So, I've been playing some games on my new Macbook Pro 17" and I'm noticing the fan going a lot.. and the bottom left corner gets pretty warm... but the top left corner near the the power cord gets really hot... Is this a bad thing? Like, do I not want to play games a lot on my macbook because the heat will mess it up eventually? or is it just normal? Is it bad to have the fan going for hours? It pretty much never runs when I'm just doing normal computing stuff...
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New Macbook Pro & heat
- Thread starter Necross
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Many games (especially 3D ones) are CPU and GPU intensive, thus more power is needed to feed the CPU and GPU, which results in higher temperatures and often higher fan speed(s) on mobile computers.
If the Mac gets too hot, it will shut itself down.
Btw, the CPU and GPU are located on the top left of the Mac, look at iFixIt and its teardowns to learn more.
If the Mac gets too hot, it will shut itself down.
Btw, the CPU and GPU are located on the top left of the Mac, look at iFixIt and its teardowns to learn more.
Cool thanks. That's a nice pic with the heat vision thing 
Seeing that now I just noticed the top middle is real hot for my 17" also, but I never have my hands there so I didn't notice. The corner by the power cord feels hotter though.
I guess I was just worried that playing games all the time would make it be hot all the time, and could eventually lead to some problems later on in it's life...
Seeing that now I just noticed the top middle is real hot for my 17" also, but I never have my hands there so I didn't notice. The corner by the power cord feels hotter though.I guess I was just worried that playing games all the time would make it be hot all the time, and could eventually lead to some problems later on in it's life...
Cool thanks. That's a nice pic with the heat vision thing
I guess I was just worried that playing games all the time would make it be hot all the time, and could eventually lead to some problems later on in it's life...
You are correct. Heat kills electrical components over time. If your going to game heaps , get AppleCare. That will give you three years of safe gaming
The bottom-left corner is where the hard drive is, if you got a usual HDD rather than an SSD, it's normal to get a little warm there.
The two major heat sinks are above the keyboard, beneath the black antenna part, and they can get very hot during intense workload and/or games, I think the left one is the GPU and the right one is the CPU but I don't know for sure.
However the temperature near heat sinks should drop dramatically when you are not playing games, my 17" usually drops to normal temperature about 1 min after I left a game, then the fans return to their quiet mode. This is my first MBP and I'm actually quite impressed by the efficiency of these fans, and the fact that they produce almost non-existent noise when in quiet mode.
The two major heat sinks are above the keyboard, beneath the black antenna part, and they can get very hot during intense workload and/or games, I think the left one is the GPU and the right one is the CPU but I don't know for sure.
However the temperature near heat sinks should drop dramatically when you are not playing games, my 17" usually drops to normal temperature about 1 min after I left a game, then the fans return to their quiet mode. This is my first MBP and I'm actually quite impressed by the efficiency of these fans, and the fact that they produce almost non-existent noise when in quiet mode.
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Wow. Late 2011 17" MBP, bought refurbished.
Suddenly for about 36 hours the corner under the ESC key was too hot to touch, fans roaring -- even with no programs operating. Restarting severa times didn't solve the problem. Seeing over 100 degrees C, in the top toolbar display (FanControl).
Changing Energy Saver, switching the automatic graphics mode change off, various other things over quite a few hours changed nothing.
Finally I tried unplugging the charger and running the battery down for a few hours, then restarting -- and after the restart, something seems to have made the problem go away for now.
Seems like it was locked into some mode that ran terribly hot -- poking around for what else to look out for next time.
Suddenly for about 36 hours the corner under the ESC key was too hot to touch, fans roaring -- even with no programs operating. Restarting severa times didn't solve the problem. Seeing over 100 degrees C, in the top toolbar display (FanControl).
Changing Energy Saver, switching the automatic graphics mode change off, various other things over quite a few hours changed nothing.
Finally I tried unplugging the charger and running the battery down for a few hours, then restarting -- and after the restart, something seems to have made the problem go away for now.
Seems like it was locked into some mode that ran terribly hot -- poking around for what else to look out for next time.
Activity Monitor is a good tool for that.
Seems it's heat from powering external Firewire drive
Only guess so far after checking everything in the usual places -- removing the three external firewire 800 drives daisy-chained together on the one firewire port, and now no heat problem at all.
The first two of those drives are 110v wall-wart self-powered, both with original power supplies plugged in and working.
The third drive on the chain gets power through its firewire connection, but I'd have thought it should have been getting power from the other external drives on the chain.
Well, more experimenting to do. I'll try them one at a time and see if that corner heats up again.
If so, it's probably Applecare Vacation time.
Only guess so far after checking everything in the usual places -- removing the three external firewire 800 drives daisy-chained together on the one firewire port, and now no heat problem at all.
The first two of those drives are 110v wall-wart self-powered, both with original power supplies plugged in and working.
The third drive on the chain gets power through its firewire connection, but I'd have thought it should have been getting power from the other external drives on the chain.
Well, more experimenting to do. I'll try them one at a time and see if that corner heats up again.
If so, it's probably Applecare Vacation time.
No computer should ever get that hot
Intel CPUs temperature thresholds are possibly single digits away from what he had
Deja vu...
First, Why your MacBook Pro runs so hot
Then:
Problem is still there with the rMBPs as well.
When everything is working properly as Apple's engineering team designed it, you should not exceed 90C stable during a heavy workload.
If you are exceeding 95C, you have a problem.
First, Why your MacBook Pro runs so hot
Then:
Problem is still there with the rMBPs as well.
When everything is working properly as Apple's engineering team designed it, you should not exceed 90C stable during a heavy workload.
If you are exceeding 95C, you have a problem.
Wow 32c I might have to do that to my MacBook too! I could only imagine how cool it would also run on Bootcamp