Temperature limit: when do I get anxious?

You get anxious when you either: A: Burn yourself or use your macbook for frying eggs because it is hotter than your stove. Or B: When your macbook shuts itself off because it gets too hot.

Seriously though, it will shut itself off if it gets too hot. (I seem to remember that being 100 something C? I'm not sure I read it a long time ago on these forums when everyone was flipping out about the thermal paste on the original MBPs.)

 

Those are all nice 'n' cool. I hit 180F or so for over an hour using WinClone, and no ill effects. Just keep it well ventilated and it'll take care of itself.

 

It's best to stay below 80 C, although your computer will shut down if it gets too hot, so it's not worth worrying about.

 

Cooling pads are usually a waste of money. Unless the room is stifling hot to begin with, just make sure that the vents on the bottom & rear aren't blocked. Some air also vents through the keyboard; skins may restrict some of that, but normally not enough to overheat a machine unless you're already running hot.

 

Leaving macbook pro in hot car in summer?

I have a related heat issue - I'm taking a car trip and want to bring the macbbook along. Is there a problem if it sits (turned off of course) in a hot car in the summer sun for a number of hours at a time? Someone told me this would definitely be bad for the battery.

 

taken from here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/SP4



Not exactly made for MacBook owners but here you can get an idea of the temperatures a car interior can reach:

http://www.mydogiscool.com/x_car_study.php

If you leave the car closed under the sun the battery may be damaged. The LCD display could also get a damage from that.

 

NO reason to even begin to worry unless your CPU temps get above 85-90C and the fans kick up in speed won't stop the temps from rising further I'd say.

The C2D is rated up to 105C before it'll start shutting down for damage prevention, and even with very high CPU utilization video encoding, I haven't gotten my core temps above 82C or so, and then fans came up and pulled things to ~78C steady.