Will I damage/stress my 11" macbook air by gaming?

[darshie76]

I used my Macbook 13" Unibody (got it a couple of months before they turned pro) for gaming and torrents so it was on a lot, one night a loud bang noise awoke me, turns out the battery swelled up, thankfully it didn't explode.

Was it related? no idea, i got a new battery (had to buy it and it was still under applecare, sometimes i really hate not having a direct apple store down here) and sold it to a friend, it's been solid (except the hinges have lost a bit of their strength) ever since.

Battery has nothing to do with this....if the cells are not sealed correctly you can get these kind of problems; and batteries (especially the ones made in china) are more prone to be defective, compared to any other component.

 

[jsolares]

Battery has nothing to do with this....if the cells are not sealed correctly you can get these kind of problems; and batteries (especially the ones made in china) are more prone to be defective, compared to any other component.

Heat affects batteries, heat that because of the Aluminum Case gets spread out to everything

 

[darshie76]

Heat affects batteries, heat that because of the Aluminum Case gets spread out to everything

True, but the battery is a closed system; it is isolated to keep best efficiency; since part of the byproduct of the chemical reaction that produces electricity is also heat....

If you notice the battery gets hot because of that, not because the computer heats up and transfer heat to the battery.

The case is made of aluminum to maximize temperature dispersion...it doesn't necessarily means that the heat goes on the battery (if you notice the battery is always in a place as far as possible from HD and processors).

It is much more common to see a bad battery leaking (in the worst case explode, Li-ion are well known for just burst if they are defective), compared to the damage that you can make to a battery overheating the computer (of course the Li-ion batteries are damaged by heat, but this means using the laptop on top of a blanket without having any temperature exchange...that would kill anything honestly )

This is a nice article about batteries:
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/everyday-tech/lithium-ion-battery1.htm

 

[kyjaotkb]

tl;dr

jk. thanks for the trip down memory lane. i still have the computer i built in 1998 for starcraft and it works fine. voodoo2 on a pentium 2 ftw!

Man, I had a 12MB Voodoo²... on a K6-2 300MHz... OC'd it to 375 and the alim fried... but the PCI card is still in pristine state... remembering hours of UT, Quake 2 & 3, Star Wars Racer, Midtown Madness, etc...

 

[usmc0341]

I play SWTOR with my 11 air 1.4ghz c2d. I have to play with the settings on low but it works ok! The air stays fairly cool, my macbook pro gets a lot hotter