Macbook Gaming Heat Discussion

[Zerohm]

So I recently bought an Aluminum Macbook (2.4 GHz C2D, 4 GB RAM). I'm a casual gamer, but the Pro was just too big for me. I was nervous about the NVIDIA GPU sharing main memory, but have been pleasantly surprised. WoW runs very well, 60 FPS in light traffic, 30 FPS in heavy traffic, medium graphics settings. But as everyone knows, the back half of the chassis (above and below the keyboard) gets quite hot.

That doesn't bother me too much. I actually like the fact that the aluminum chassis also acts as a heat sink, and the heat is away from the battery and hard drive. (Also my friend's pro gets just as hot while gaming) However, I need to know that I'm not shortening the life of the laptop. Consumer electronics should be able to sustain real world loads indefinitely under appropriate conditions (reasonable room temperature, sitting on a flat table).

I'm new to Mac, so what is a good temperature monitoring tool? What are good/bad temps? I want to be able to game for a few hours a night, and still get 4-5 years out of this laptop, so if my temps are going to shorten the life of the laptop, I'll get one of those lap/desk fan stand coolers.

 

[mmntech]

Download the iStat Nano widget for measuring temps as well as a whole bunch of other performance measures. It's on Apple's site. Apple systems do get hot though. I guess you could try one of those USB laptop coolers. Some say they do nothing, others swear by them.

 

[Zerohm]

Cool, thanks.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind using a cooler at home, but certainly wouldn't want to travel with it.

 

[RandomFool]

Originally posted by: mmntech
Download the iStat Nano widget for measuring temps as well as a whole bunch of other performance measures. It's on Apple's site. Apple systems do get hot though. I guess you could try one of those USB laptop coolers. Some say they do nothing, others swear by them.

In theory, since the case is sort of a giant heatsink the coolers might actually work pretty well.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

smcFanControl will let you control the fans.

 

[Kmax82]

Yea.. smcFanControl is great. It drops my temps by 5-10C when I put the fans as high as they go. I don't personally know the implications of the heat, but I would hope that Apple has stress tested their laptops to know whether they can last that long. But the reality of my situation is that I don't keep computers longer than 3 years, so I'm not sure what the repercussions of the heat will be past that point.

 

[VinylxScratches]

I've made my Macbook 1.83Ghz run for hours on high fan. It's still alive and I plan on using this laptop for another year or 2 before I upgrade. I got it back in 2007.

 

[TheStu]

All processors have a thermal envelope that they can operate in. They also all have onboard monitoring systems that talk back to the chipset so that they know how hot they are running. Mobile processors, for obvious reasons, are designed to withstand higher temps than desktop processors, and IIRC, Mobile Core and Core 2 Duos are rated for somewhere in the neighborhood 90C. So even if you are cooking along at 75C or more you are doing just fine.

Generally speaking the system will not allow itself to exceed spec and will shut itself off it temps go outside of range.

 

[mmntech]

Originally posted by: RandomFool

Originally posted by: mmntech
Download the iStat Nano widget for measuring temps as well as a whole bunch of other performance measures. It's on Apple's site. Apple systems do get hot though. I guess you could try one of those USB laptop coolers. Some say they do nothing, others swear by them.

In theory, since the case is sort of a giant heatsink the coolers might actually work pretty well.

Yeah, now that I brought it up I might pick one of these up myself. They're not too expensive. Should come in handy for video editing and transcoding with CUDA. I find it's the GPU that puts out the most heat. That's what's been killing the 9600GTs in the Pros. Similar problem to the 360's RRoD.

 

[Zerohm]

Well, I tested the istat nano widget. I saw 84C on the CPU, but then that came down to about 80 or less. I guess there was some delay in the fans getting cranked up. I was playing WoW with just the laptop sitting on my legs.