New 2011 MacBook Pro Heating Issue?

Test Type: All
Repetitions: 10
Instances:4

Temp Ranged from 88-94 degrees Celsius, Fans kicked in and ran anywhere from 4500RPM -5600RPM depending on test.

stare bare wrote:
Send some feed back to apple,

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html

They really need to be made aware of how many ppl feel the same way and would prefer a quiet cool laptop as apposed to the absolutely fastest.

they will be missing out on my money if I cant achieve a cooler/quieter computer than my 4 year old core 2.

Speak for yourself. I spent big money on this laptop because it's a quad-core and it's faster than all but high-end desktop systems. If the fans spin up under heavy loads, so be it. Better that than having the computer thermally throttle itself. The noise honestly doesn't bother me and for day-to-day tasks where the computer isn't working hard there's no fan noise anyway.

I mean, really? You're buying a Macbook PRO and your biggest gripe is that the fans make noise when the computer's under heavy load? Wow. Besides, you don't even own one of the new computers! How do you even know what the fans do or don't sound like? From anecdotal evidence? Yeah, that's really reliable.

Message was edited by: Schwa72

blade0440 wrote:
Hey guys, recieved my 13inch 2011 mbp last week...custom configured with 128gb ssd (from apple)
Things ive noticed:
-The SSD specs: "trim = yes" i thought osx didnt support trim...yet
-idle cpu temps is about 40-55 degrees Celsius fan @ 2000rpm
-youtube with word and music can shoot up to 65 degrees celsius, fan can go up to 3000 rpm
-When running skype cpu temp shot up to 85 degrees celsius fan @3700-4000 rpm

-Encoding an 4gb mkv to 700mb mp4 has the cpu at a constant 91-93 degrees celsius with fan @ constant 6200rpm
*(whilst encoding, i had an avi playing in the background, youtube and cs5 - just to stress test it....it made no difference though when i had the other programs running - temp remained the same with handbrake on its own)
** i did however notice at time things got laggy with youtube, cs5, an avi running whilst handbrake was encoding

top of the laptop surprisingly remained very cool and operable....but the bottom especially near the screen became very hot.

My questions:
1. are these temperatures relatively normal for what im doing?
2. is it ok for a fan to be on 6200 rpm for that long (took about 45min to fully encode the mkv)
3. Is the led screen effected at all by the heat produced from the exhaust?

Thanks guys

Don't worry about it. Your computer is running fine.

McSad wrote:
This is so wrong: my girlfriends Macbook Pro is 1 year old (core 2 duo 2,66 GHz, 4 mb ram). It can run World of Warcraft with low video settings WITHOUT any noise. When I run World of Warcraft with the SAME low video settings on my new i7 sandy bridge state-of-the-art Macbook Pro (2,2 GHz i7, 4 mb ram), the processor heats up like mad and the fan goes crazy.

Why the **** can a processor that's supposed to be incredible fast not run wow on low settings without any noise, when a 1 year old ****** processor can do it.

I just wasted €2200 on a machine that I wont be using because I can't stand the noise.

Running World of Warcraft - I have 4 computers at home including a 2003 Dell Pentium 3 and that one can run WoW all day long no issues...

This state of the art MBP that I have cant run it more than 2 hours without crashing/freezing, and it doesnt seem to matter what graphic settings I choose, the MBP heats up and doesnt stop until I leave the application or it freezes up.

Fan issue aside, something is seriously wrong. Esp that older versions of the MBP can run WoW with no issues.

I didnt expect that a top of the line computer would have these issues that older computers dont experience.

Its gotta be that Sandy Bridge processor that Intel recalled on the PC side.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/processors/showArticle.jhtml?articl eID=229200223



I have a friend that works at Intel and we were discussing the Sandy Bridge Processor for PC in this conversation I am quoting below, but the Sandy Bridge is in the MacBook Pro.

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Looks like the Sandy Bridge architecture is for mainstream desktops. It would not be recommended for a gaming machine. I kinda figured that since the graphics is built in and you will never see high performance when that is done. It appears to have very good video transcoding abilities. There are some adobe CS5 benchmark test toward the back of the article. I have included a link to a good review on Sandy Bridge and some snippets from the article that you should pay attention too. I would say this is a great chip, but you will still need a good graphics card for gaming. The i7 2600K is very impressive with adobe CS5. Makes me want to go buy one. If it would fit in my motherboard I would.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-core-i7-2600k-core-i5-2500k,283 3.html

For reference I purchased a Core i7 920 Bloomfield not quite a year ago. They are using a 950 in their tests. I think the only difference was a higher clock speed which was significantly more expensive at the time.


Note that the top Sandy Bridge chips are the K series chips i7 2600k and i5 2500k

They are comparing Sandy Bridge here to a very cheap graphics card while running world of warcraft (HD Graphics 3000 is sandy bridge there is also a HD2000 that they say will most likely be used in most consumer purchased built desktops.
The HD Graphics 3000 engine actually stands up impressively to AMD’s Radeon HD 4550 512 MB—a card you can find for roughly $25 online. The HD Graphics 2000 core doesn’t fare well at all, even using the second-lowest detail preset available. It’s faster than Clarkdale’s on-package solution using half as many EUs, which I suppose says something. But if you want to play this game (even at very modest settings), you’re not using a desktop Sandy Bridge processor.


If there was one Sandy Bridge-based SKU that I’d personally recommend to friends and family building new PCs, it’d be the Core i5-2500K. Its performance relative to AMD’s lineup and the rest of Intel’s stack is noteworthy—especially given its price tag just north of $200. The i5-2500K circumvents Sandy Bridge's overclocking challenges with an unlocked multiplier, and I'm counting on gamers to drop it onto a P67-based motherboard, skirting the integrated graphics debate entirely.
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Did APPLE screw up here and pull the trigger on releasing the new MacBook Pro without comprehensively testing out this brand new processor?

