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Will the MacBook Air get damaged by 'hard' gaming?

N

NeonBible

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 26, 2012
87
1
Hey, everyone!

Today I just bought the game LIMBO from the Mac App Store, and so far so good! What a nice game, and a great atmosphere! I've connected the MacBook to a 32" LCD-TV, and find the set-up pretty great! But, as far as I've played this game today, the fan has constantly been on 6500 rpm and the CPU has been somewhere between 57–60 degree Celsius. I've played around five hours today with some breaks now and then. So my question is: Will the MacBook Air (13" mid 2012, 128 GB SSD, 4 GB RAM) get damaged by this 'hard' gaming due to the fact that it wasn't constructed for gaming purposes?
 
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NeonBible said:
Will the MacBook Air (13" mid 2012, 128 GB, 4 GB RAM) get damaged by this 'hard' gaming due to the fact that it wasn't constructed for gaming purposes?
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Would you ask this question of any other laptop or desktop? If you created and used complicated Excel spreadsheets, would you ask this question? Are certain laptops constructed for running complicated spreadsheets? How about really long Word documents?

No, you are not going to damage your MBA by 'hard' gaming.
 
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You can easily shorten the lifespan of the fan if it constantly has to run at max speed. Other than that, it's unlikely anything else will get damaged. Intel chips are really good about shutting everything down if the temperature starts to reach a level that will damage them, and you aren't anywhere nears those temperatures (100C+).
 
Yes, extended game play will shorten the life of your CPU due to thermal stress.
From an overclocker forum: "Heat does degrade your CPU in a measurable way. Heat will kill your CPU, and the more heat, the quicker. It should be your objective, overclocking or not, to run your systems at the lowest possible temperature." Running your Air close to its thermal limit of 105C will indeed shorten its life.

http://www.overclockers.com/overclockings-impact-on-cpu-life/
 
calvol said:
Yes, extended game play will shorten the life of your CPU due to thermal stress.
From an overclocker forum: "Heat does degrade your CPU in a measurable way. Heat will kill your CPU, and the more heat, the quicker. It should be your objective, overclocking or not, to run your systems at the lowest possible temperature." Running your Air close to its thermal limit of 105C will indeed shorten its life.

http://www.overclockers.com/overclockings-impact-on-cpu-life/
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You'll most likely end up replacing your laptop before the CPU dies.
 
hehe, LIMBO is 'hard' gaming?

Don't sweat it. That new-and-improved ivy bridge was put in there to improve graphics performance. I know it is a pretty computer, but it is also built to work. I run Tribes: Ascend, Skyrim, Civ 5, and others at higher temperatures than what you're getting. I'm not worried at all.

Your mac will turn off if you're ever running so hot that damage will occur.
 
No, unless your definition of hard gaming is hitting the keyboard in frustration.
 
ZBoater said:
You mean instead of 15 years of use he'll only get 14 1/2? :confused:
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Not sure if you're serious, but a fan running at 6000 rpms constantly is going to have problems well before a fan that runs at 2000 rpms. Running any mechanical device at it's limit is going to wear it out quicker.
 
Yes, he's serious. Noone should lose any sleep about lowering the lifetime of the fan in these machines - I'm sure they are engineered to handle the load for a long, long time.
 
NeonBible said:
Hey, everyone!

Today I just bought the game LIMBO fra the Mac App Store, and so far so good! What a nice game, and a great atmosphere! I've connected the MacBook to a 32" LCD-TV, and find the set-up pretty great! But, as far as I've played this game today, the fan has constantly been on 6500 rpm and the CPU has been somewhere between 57–60 degree Celsius. I've played around five hours today with some breaks now and then. So my question is: Will the MacBook Air (13" mid 2012, 128 GB SSD, 4 GB RAM) get damaged by this 'hard' gaming due to the fact that it wasn't constructed for gaming purposes?
Click to expand...

No, the computer would shutdown before any damage could be caused.
 
TheRealDamager said:
Yes, he's serious. Noone should lose any sleep about lowering the lifetime of the fan in these machines - I'm sure they are engineered to handle the load for a long, long time.
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I'm not saying lose sleep over it, I'm just saying it's true. The fans in the macbook pro I gamed on pretty hard for a year became extremely noisy and sluggish sounding. Replacing fans is a tiny cost, I'm just telling the OP that it's a possible consequence of running them at full speed all the time.
 
My biggest concern is if it will impact the battery. I wonder how warm the battery gets while gaming...
 
Not trying to hi-jack the thread, but those of you who have bought LIMBO, how is it? Pretty fun and worth buying?
 
Sam4nd said:
Not trying to hi-jack the thread, but those of you who have bought LIMBO, how is it? Pretty fun and worth buying?
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It's awesome, and definitely worth it. It is more demanding than you'd think, and I got a few hours out of a full battery charge while playing it.

