Retina MacBook Pro Heat

Well I have a Mid 2010 core i7 2.66 and I'm waiting for my retina to arrive. All of these MBPs run hot in my opinion. My 2010 gets unconfortable on my lap even when not CPU intensive.

I expect the thinner MBP retina might even seem hotter but I would assume the chips inside are running about the same as my 2010.

As an electrical engineer/sw engineer by trade I think it is safe to say that these MacBooks really should not be pushed to the max CPU because they simply don't have the cooling capacity to support that. I think short to moderate length bursts of intense CPU activity will be fine. But doing your test will probably overheat the machine if you let it go too long.

I took my 2010 in to Best Buy the other day and I did four terminals with yes > /dev/null and my core i7 had all four cores at 100%. I did the same, four terminals on a retina 2.3 core i7 and the four cores were at 50% and the machine was MUCH cooler than my 2010 after about 3 minutes.

Clearly the machines were doing the same amount of work in four terminal windows but the retina was doing a better job of managing the CPU activity. As you mention, I had to open additional terminal windows to get cores going at 100%.

As a test on my 2010 MBP with four terminals doing yes I really can't watch a youtube movie. It will become a little jittery in places. I opened the same movie on the retina and it never even gasped.

But back on the subject of heat. I think we can all do away with our toasters and just fire up our MBPs in the am to heat our coffee and crisp our toast! LOL

I run Parallels in my day to day tasks and aside from this I just run iTunes music and Safari. This is enough to get the core CPU temp up to around mid-60s (Celcius) where it generally stays and hitting 70 / 71 degrees as soon as I do something such as go to compose an e-mail in Outlook for instance.

Without Parallels running i.e. just having regular Mac apps open, the core CPU temp drops to around mid-50s but again this can reach early-60s if doing anything remotely taxing on the CPU.

This is normal temperatures

I do like to play Portal 2 and Half-Life 2 every now and again, which isn't (or shouldn't be?!) that demanding for a modern computer. Within a minute or two of playing either of these games, the CPU temp rockets to nearly 90 degrees before the fans kick in and bring that down to around early to mid 80s.

Most Mac games are just Windows ones, running in virtualising environment like Cider,

thus demanding much more resources than native Windows versions. Thus Windows in bootcamp is much preferred for gaming. Especially with incredible Retina resolution.

Heat goes from CPU and GPU proportionally to the taskload - so there are no escape, any notebook with same power will give you more or less same amount of heat despite of manufacturer/os. Only heat may be hidden from user behind plastic instead of aluminium - but it will be there.

and I'm not sure that MarkRHolbrookis inevitably right on not pushing to constant 100% load. I used to run Mathlab routines almost at full 100 for hours, some media encoders at 100% for hours, some renders - and my 2011 MBP still feels good.

It goes really hot, but runs and runs and runs. Actually I avoiding this as far as I can (thinking same as Mark) - but there are situation when I need all the power - and it just works.

Almost forgot - Core CPUs will go overclock under high load - like from 2.2 to 2.8 GHz - it happens with a lot of yes > /dev/null's definitely. Thus heat dissipation goes high. Cider also tend to use just one core up to max - thus forcing it to overclock. Having some percentage free gives possibility to less overclock and dissipate less energy.

I'm not interested in being right or wrong but the fact remains that heat destroys components. That is why we have heatsinks and fans on our electronics. If for some reason the heatsink/fan system in the MBP can't keep up with the heat generated then it is possible to do damage. In my electrical career I've fried many a chip pushing it too hard. When they go, they go in a big way. IE total failure.

I too run VMWare fusion. One of my main purposes for getting a retina is not the screen but the 16gb of RAM. Obviously more screen real estate will be helpful but I'm probably not going to be as bothered as the guys in the burn-in forum if I have some IR.

My typical work day consists of three VMs running: Windows 7 32, Windows 7 64, and a Windows 8 VM. Each is running a compiler/editor so they are not churning away on rendering an intense graphic. But each is eating up some CPU and at times when Windows decides it needs to get busy my MBP 2010 gets hot fast and the CPU goes up rapidly. I try to be proactive and set my fans to run faster when I expect to do this. I'd rather have the noise than the heat I guess.

Is it a good idea to push your MBP at 100% on all four cores for hours on end? I really can't say. One would hope the Apple engineers did their jobs and made sure that there was no way injure things doing that. But if they didn't then you are running the risk of your own personal meltdown so to speak!

Back when I used a Windows laptop I had a toshiba and one time I started up a Window sprocess to scan the disk for viruses while I was watching a movie in the hotel on a trip. I noticed it was getting hot but figured it would be ok. About 30 minutes later the screen screwed up then went blank and I smelled this awful smell which electrical engineers hate... The burned chip smell. The laptop never ran after that. Toshiba offered a replacement motherboard at almost the cost I could buy a brand new machine for. I lost almost a weeks work time sitting onsite without a computer. Since that experience I just don't push things that hard.

