New 2011 MacBook Pro Heating Issue?

Like others, I am watching this thread before parting with £2k (might even get a Sony Vaio Z if I have to wait too long) but I wondered where people who have experienced freezes/crashes/overheating actually purchased their Macbook Pro's. USA? UK? in the off chance that it might be somehow related.

I got a brand new 2011 MacBook Pro over the internet at Apple.com on the Thursday it came out. I ordered it from the USA. I haven't had any overheating, freezing, or crashing with my machine. In fact I haven't had a single problem of any kind with my machine.

Have you run any graphics intensive games or programs?

A bit of an extreme response, there are maybe 50 ppl posting about issues on this site out of how many thousands of laptops being sold by apple?

Not to mention if you do have a problem you can return it within 14 days anyway.

Its easy to forget that ppl who have issues are the ones that bother to post online, those that have none dont bother so problems seem bigger than they are.

Ok, went to the Apple store and they seemed to this that the issue wasnt a big deal, esp when I mentioned World of Warcraft... the guy behind the counter said "well these laptops get hot so that is just the way they are" and I responded "I didnt pay almost $3,000 for a top of the line Apple computer that has screen freezes when I play the game at ANY resolution."

They wanted to keep my MacBook Pro overnight for stress testing to duplicate the issue... I bet they dont figure it out.

BTW - as Im new to Mac's what tool are people using to watch continuous temperatures and fan speeds?

This machine is sufering from the freeze issue as well so Im just trying to precisely profile it as I think I know exactly what is wrong - an advantage I guess of experience building 100% reliable severely overclocked and yet quiet PCs - Unlike whatever fukwit at apple came up with this useless system.

Found some utilities to take control fo the fans and watch temperatures.

The basic problem here is the fan are kicking in way way too late.

Some tests - if I use smcFanControl to pre-crank the fans upto 5500rpm, then run something really intensive - its fine (allbeit loud).

If I leave OSX to look after the fan itself, it seems it doesnt crank their sped up enough until it actually too late and one or more cores have exceeded 100C, in turn causing a softwrae failure (on a PC I would expect a core shutdown blue screen to ocurr - no idea what a mac is supposed to do - just UI freeze I guess?)

Without using any kind of artificial fan speed controller, I can get machie to work on high load so long s I crank the load up very slowly, to give te fans time to crank up their speed in line with the temperature increases.

OTOH, if when the machine is cold and I suddenly dump a high load on it, then it just stiffs within a few seconds.

Basically the fan speed vs temperature response curve as compleel wrong for any kind of suddenly intesive applications to work.

To put this in real context, to show you how fast this has to happen, if I start my test CPU load (about 80-90% average load across all cores) suddenly, then I have about as much time as it takes to move the mouse over to smcFanContro and click save (after having allready positioned the fan speeds to move upto 5500 on save) to get the fans speed up fast enough. In those few second, CPU sensor A has jumped from 60C to over 80C. In another second or so and its allready too late for me to hit save and crank the fans up.

OSX by default wont even have started cranking the crank upto max speed by this time - hence instant crash.

Ie the current cooling curve is buggered - utterly. In fact i cant even see how this could have got through design stage testing - never mind into production, unless there air condition is cranked rediculously high all day so they all shiver.

The sooner Apple acknowledge this and get a software fix out, the better. I think that is all that is needed, along with perhaps some emergency active throttling of CPU speed to at least avoid a crash as well.

There is an argument that some case redesign is needed as well to further increase airflow through the vents. Fairly minor change I should think.

For people who need utter reliability out of these thing in high performance scenarios (DJ/Live music for eg), then its looking a bit bleak.

I guess what frsutrates me most when a company like apple make this sort of mistake, is somehow it takes ages to sort out, and the solution often isnt good enough (because the person doing it doesnt really understand the problem and comes up with a hack) and I know **** well that in spending an hour with the right person to talk this over with the right person could fix this permenantly.

Grrrrr!

Khazul, I was thinking along the same lines as you.

I haven't bought this MBP 2011 (yet) because of this forum and others reporting high temps and freezes, so I don't have the system at hand to do it myself...........but I am asking you...wouldn't a good test of your hypothesis be to simply lock down the fans at their very highest fan speed possible while at idle, then hit the CPU and GPU(s) with many of the highest stress scenarios as reported in this forum and others to see what happens vis-a-vis thermal control (i.e., temps), as well as freezes ?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Also, FYI to the site, I found a couple of additional relevant web sites on this subject:

(1) A great temperature database site someone set up some time ago, who was obviously very concerned about high temps throughout the Mac line:

www.intelmactemp.com/list

(2) Many additional high temp concerns that are similar to ones appearing here are appearing on several threads in "Mac Rumors" web site:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1118405, and scroll down to post #6, where a number of additional threads are identified.