It's really too bad you didn't pick it up when the humble bundle had it. That bundle was awesome, and amnesia and bastion were well worth it too.
 
asting said:
It's awesome, and definitely worth it. It is more demanding than you'd think, and I got a few hours out of a full battery charge while playing it.

It's really too bad you didn't pick it up when the humble bundle had it. That bundle was awesome, and amnesia and bastion were well worth it too.
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Amnesia is an amazing, genre-changing game. Can't wait for the sequel.

Well worth knocking some time off your MBA's lifespan.
 
Thanks for replies, everyone! And yeah, it's good to know that I can have a little fun with my MacBook Air without ruining it :D

Belgrano said:
hehe, LIMBO is 'hard' gaming?

Don't sweat it. That new-and-improved ivy bridge was put in there to improve graphics performance. I know it is a pretty computer, but it is also built to work. I run Tribes: Ascend, Skyrim, Civ 5, and others at higher temperatures than what you're getting. I'm not worried at all.

Your mac will turn off if you're ever running so hot that damage will occur.
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Good to know! And LIMBO isn't really hard gaming by any means, but it's just the fact that I never played on my MacBook Air mid 2011, and therefore want to take extra care of my new MacBook Air mid 2012 due to the fact that it's, yes – brand new :)

theSeb said:
No, unless your definition of hard gaming is hitting the keyboard in frustration.
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Now I'm aware of that! :D

x24 said:
My biggest concern is if it will impact the battery. I wonder how warm the battery gets while gaming...
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I just finished the game, through two charges (spend around 6 hours) and had the same thought, too. I noticed how much longer it took the MacBook to fully charge while gaming, but as everyone else has said here: It's build to be used – even on hard tasks :)

Sam4nd said:
Not trying to hi-jack the thread, but those of you who have bought LIMBO, how is it? Pretty fun and worth buying?
Click to expand...
Bought the game yesterday. Played throught it within the next 6 hours – and it was pretty awesome! Great atmosphere, beautiful graphics, creepy and great sound effects, fun challenges etc. It's like a 'normal' platformer with an oustanding atmosphere and feel to it. And not to mention the killing scenes. You can somehow compare it to a dark version of Mario.

And this comes from a non-gamer.
 
Nerio27 said:
Not sure if you're serious, but a fan running at 6000 rpms constantly is going to have problems well before a fan that runs at 2000 rpms. Running any mechanical device at it's limit is going to wear it out quicker.
Click to expand...

Although conventional wisdom may seem to support that statement, it is not necessarily true. I recall hot wiring a fan on a PC and it was running full blast 24x7 for 10 years. It stopped running when I turned the PC off to junk it.

The chances of the MBA fan failing because it runs at 6000 rpm "constantly" over the 3-4 years most people will keep theirs are slim to none.
 
Wouldn't it be really hard to do 'hard gaming' on a MBA? The fact that it wouldn't be able to cope with it in the first place, surely?
 
I have my 2012 MacBook Air running 24 hours a day, with VMWare and Win 7 doing data collection while I am watching netflix on the Mac side and playing games off and on and yes it heats up sometimes but never am I concerned about damaging it. (It is made to run as long as you want for whatever tasks to give it) Just enjoy you Mac!
 
AlexBass said:
Wouldn't it be really hard to do 'hard gaming' on a MBA? The fact that it wouldn't be able to cope with it in the first place, surely?
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Since we are on the topic of "hard gaming", I was just wondering are there any games available on the mac that the macbook air 2012 can't handle. I am not talking about not running games at the top graphical level with everything on ultra, rather is there any game that refuses to run on the macbook air 2012 because it does not met the minimum requirements.

I have so far thrown all my mac games (not a huge collection, mostly blizzard games) at my tiny 11" i7/8/128 and it seems to run it pretty well.

The greatest improvement coming from World of Warcraft. Use to run it on a 13" 1.86/2gb/128 and later on 13" i5/4/128. The problem I encountered with those 2 machines is that ram would fill out pretty fast, about 30 mins to 1.5 hours for the first and anywhere from 1 to 3 hrs for the second. Exploration and Raiding environment, attached to a Dell 3008 WFP monitor. I am no super computer person so pretty sure i might be totally wrong but what I have observed so far with those 2 airs is once it starts paging to the flash storage, the game begins to jerk ever so slightly, like when i do a sudden turn in the game or pan sharply to the right or left. Nothing too horrible and easily solved with a quick restart. Have not encounter any problems with the 2012 air yet, coincidently 0 paging after long hours of World of Warcraft.

I am wondering is this improvement to gaming just because of the ram, or does the improved intel cpu/gpu combo also help. I am seeing improved frame rates across all my games too.

So 2 questions really,

1. Are there any mac games that the new air can't handle.
2. Are the improvements to gaming mainly due to the increase in ram (ram/Vram both in speed and size) or ivy bridge.

Thanks.
 
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