Is it bad to have the fans running?

Your MBP is smart enough to know when it is overheating, it will automatically shut down to protect itself if it does. To monitor temperature you can install the iStat Pro widget, it will tell you vital information like temperatures and fan speeds. You can find iStat Pro at:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/istatpro.html

Regards,

Roger

As long as it doesn't overheat things will be OK and, no harm in investigating other ways to cool down the MBP when playing intensively either, there's cooling pads and fans and other things out there ...

If the fans are running, then it is unlikely to overheat. I would be worried if it was getting hot and the fans DIDN'T come on. So I think they are doing what they were designed to do.

As the other poster observed, the real issue is WHY are the fans running all the time? Are you running some apps that are heavily stressing the CPU?

Open Activity Monitor (In your Utilities folder) and click on the CPU column so that the highest percentages are at the top. What processes are at the top, perhaps at 100%?

Cheers!

iskihood wrote:
Is it bad for my macbook pro to be playing counter strike source for long amounts of time which makes the fans run this whole time?

in a MBP the fan is ALWAYS run, at least at 2000 rpm.
During a conter strike session the fan is probably running at an higher rate to keep the cpu's temperature under control, so you can hear a louder noise.

It's OK to let the fans run for long periods as long as you don't artificially increase the speed so they're over working. As far as max temperatures, Apple does not publish that information however as I previously stated you do not need to worry about the temperatures because your MBP has sensors in it will shut the computer down when it senses it is too hot.

Regards,

Roger

Your MBP can either run its fans or overheat. It's a lot better off running its fans than overheating. If you don't want it to get hot and you don't want its fans to run, don't play your game. If you'd rather play the game, let your machine cool itself as it's designed to do. The harder you work it, the more the fans will run at high speeds and the sooner they'll wear out, but they may still last several years.

iskihood wrote:
I know this but is it bad to have my fans running at a high speed for long amounts of time??
Also what is the max temp a macbook pro can be at?

First of all, a notebook it's not the best choice at all if you are an "hard core gamer" that spend a lot of time playing 3d-intensive games.
But it's ok to have the fan running at high speed to keep temperature under control, even for several hours a day