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iEric

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 26, 2003
819
11
Does your Thunderbolt Display run cooler than the old generation LED Display? I switched to take advantage of the expanded ports and seems there is less heat emitting from the display.
 
I also never had a LED display (only entered the Mac world this past may), but my TB display doesn't really get warm at all. I suppose it might depend on what is attached to the Magsafe connector, but when just using my 13" Macbook Pro for normal everyday tasks it doesn't seem to load the TBD's power supply enough to create any significant amount of waste heat...

If I had a 15 or 17 inch MBP and ran something that used the discrete graphics processor and loaded all four CPU cores maybe I'd notice a more significant heat output, but alas.
 
I said yes, but it's very little if any. It runs hot enough as it is.

FYI, you might want to change the question from "Thunderbird" to "Thunderbolt".
 
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Lol oh wow thanks!
 
I was looking at these yesterday in the Apple Store (drooling is more like it) and found that they were all running VERY warm... bordering on hot to the touch. I mean on all edges... the top and the lower left corner being the worst. Is this normal?

I live in an RV, so having something producing this much heat in the Summertime will suck. RV air conditioners already don't work for crap as it is.

Rob
 
I've never had any other display to compare to, I've always been an iMac user until recently. My ATD seems to run fairly cool, just a slightly bit warmer than the room temp and much cooler than my last iMac. I'm not charging anything from it though and don't have anything else hooked up aside from my mac mini so that might make a difference
 
There will be less heat if you:

1.) Run on reduced brightness. 50% brightness doesn't heat the display up much, if at all

2.) Are not using the Magsafe to charge a laptop. Charging a laptop creates significantly more heat (if you know how hot a magsafe AC adapter gets, you know what i'm talking about)
 
I live in an RV, so having something producing this much heat in the Summertime will suck.
It actually doesn't create all that much heat, in absolute terms. Check the Anandtech review. It shows power consumption ranging between less than 25W at minimum brightness and a tad over 100 at maximum, not counting what any connected Macbook may suck down of course.

Now, considering just how bright these Mac displays are (measured over 400 nits), it's going to draw power, but 100W is unlikely to overwhelm even your RV home, and you're not going to find any similarly bright display drawing significantly less either. It takes what it takes to light up a panel as big as this is.

If you want to reduce power consumption, knock down the brightness setting. 100% may well be overkill for your needs. I find about 60% is eminently useful, and at room temp of about 25C the display doesn't heat up at all even running my Macbook Pro 13" off of it.
 
The Thunderbolt display runs a lot cooler than the 30" cinema display. Once the cinema display gets warmed up it gets quite hot to the touch and puts out a fair amount of heat.
 
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