I have run things like Call of Duty 4, Steam, Portal, and I do a lot of multitasking.

I just ordered 17 inch MBP and with my 2006 MBP I use APC lap cooler under my laptop that has a fan that blows on the underside of the laptop. I wonder after reading this discussion if anyone is using a cooling pad under their computer and if it helps at all? I know when I don't use my cooling pad with the fan my MBP gets very hot very quick but when I use the cooling pad the underside is not as hot. I just hope my cooling pad helps my new MBP and I don't have the same issues as others. Can anyone report if they use a cooling pad and if it helps with the new MBP?
Thanks

Not seeing the issue here. Actually, this has been the coolest running computer I've ever used in my entire life and I'm not kidding. It stays cool to the touch most of the time while running Safari, Mail, etc. even while playing videos, etc. in Safari.

I can barely get the thing luke warm if that by running things like Google Earth, Parallels, etc.

When I first got this machine I was worried that the fans were broken because I was running so many apps and normally with other machines the fans would be blasting. But then I felt the machine and it was actually cool to the touch. It simply didn't need the fans on strong to keep it cool.

Heat issues? Definitely not here with my machine.

Feedback requested .. (note: also posted to 2011 freeze thread)


So seems I'm getting to 99C on multiple cores regularly now when I start up Dragon Age: Origins on my new 15".

Since the Tjunction for these is listed at 100C, I'm trying to understand how this could be anything but a hardware problem.

Here are some temp charts of my system.
http://min.us/llZL1e
http://min.us/mvghBMv#1

Note the steep ramp up in temp as soon as I turn on Dragon Age. Very concerning. Have an appointment with a "genius" this afternoon. I may return my MBP, not sure I'm happy if this is "expected" behavior.

Any thoughts?

I'd like to weigh in on this issue as I am interested in purchasing a new MBP. I had what seems to be the exact same problem that many people in this thread are experiencing when I purchased my current MBP (late 2008). Khazul has explained his experience as if it were my own. I can say that I no longer get the black screen freezing, but the problem did persist until there were a few firmware/software updates from apple. I'd be very disappointed if apple is having the same problem with their new machines after experiencing a similar problem with a previous product release.

I have the 2011 15" i7 2.2GHz MBP I got it the first week it came out. Everything seems to work perfectly, that is until I tried playing a game.
While trying to play the Sims 3 with a cooling fan the laptop became extremely hot. I kept lowering the graphic settings in attempts to fix the problem but even at the lowest I still have the problem.

I have at times had After Effects, Photoshop, & Cinema 4D open at once without a problem but 15 minutes of the Sims 3 and I have to shut the computer down.

I am considering calling Apple for a replacement but don't want to if I will have the same problem with the next one. Does anyone think they will fix this problem with a newer release and if so will those who's mac books are over heating be able to exchange them?

dnakad wrote:
Doing a multi-core/RAM preview in After Effects CS5 with my friends macbook pro 2010
made no fan noise what so ever. Mine peaks at 6200 rpm just for short 3-5 second RAM previews.
That is not normal in any sense.

I got tired of this...

Just got of the phone with Apple, they are shipping me a new one:

MBP 15.4
With following configurations:
PROCESSOR 2.2GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
MEMORY 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
HARD DRIVE 256GB Solid State Drive
DISPLAY MBP 15"HR Antiglare WS Display

I will get to keep my current macbook pro at home meanwhile,
and when the new one arrives, I will still have a new 14-day
return policy to lean back on. I doubt the new one will be any different
but at least then, I will most likely have ruled out any hardware issues.

Hoping for a firmware update soon, another friends MBP 2010 model had this issue aswell,
until apple released a firmware update, and the fans went dead silent.

/d

Hi all, so I got my new Macbook Pro 2011, see above...

And you know what? Nothing, no change, the problems still occur.

Only thing that helps the noise (while doing really heavy rendering) is to switch to the integrated GPU, that lowers the fan to 5800 instead of 6200rpm, Im not sure anymore, will probably return this one aswell if Apple dont release a firmware update within 10 days.

Dont want to wake my girlfriend while working late, it *****.

Maybe go for a 2010 MBP... or maybe... PC.

Will report this to Apple now.

/D