Hi everyone, heard so many mixed stories about the MBA when it comes to basic tasks, some people saying their machines run cool others claiming high temperatures with light use, it does seem to be more the i5 users complaining of these high temps. I was wondering if some i3 users could let me know what sort of temperatures they get with basic use: my typical use would consist of a few office tabs open at the same time, safari with too many tabs open at once (I really need to sort that bad habit out lol) and probably a youtube video/netflix show playing whilst these other apps are open in the background. In the future i may consider using an external monitor as well.
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MBA i3 users, what sort of temperatures does your machine run at with light use?
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My usually runs in the range 40c to 50c whith what could be concidered as light use (remote VS coding, Safari browsing with a couple of tabs, listen to rafio, MS teams and Slack chatting, e-mail, writing documents etc.). Only on VC does the range move to 70c to 80c.
Just got my i5 Air today. Using it right now. The fan hasn't come on yet, but dang, the metal casing above the F6, F7 and F8 keys is scalding hot to the touch! And that's with nothing open, just Safari and the Macrumors website. Granted, I've only had the thing for a few hours, so it might cool down with use. But so far, it's pretty dang hot.
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Would be great if users could add whether they are running their MBA connected to an external Display also, and if so, at what resolution. If I upgrade from my 2015 MBA to an i3 or i5 2020 MBA it will also have to drive my 4k display all day long, and it would be interesting to hear real life experiences with that use case. Thanks in advance for chiming in!
With that specific workload you mentioned open, my CPU temps on the i3 are ranging between 60-70. Not uncomfortable on the bottom case, but not exactly ice cold either. Fans coming on intermittently, but that's to do with turbo boost.
It's worth mentioning that with the copper mod the temps would much more likely be in the 50-60 range with fan off given the data set collected from users before/after. Head on over to the MBA 2020 Heatsink thread if you're interested, it's quite easy to do.
What? This is the first time I'm hearing about this. Can you point me somewhere where I can read more about this please?
Yeah first time I'm hearing that too. As far as I know, there's a theory that the i3 heat sink is aluminium and the i5/i7 is copper coated.
As far as I know, nobody has weighed them yet to check the difference, and from photos it looks like both heat sinks are corrugated.
First day. Look at Activity Monitor, CPU tab, %CPU column and see what's going on -- likely spotlight indexing, and also a good chance photos is doing its thing with whatever you had in icloud. Other sync processes may well be running a bit of CPU in the background. Also check the Energy tab in Activity Monitor and the Energy Impact column.
FYI - the same spot on my i5 MBA case is reading 87F right now using an infrared thermometer. My usual mix of safari, mail, notes, etc.
MBA 2020 i5&i7 Copper and Corrugated
MBA 2020 i3 Ribbed heatsink not corrugated & aluminum.
So as a layperson, what difference does that make? Hasnt testing shown so far that i3 runs cooler and quieter?
It has, yes. Although everyone here is mostly posting from a sample size of one, the i3 does run consistently cooler and quieter. I'd recommend the Notebookcheck review of the i3 - it's got some good data as to how much.
There are some users who appear to have won the 'silicon lottery' and have cool, quiet i5s and i7s, but it looks to be the exception rather than the norm.
It does, but i5 still runns hotter than i3, so why does it matter ?
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On what data do you make that assertion?
Yet oddly enough, when get away from a mac enthusiast group and check consumer reviews of the i5 MBA, it seems the folks mentioning heat or noise are in a distinct minority.
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What do you mean by hotter?
CPU temp? Very few folks find themselves touching the CPU.
IMHO what matters is the bottom case temp, and less so the top case temps.
So if if there's quantitative case temp data please point me to it.
With my sample size of one, my i5's case stays comfortable. Presently 82F under the CPU location. 85F near F6.
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On what data do you make that assertion?
Yet oddly enough, when get away from a mac enthusiast group and check consumer reviews of the i5 MBA, it seems the folks mentioning heat or noise are in a distinct minority.
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What do you mean by hotter?
CPU temp? Very few folks find themselves touching the CPU.
IMHO what matters is the bottom case temp, and less so the top case temps.
So if if there's quantitative case temp data please point me to it.
