The problem of excess heat in the MacBook Pro 2011

[EEXOOO]

I have a newly bought 13" base MBP that I use for my desktop replacement.
It is on a mStand and is connected to a Dell U2711 monitor permanently.
I do not turn off my MBP but turn the display off whenever I'm downloading over the night.

I keep a VM (Parallels - Windows 7 HP) running all the time. The things that I do on the MBP are all light on processing power. Stuffs like surfing the net, download torrents, viewing photos, 1080p movies and editing some documents.

Without the VM running, my temperature hovers around 65C to 75C. With the VM running I'm achieving temperatures of around 75C to 85C.

I understand that laptops are supposed to run hotter than their desktop counterpart but staying at around 75C to 85C disturbs me. I believe CPUs are not designed to run under such temperatures > 75% of the time.

I disabled running plugins automatically on my Opera as recommended but do not see much improvements.

Am I doing anything wrong or is this temperature perfectly normal and healthy?

 

[dagamer34]

I have a newly bought 13" base MBP that I use for my desktop replacement.
It is on a mStand and is connected to a Dell U2711 monitor permanently.
I do not turn off my MBP but turn the display off whenever I'm downloading over the night.

I keep a VM (Parallels - Windows 7 HP) running all the time. The things that I do on the MBP are all light on processing power. Stuffs like surfing the net, download torrents, viewing photos, 1080p movies and editing some documents.

Without the VM running, my temperature hovers around 65C to 75C. With the VM running I'm achieving temperatures of around 75C to 85C.

I understand that laptops are supposed to run hotter than their desktop counterpart but staying at around 75C to 85C disturbs me. I believe CPUs are not designed to run under such temperatures > 75% of the time.

I disabled running plugins automatically on my Opera as recommended but do not see much improvements.

Am I doing anything wrong or is this temperature perfectly normal and healthy?

Perfectly normal. That Dell monitor has a LOT of pixels which the Intel HD graphics GPU needs to push plus the pixels on your laptop screen and it's no easy feat. I get about the same numbers with a 15" 2011 MBP and a 27" ACD.

Do remember that running a VM is still a processor-intensive task, even if you aren't actively sending it input. It can easily use every ounce of CPU power available in an effort to run smoothly. Also, with turbo boost, the CPU will overclock itself to get better performance, which means you'll see a higher temp more often than in previous laptops. The temp tops out at around 90C and then it'll back off. Only get worried if the computer is shutting itself off because it's hot, otherwise everything is fine.

 

[EEXOOO]

Perfectly normal. That Dell monitor has a LOT of pixels which the Intel HD graphics GPU needs to push plus the pixels on your laptop screen and it's no easy feat. I get about the same numbers with a 15" 2011 MBP and a 27" ACD.

Do remember that running a VM is still a processor-intensive task, even if you aren't actively sending it input. It can easily use every ounce of CPU power available in an effort to run smoothly. Also, with turbo boost, the CPU will overclock itself to get better performance, which means you'll see a higher temp more often than in previous laptops. The temp tops out at around 90C and then it'll back off. Only get worried if the computer is shutting itself off because it's hot, otherwise everything is fine.

Great to hear! Thanks a lot
I'm pushing 90+C while using Max to convert FLAC to ALAC though, a little more and it will shut down. Let's hope it will not come to that.

 

[Aquaporin]

The heat issue has resolved in my MBP. I am not sure what happened, but it is running a 30 *C and the fans don't turn on anymore for the visualizer. Now if only the HD3000 wasn't a crap card.

 

[KevinRightWing]

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Since I upgraded from the 2.16 core duo MacBook pro, no other laptop in my Mac future will ever feel hot.

 

[Crunch]

Great informative posts! We should do a poll and see how fast our fans run and under which circumstances. I highly recommend iStat Menus! You can have all your stats neatly tucked away in the menu bar and get tremendous detail as to each component in your Mac. It's also highly configurable.

Anyway, so mine runs hot to the point where it's annoyingly loud, iStat Menus displays that both fans (right and left) top out at 5,500rpm, which is probably a software limitation, because I've seen other posts where people say their MBP's are experiencing over 6,000rpm.

Aren't these fans going to eventually fail and perhaps sooner rather than later if they constantly run at 5,000-6,000rpm? I'm asking because I've had nothing but laptops and all of them ThinkPad's for eleven (11) years before switching to the Mac (1 yr. on an iMac and now I'm on my first MacBook Pro). I changed laptops frequently, so I've been on a number of machines, some of which also ran hot and the fan(s) was(were) loud as well, but nothing close to this 2011 17" MBP. I know that OS X Lion won't fix anything either. The heat is simply there and needs to be dealt with or the CPU will fry fairly quickly. Should I maybe switch to a 2010 17" MBP? Are they less hot/noisy?

I'd love to get as much feedback on the above as possible and please don't misunderstand: I'm not hatin' on the MBP. lol...I love the design, the screen is beautiful (albeit still not IPS...Grr) and the keyboard is a dream. Thank you all very much!