If I really need that much CPU I try to offload it on to my desktop (MacPro dual Xeon).

I'm not interested in being right or wrong but the fact remains that heat destroys components. That is why we have heatsinks and fans on our electronics. If for some reason the heatsink/fan system in the MBP can't keep up with the heat generated then it is possible to do damage. In my electrical career I've fried many a chip pushing it too hard. When they go, they go in a big way. IE total failure.

Absolutely with you on this.

Just it happens that I periodically use software that loads my MBP at full for hours. It happens that my MBP does not have cooling system manufacturing defects.

May be for OP it will be better to run hour or two at 100% just to find cooling problems (probably frying his MBP) and exchange it for good one - or just to know that all is ok at any load? It is a bit scary and unhuman proposition, I know, but what if problem with cooling quality exists on his MBP?

It have to survive full load for hours - as there are a lot of math-intensive multithreaded Mac software that can load any computer up to 100%. What if OP will use one of that in future? Apple propagates multithread everywhere - so there will be more and more of this... Take a look at loads when iMovie does encoding. When Aperture works. And so on.

I know smell you're writing about - but I can't control software I use. It just grabs everything it can.

In response to dmdimon, I don't believe the temperatures that I'm seeing in normal use are normal at all for this particular machine. The other 3 laptops I've had didn't get nearly as hot when doing the same tasks and weren't even noticeably warm to the touch either.

there was reports on bad assembly of cooling system in MBP's. May be this is your case. Just from my experience - 70 C is definitely nothing unusual when computer works. If you're interested - can check temperatures at full load when at home, in 2-3 hours.

acceptable temperatures for core and GPU cores are listed in Intel, AMD and nVidia specs for every model and are easy to find if you're interested.

for example see answer from Intel representative here:

http://communities.intel.com/thread/29229

As I read once in a while some of the rMBP related threads I come aware, that I must be an outstanding lucky guy, because my machine is picture perfect. The screen, a samsung, is perfect. No dead pixels, mura or light bleeding. This is the coolest machine ever. For me. In simple use, like safari or iTunes, I never gets above 35 degrees Celsius. When working more demanding like with Aperture or HD videos they get to max 50 degrees. Only if I really kick the thing, it might goes up to 60 0r 65. But never more. And at that point, the fans really don't kick in noticably. So, how come, that obviously so many rMBP's are not working right? Cause it can't be the design. Why would mine be so wonderful?

Apple, do something!!!

It can't be right, that people spending a fortune on this thing, and than are only struggeling.

here we go:

CPU Die temps in Celsius reported by iStat

lazy browsing - 1% load - CPU Die 48 C

4 x "yes > /dev/null " - 51% load - CPU Die 88-96 C in 30 seconds and keeps at it

8 x "yes > /dev/null " - 100% load - CPU Die 90-96 C in 30 seconds and keeps at it

I'd say that cooling system is adequate - as with load from 50 to 100 % it keeps stable high temp. And as you see - from thermal point there are no difference between 100% and 50% load.

Dear dmdimon:

Could you please specify which processor do you have in your RMBP? It would be also helpful to indicate stepping (you can use MacCPUID for that) and approximate purchase time. I'd really appreciare if you provide those details.

Could you please specify which processor do you have in your RMBP?

sorry but you misread me:

my 2011 MBP still feels good

but if you're interested I still can take a look at stepping when at home.

My 13" Macbook pro Retina is great. Probably the coolest-running laptop I've ever owned of ANY laptop. But let me make this very clear... sometimes two of the exact same laptops can run differently concerning heat. Years ago, my 2010 MBP ran so hot that I decided there MUST be something wrong with it. So I took it apart. Come to find out, they cheaped out on the thermal paste on the processor. So I went to my local computer store, got some Antac Silver, put it on, smoothed it with the side of a business card I had in my wallet, and ...wouldn't you know it... that laptop became much more tolerable.

Now... as cool as it ran after I reapplied the thermal grease, the new rMBP 13" I have... runs great. I'm shocked to find that it typically idles around 110F in my home, where my folks keep the house around 77F. If I play Half-Life2 on this thing, it runs around 160F. I've seen it get up to 180F with maxed settings on SecondLife, but the fans kicked in and brought it down to 165F. In order to monitor the heat, I use the iStat / iSlayer "iStat Menus 4" with the thermal sensors showing for the CPU, CPU Proximity, Battery and SSD. I also have it display both fans, which typically run around 1600rpms at idle and 2500-3000 rpms at load. I've seen them get up to 5800 before but only that one time when SecondLife got it cranked up. Besides, the HD4000 Intel GPU SoC that comes onboard the i5 wasn't enough for Second Life to be playable with everything cranked. I just wanted to see how it would react out of curiosity.

Rant aside, consider the possibility that someone in China didn't do a good job applying thermal grease to your CPU. That might shave 25F off your heat when running at load.