of my PCs throttle back the turbo when the laptop is not hooked up to external power.

This means it will run slower (and cooler) when not plugged in.

When on AC, the CPU will run faster, and this hotter.

This is not about battery charging temps, etc.

R
 
KPOM said:
Handbrake for Windows is 32-bit only. That said, it seems to be oscillating between 1.8GHz (native speed) and 2.6GHz (Turbo Boost at dual core). It has temporarily hovered at different speeds (1.4 GHz, 2.4GHz), but it mostly splits time between 1.8GHz and 2.6GHz. I can't tell the load on each core since CPU-Z doesn't reveal those details, but Norton Utilities was kind enough to throw out a warning that one of the cores was at 100% utilization.

I'm encoding a standard resolution DVD and am getting an average FPS of about 70fps.

The fan is going at a fast clip, but again, I don't have the exact speed.

Update: About 20 minutes into what would be a 60 minute encoding, the CPU is staying at 1.8GHz more, but still occasionally boosting up to 2.6GHz.
Click to expand...

Hello, windows task manager should show the load on each core, you can start it by typing "taskmgr" in the run menu (if I remember correctly), or bring it up by pressing ctrl-alt-delete if you're using windows 7. However, it's not clear that handbrake will fully load all cores all the time. If not, it would be better to use a program that equally stresses all cores like Prime95.
 
striker33 said:
Do you honestly think Apple would release the thing if there was issues with heat?
Click to expand...

LOL, I've had about 4 different unibody MB/MBP's and 3 of them had heat issues. My 2009 MBP reached 107 degrees and when I returned it to Apple they said it was within limits.

It's a known issue that insane amounts of thermal paste is applied to MBP's, causing more heat development than usual. Search around this forum and you will find lots of people who disassembled their logic board and re-applied thermal paste, gaining much lower temperatures.

There are videos of people literally cooking eggs on their Macbook's, so saying "do you think Apple would release it" doesn't fly. They would and they did.
 
i had severe CPU load and fans spinning like crazy after updating to Mac OSX Lion. I found out that a defective keychain item caused the issues, which i outlined in a thread in the apple discussion forums. also still flash still seems to bring the apple hardware to the edge - updating to flash 11.0 from adobe labs solved that issues for me.
 
I think that thermal paste plays a part here to. Day one on my MBA after indexing, etc, my CPU doesn't go below 55C. Now it barely goes above 50C.

i7, 11"
 
Mikael said:
Yep. People have a tendency to think that whenever something is hot enough to burn you, it must be pretty bad. If Intel's rigorous testing and validation has determined that 100C is safe for these chips, I'd trust that.
Click to expand...

if intel says so, the cpu will handle 100C. But what about the parts next to it, like ssd or whatever else is inside? What does the air have inside actually? Just cpu-ram-ssd ? since the gpu is in the cpu...
 
are we seeing a general trend of those with machines that initially ran very hot / noisy fans now calming down after they have had them for a while or a people still having issues?
 
ishopukisfake said:
this wasnt a very good test of the CPU you basically just ran one video and some low intensive programmes

A better test of the fan noise would be running 1080p youtube video

or a HD video offline with a more intensive programme like garageband and iphoto, imovie and exporting something

Another good challenge is to import from an SD card
Click to expand...

What? Are you responding to me?

I encoded 50 minute HD episodes of Band of brothers, 50 minutes SD episode of Oz and a 20 minute SD episode of family guy. I watched various clips such as YouTube, Mkv and h.264 1080p and SD movies for quite a while. I have taken screenshots of what happens during all of these operations.
 
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