With my sample size of one, my i5's case stays comfortable. Presently 82F under the CPU location. 85F near F6.
We've been through this before - anecdotally. On my own experience (three 2020 MBAs). On the experience of others.
Clearly, as you point out, many customers are happy with them. But, as I've pointed out before, you won't find thousands of posts of 'Macbook Air 2017/2018/2019 hot' because it wasn't a significant enough issue, for a significant enough portion of buyers, to drive discussion.
Again, it is excellent your i5 runs cool. Mine didn't. We could speculate all day as to the reasons that might be, but without having them side by side, it's just speculation. Interestingly, I did return our second i3 to the physical Apple Store yesterday, the one I was desperately trying to get Bootcamp running acceptably on, unsuccessfully. When I came in, the blue-shirt-guy asked 'Was it too hot?'
Again, just an anecdote, but he told me they've been getting more returns than normal with the 2020 Macbook Airs (sample size of one major metro store in Australia, still not exactly scientific). Right out of the MacRumors playbook, he asked me if I'd be interested in a Macbook Pro, as it had just come out and 'nobody is returning these so they should be fine'. I told him my 2019 worked fine in both OSX and Windows 10 and I was just after the better keyboard, so I'll be right.
Your 2020 i5 works fine, many others seem to work fine, but an unknown number don't, that's why so many people are coming here.
I know you're more worried about case temps than CPU temps as you've often said, but high CPU temps more often will (again, probably) lead to lesser internal longevity. I'm not questioning the design of Ice Lake, the turbo boost function, or claiming 'thermal throttling'. I'm just used to OEMs (even Apple) pushing products out on a yearly cycle, because the demands of the market don't allow for multi-year testing.
So, if I had to choose (which I did) whether I'd prefer a laptop whose CPU sits around the 60s or the 70s-80s, I'd choose 60s. Call it paranoia if you want, but I'm spending so much money I want it to last for as long as possible.
@RegularGuy09 - here's the comparison I was talking about. Unless the i5 and i3s I had were faulty, and unless Notebookcheck's review versions were faulty (pretty unlikely I think), these figures for temperature/sound match up with my experience.
Pointing this one out again - if you care about noise at all, the i3 is probably the way to go. You'll notice there the average decibel level for load is 31.6 for the i3 and 45.5 for the i5.
The decibel scale isn't linear, it's logarithmic. An increase of 13.9 dB(A) makes it about four-to-five times as loud in the real world under load. In my usage, 'load' for the i5 where the fans became noticeable and intrustive was a few tabs of a Chromium-based browser, streaming a movie, and editing a PDF.
That's something I'm currently doing on the 2019 silently, and my partner is handling a similar workload next to me on the couch and it's also inaudible (on the 2020 i3). Again, anecdotes, but given we don't have access to a giant sample size, it's the best we've got.
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I think the story has now changed with the latest update 10.15.5. It appears they did some good changes for battery life, Temperature and Fans.
Maybe it was a different story on the first lots and running 10.15.4? IDK I just got mine last Thursday and it has only seen 10.15.5 i7/16/256 .
Maybe it was a different story on the first lots and running 10.15.4? IDK I just got mine last Thursday and it has only seen 10.15.5 i7/16/256 .
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We've been through this before - anecdotally. On my own experience (three 2020 MBAs). On the experience of others.
Clearly, as you point out, many customers are happy with them. But, as I've pointed out before, you won't find thousands of posts of 'Macbook Air 2017/2018/2019 hot' because it wasn't a significant enough issue, for a significant enough portion of buyers, to drive discussion.
Again, it is excellent your i5 runs cool. Mine didn't. We could speculate all day as to the reasons that might be, but without having them side by side, it's just speculation. Interestingly, I did return our second i3 to the physical Apple Store yesterday, the one I was desperately trying to get Bootcamp running acceptably on, unsuccessfully. When I came in, the blue-shirt-guy asked 'Was it too hot?'
