Power of 12" MacBook

[Apples555]

I really like this machine. It looks beautiful, feels great, and is the perfect size.

I will probably purchase one when they get refreshed. My question concerns power. I’m sure the i5 MacBook has enough power for MacOS, but how does it perform under stress? How is cooling handled when it gets hot? I need to occasionally run VMs in VMware, and am curious if this little MacBook will be able to do that.

My work-issued 2015 3.1 i7 MacBook Pro runs them just fine, but it does ramp up the fans occasionally.

 

[EugW]

I really like this machine. It looks beautiful, feels great, and is the perfect size.

I will probably purchase one when they get refreshed. My question concerns power. I’m sure the i5 MacBook has enough power for MacOS, but how does it perform under stress? How is cooling handled when it gets hot? I need to occasionally run VMs in VMware, and am curious if this little MacBook will be able to do that.

My work-issued 2015 3.1 i7 MacBook Pro runs them just fine, but it does ramp up the fans occasionally.

Check out my thread here on MacBook performance vs. heat:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...uns-of-cinebench.2073415/page-2#post-25271927

To summarize the graph in that thread, basically after 30 minutes of sequential Cinebench benchmarks, I lost only 7% of performance due to throttling. That was on a wood table, which acts as an insulator too. The performance loss was less on a granite counter.

Unless you're running hardcore stuff in your VMs, it should be fine. Just make sure you get the 16 GB model.

 

[Apples555]

Thanks for the reply, that's exactly the input I was looking for.

This machine looks fantastic, so thin.