Sounds like a wind tunnel!

[XYZed]

I'm currently messing around on my friends MacBook Pro. It's an earlier one. The first or second model of the MBP to have an isight built in. Anyway. I was playing Enemy Territories on it, and the computer started to sound like it was a space ship trying to take-off! I'm not sure if it's the fans or what but it's really loud and distracting. I tested it on some other things and tried it on really simple browser based games, it even gets noisy on runescape (I don't play runescape, just a test).

Let me copy and paste you some specs.
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
GeForce 8600M GT

So in a week or so I'm getting one of the high end 15" MBP, and now I'm worried that whenever I start playing TF2 or even some simple in Browser game that my computer will start to make a lot of noise. What is going to happen?

 

[HiRez]

Anything that taxes your CPU and GPU a lot (typically games) is probably going to wind up your laptop's fans and make them scream. It sucks, but that is pretty normal. Probably the best thing you can do is to cap the frame rate, as if you don't many games will just try to give you as many frames as it can possibly render, which is likely way more than you need. On some games you can do it through a menu, on many you'll have to pull up a "console" where you can type text commands. For example on World of Warcraft, if you type "/console maxfps 25" it'll cap your frame rate at 25 fps and help cool down your machine and spin the fans down a bit.

As for browser based stuff, you might be out of luck. Typically those are going to be Flash-based games and Flash is very inefficient on OS X. Overheating running Flash applets (even seemingly very simple ones, or even some banner ads) is very common in my experience.

 

[jakeguy99]

It sucks and may be normal for the MBP LOL, but running a GPU at an upwards temp of 80 degrees C is not normal for most computers and is not good for them. This not only wares out fans, but the temperatures can damage other components of your computers. I am an avid gamer on my MBP and have noticed the hot temperatures and really have been quite annoyed with it. One way to try and help the problem is to put a cd case near the back end of your laptop so its about half an inch off of the desk (airflow). Otherwise there isnt much else you can do just got to live with it.