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MBP temperature while playing WOW

sinser

sinser

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 16, 2003
549
0
I'm wondering what can of temperatures you get while playing WOW on a MBP.
Yesterday I limited the FPS of the game to 30, this has yield a very quiet performance of the game: laptop seems seems less stressed and fan speed has decreased from 5500 rpm to 3500 rpm. Nonetheless the temperature of the laptop is kind of stuck at 71-73 Celsius (161 F for Americans). Is this a normal working condition ?
 
I haven't played for a while (I cancel my account during the summer). However, I do remember that my uMBP was getting VERY HOT but it did play the game very well.

Cheers.
 
It's not unheard of, are you using the machine on a hard surface?

I use the River design iLap stand, it works a treat for all MBP lap stuff not just WoW.

Get the iStat Pro widget if you haven't already, the GPU reading can get a bit scary sometimes...!
 
WinterMute said:
It's not unheard of, are you using the machine on a hard surface?

I use the River design iLap stand, it works a treat for all MBP lap stuff not just WoW.

Get the iStat Pro widget if you haven't already, the GPU reading can get a bit scary sometimes...!
Click to expand...

Oh...I'm using all the tricks. I have a Griffin Elevator. If I touch the upper left side of the case after the framerate cap, it feels MUCH less hot, but iStat still reports 72 C degrees.
 
sinser said:
Oh...I'm using all the tricks. I have a Griffin Elevator. If I touch the right side of the case after the framerate cap, it feels MUCH less hot, but iStat still reports 72 C degrees.
Click to expand...

OK, then you're doing the right things, yes it gets a bit toasty, make sure the ambient room temperature doesn't rise too.
 
Interesting this has been a concern for me of late. I am on a UMB though, are you just running the 9400m? My temps average 70-74C and the fans are usually on at 5500-6100 (SMC Fan) max the entire session which kind of bothers me. I am playing on a hard wood table though w/o a cooler of any sorts.

I may try capping the framerate and see how that goes b/c I was originally doing ultra (playing Vanilla WoW) and that got hot so I turned down some gfx but still gets hot. How do you go about capping at 30FPS?
 
aznguyen316 said:
Interesting this has been a concern for me of late. I am on a UMB though, are you just running the 9400m? My temps average 70-74C and the fans are usually on at 5500-6100 (SMC Fan) max the entire session which kind of bothers me. I am playing on a hard wood table though w/o a cooler of any sorts.

I may try capping the framerate and see how that goes b/c I was originally doing ultra (playing Vanilla WoW) and that got hot so I turned down some gfx but still gets hot. How do you go about capping at 30FPS?
Click to expand...

To cap just use the command

/console maxfps #desiredframerate
 
sinser said:
Oh...I'm using all the tricks. I have a Griffin Elevator. If I touch the upper left side of the case after the framerate cap, it feels MUCH less hot, but iStat still reports 72 C degrees.
Click to expand...

I had the same problem. Used the Griffin thing, too. Eventually the heat lead to glitches, then KPs and all sorts of trouble. When I took it in for service they ended up gutting the thing and replacing almost every part of it except the drives.
 
Use smcfancontrol as well and let it run at max rpm as soon as you startup wow. Also, make sure your mbp isn't on a soft area as it cools from it's body as well. Next to that, use /console maxfps 30 (can be higher/lower depending on what fps you want) to lower the fps so your gpu isn't pushing it's limit the whole time.

With the above, I'm around 62 degrees while raiding.
 
/console maxfps 30
/console maxfpsbk 8

these worked wonders for me already! no more max fan and temps stay around 72C no higher so far.

maxfpsbk is good for when the program is not at focus -in background, if you're afk or somthing, FPS will drop to the min (8FPS is the min. atm) so like me, I use it while I scan using auctioneer or if I am doing something else while WoW is running. it's like it's not even open!
 
I play cod4 and qauke wars and my left fingers start to burn since the motherboard is underneath!!! I can only play for 30mins because my fingers start to hurt.
 
There's definitely something wrong with your mac. I have a Macbook and a Macbook Pro. And the 3rd generation macbook GMA950 can run it very smoothly without any large increase in the temperature.
 
I have a 15" Unibody MBP late 08 and it also becomes extremely hot when using the nvidia graphics card. My GPU would go up to 98 C. I took it to the Apple Store because eventually the machine would lock up. The guy told me that there are reports of that happening and I could leave it with him to get tested for a faulty GPU, which, if was the case, I'd lose my MBP for about 2 weeks and I wasn't willing to do that right then. But I'm really considering taking it back and having it fixed before the warranty expires in Sept.
 
aznguyen316 said:
maxfpsbk is good for when the program is not at focus -in background
Click to expand...

Good tip, I didn't know about that one. Thanks.

But yeah, maxfps can make a huge difference in temperature on a laptop, not to mention battery life (not that you'd be likely to play WoW on battery very often, but you never know). I usually keep mine capped at 25 fps when I'm not on a desktop.
 
Yeah, my first batch MBP gets pretty darn hot playing wow, or doing anything that utilizes the hardware pretty well. It also gets hot just sitting there for awhile. It doesn't bother me when its on the desk, but when I'm using it on the go on my lap its hot.
 
I had a late 2007 15.4" MBP. When I played WoW on it the graphics temp got up to about 95 C. That was an 8600 GT.

I sold the MBP to my brother because I didn't want to be playing on a machine at that temp. Bought a Windows laptop instead and, on the battery without a cooling pad, that got up to 105 degrees once.

So yeah.. moral of the story is.. laptops get hot!

On my current 13" MBP I get into the 70s but not much higher so I guess the cooling has improved, plus the graphics (9400M) are less intensive.

I quit WoW though, so I only tested it out. I play The Sims 3 on the MBP and it's a lot better in terms of temperature.
 
sinser said:
I'm wondering what can of temperatures you get while playing WOW on a MBP.
Yesterday I limited the FPS of the game to 30, this has yield a very quiet performance of the game: laptop seems seems less stressed and fan speed has decreased from 5500 rpm to 3500 rpm. Nonetheless the temperature of the laptop is kind of stuck at 71-73 Celsius (161 F for Americans). Is this a normal working condition ?
Click to expand...

lol i've seen it hit 96C before..These things do get hot
 
Do you think it really make any difference to your top end temp if you have a 3rd party software or just allowing our Mac to control it's temp?
 
Shame you can't do this in Sims3. My fans go crazy when I play it. Spore on the other hand does not cause the same problem.
 
Temp on WinXP

I have been currently playing WoW on my XP partition and the GPU gets about 68C and both of the CPU cores get about 55C when playing. I have found the game runs MUCH COOLER when on XP. The fans are going about 3500rpm average, I am also using a Targus chill pad. I play WoW on medium settings and capped the fps at 30.
 
My MBP (see sig) while playing at just above minimum settings(view distance set to max, player textures set to max, particle density set to medium, no fps cap) will have the processor in the 72 to 82 degrees Celsius range and the gpu will go from 62 to 68 degrees Celsius range.

A year ago, playing TBC expansions, the temperature ranges were 2 to 4 degrees Celsius lower.

I have been contemplating reapplying thermal paste but the laptop at idle and low loads has below average temperatures from what I'm seeing on this board.
 
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