What's your point? The Sandy Bridge processor used in the new MacBook Pros is completely different than the processors described in the long post you quoted. And it's positively idiotic to claim that the Sandy Bridge line "isn't recommended for a gaming machine." Based solely on the performance of the integrated graphics chip, that's a true statement, but if you use a halfway-decent add-on graphics card (which ALL gamers will do), then Sandy Bridge pulls ahead of all of the Nehalem chips, except for possibly the six-core varieties, and only then for multi-threaded applications. Further, the enthusiast-class Sandy Bridge processors coming out later in the year (that most gamers will use) won't even have integrated graphics! Saying that the current Sandy Bridge line-up is no good for gaming because of its weak integrated GPU is nonsense.

But I digress. Why are we talking about desktop processors in a thread about mobile computers? I still think the lock-ups are due to a graphics subsystem issue (perhaps firmware or drivers), but there seem to be many different types of problems being discussed. Some issues could very well be heat-related, but others...maybe not.

taylor-design: Thanks for your info, esp. about fan levels under vmware fusion.

FWIW, I visited a BB yesterday and felt the hot spot area of the underside of the 13", 15", and 17" (now sure which version of each they were). The 13 was merely warm; the 15 and 17 were kind of hot. This was when just running the demo presentation or in screensaver mode or other things that are easy on the CPU. The fan wasn't audible on any of them over the normal noise of the store, but the cooler hot-spot made me imagine that the lower-wattage CPU of the 13 might possibly be more resistant to audible fan RPM when the CPU isn't being stressed. Of course a dual-core might become stressed more easily than a quad-core, so YMMV.

Well I am speaking for myself AND quite a lot of others who clearly feel the same.

Sure I want more power on occasion but if Im going to be editing or rendering then I'll use a desktop for that. A laptop is in contact with me, having to use something all day that makes me pour sweat isnt nice and having to hear a dust buster right near my ear is as irritating, I make music so to me its a HUGE issue and the fact that it doesnt bother you is irrelevant to me as are your posts in general.

Basically I want the option of turning of or reducing turbo mode when watching movies (where silence is good) or surfing the net, neither of which need the amount power these machines have.

No I dont own a new one, but unless fan technology has taken a giant leap forward in the last 4 years without me noticing then they sound much like mine, obnoxious, like the sarcastic air of your posts.

I just had a similar issue on my 2011 mbp 13' i5. and just realized i was running logmein which uses java. I have not seen my mbp get so hot as it just did.

I have noticed the heat issue with my MBP 2.2 quad core, the issue is i have an older 13" model and as far as i remember i have never heard the fan starts until i played SC2, but with this new one ,it is heating fast and WITHOUT a reason ,and the battery barely exceeds 4 hours.
I have installed smcFancontrol and found that temp average is 50c ,but it could rise to 75c while browsing the net or even watching a news video.
I don't know should i return it?

Well i dont know but I can say this much, today I went into a store and did some testing of a 2.2 17 inch 2011 mbp. I installed smcfancontrol and VLC player along with a mp4 HD movie 1280 x 544 pixel at 1.4 gig.

I let it idle for 5 min, 33 c
I played the movie for 10 min and it got no higher than 40 c
fans at 2000 rpm the whole time.
ambient temp would have been in the low 20's.

This is a really good result and like what I was looking for from sandy bridge. My core2, 2.4ghz idles at 50 c + and with the same movie it got up into the mid 70 c area with fans at 3500 rpm +

I have a 15 inch so Im not sure if the cooling is any different in the 17 inch having more size inside but if the 15 inch 2011 gets these kind of results I will be upgrading to one happily.

speaking of upgrading, is it just me or is apples forum engine desperately crap compared to most other modern forum sites?

I have had 4 MBP's since WoW launched in 2004. All of them ran hot, fans blaring. My current Early 2011 does the same thing. I played for 4 hours last night no problems. Fans at a constant 6200RPM, CPU around 95 degrees C.

Message was edited by: DickDigggler

...is it just me or is apples forum engine desperately crap compared to most other modern forum sites?

It has its problems, the chief one being that Apple Discussions is far and away the most heavily trafficked forum system on the internet, and no forum software package in existence has been designed to support anything like the load these forums put on it. Jive (the software Apple has been forced to use after testing and crushing everything else on the market) is creaking badly, and has been for years. But there is nothing better out there for an immense and heavily used forum system like this.

I'd say you should've gotten the 11 inch MacBook Air if fan noise is your main concern. I've heard that's one quiet laptop.

Apple should've used the 25W version of the Sandy Bridge Core i7 chip (2.3 GHz, a little more expensive) instead of the 35 W version (2.7 GHz) in the MBP 13. All previous 13 inch models used 25W Core 2 Duo chips. I was really hoping that they wouldn't get greedy with performance and sacrifice on the heat issue. But they decided that a 2.7 GHz MBP will sell better than a 2.3 GHz MBP, and now heat is a major issue. They asked for it.

We are stuck with these hot running Sandy Bridge chips (only when under load) till Ivy Bridge come out. Hopefully the die shrunk will bring down the thermal TDP down too.

There must be a way to turn of turbo boost with these chips to prevent heat/noise under load?

Id wager they would still be faster than my core2 even after doing this.

'no forum software package in existence has been designed to support anything like the load these forums put on it.'

whats the software got to do with this, ability to deal with traffic is a hardware thing predominantly, Im talking about not having auto log in or be able to edit your own post after just posting it, I cant even see a way to quote someone elses tho Ive seen others do it, its no where obvious thats for sure.