Again, just an anecdote, but he told me they've been getting more returns than normal with the 2020 Macbook Airs (sample size of one major metro store in Australia, still not exactly scientific). Right out of the MacRumors playbook, he asked me if I'd be interested in a Macbook Pro, as it had just come out and 'nobody is returning these so they should be fine'. I told him my 2019 worked fine in both OSX and Windows 10 and I was just after the better keyboard, so I'll be right.
Your 2020 i5 works fine, many others seem to work fine, but an unknown number don't, that's why so many people are coming here.
I know you're more worried about case temps than CPU temps as you've often said, but high CPU temps more often will (again, probably) lead to lesser internal longevity. I'm not questioning the design of Ice Lake, the turbo boost function, or claiming 'thermal throttling'. I'm just used to OEMs (even Apple) pushing products out on a yearly cycle, because the demands of the market don't allow for multi-year testing.
So, if I had to choose (which I did) whether I'd prefer a laptop whose CPU sits around the 60s or the 70s-80s, I'd choose 60s. Call it paranoia if you want, but I'm spending so much money I want it to last for as long as possible.
@RegularGuy09 - here's the comparison I was talking about. Unless the i5 and i3s I had were faulty, and unless Notebookcheck's review versions were faulty (pretty unlikely I think), these figures for temperature/sound match up with my experience.
Pointing this one out again - if you care about noise at all, the i3 is probably the way to go. You'll notice there the average decibel level for load is 31.6 for the i3 and 45.5 for the i5.
The decibel scale isn't linear, it's logarithmic. An increase of 13.9 dB(A) makes it about four-to-five times as loud in the real world under load. In my usage, 'load' for the i5 where the fans became noticeable and intrustive was a few tabs of a Chromium-based browser, streaming a movie, and editing a PDF.
That's something I'm currently doing on the 2019 silently, and my partner is handling a similar workload next to me on the couch and it's also inaudible (on the 2020 i3). Again, anecdotes, but given we don't have access to a giant sample size, it's the best we've got.
Apple MacBook Air 2020 Review: Is the Core i3 the better choice?
The entry-level version of the new 2020 MacBook Air is in review. Is the Core i3 processor sufficient for your everyday tasks?www.notebookcheck.net
My main point is you, at least in the post I quoted, take a handful of anecdotal bits and then make broad generalizations as if there were real evidence to support the claims.
IMHO that is a disservice to folks considering what system to purchase.
I encourage you to share opinions and your own experiences. But perhaps we can be careful not to position those as general fact about the broad population of devices when there isn't anything to support such an assertion?
my i5 2020 MBA is mostly cool other than for very big software installs. I'm using it for Xcode dev work and general use.
Speaking from personal experience, my i5 MBA initially blasted fans when doing nothing in particular.
I traced it to a hung up sync process to my Synology Diskstation - cloudsyncdaemon was clobbering the CPU.
I reset the sync setup and the problem went away.
Problem was the sync software not behaving well after a Time Machine restore.
Maybe my case was the only one - but maybe others have had something similar happen but didn't realize it? Then when they got a different machine the software hiccup didn't occur?
Pure speculation of course. Yet worth thinking about. I remember trading posts here with someone else who found a rogue software app clobbering CPU and their MBA went cool and quiet after fixing the bit of software that'd gone sideways.
Yes this can happen unknowingly. Unless you dig into it via Activity monitor or another process app. I installed a new Canon printer yesterday Pixma TR8520 and downloaded the cannon software. It was hung up on a start up verification from Canon and drove this MBA nuts until I force ejected it, CPU Max and Fans Max. Then I installed the same software on my 2018 Mac Mini and although the fans did not go Max or as much heat it was using 100% CPU for the same thing and not behaving normal. It was just some garbage software Canon wanted to keep track of everything I printed. It's gone and so is the problem. A great software that I have used for years is Etrecheck, its free and it detects unwanted files and other problems for your Mac. I just upgraded to Etrecheck Pro for free yesterday.
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They all run warm when you first initialize it. This is true with all Apple laptops and even desktops. Don't start judging it for at least 24 hours. Keep the lid open and the power plugged in so it finishes its indexing. Tomorrow will be a different story.
Could you try open few tabs in chrome and see does it reach 100 C ?
In Max Tech's review it could reached 100 C in MacBook Air 2020 i5.