Macbook Pro Retina overheat

it's normal, it will run a little cooler after a week or two of usage. Had the same issues when I first opened the box.

Don't really know the reason, can only speculate. Just letting you know what my experience has been, I was concerned when I first got it as it seemed abnormal amount of heat. Also I was expecting an ivy bridge processor to but very energy and heat efficient.

It will shut itself down if it exceeds a certain temperature, when I first got my machine it ran hot up to 104c. now it idles around 40c and goes into 60s during gaming or workloads (video encoding)

Might have something to do with the heat paste for the cpu and gpu settling in, I heard some people reporting a strange smell on the new machines and I have also noticed that the GPU generates more heat than CPU.

thomasyuen wrote:

Oh okay, is there a way to check how hot the mbp retina is ?

Have you used a App that tells you what the temperatures are like this one: http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ ?

I don't know what your level of tech savvy is but try this http://www.bresink.com/osx/216202/download.php5

I've had mine for 2 months now, and it's been overheating with the same stuff as you. Basic web and skype.

I don't think it's an issue of it settling in, I think mine may be faulty. 104c is not normal when working or just browsing and it's extremely uncomfortable.

Well usually, it heats when there is too much dust in the laptop. But if it's new, there shouldnt be a problem... But generally, laptops get hot after time because they have no complex cooling system as in Desktop computers. If you think it is caused by dust, just buy a dust collector.

imho the thermal design for the macbook pro retina (md 2012) rivals most desktop computers

Well i meant the real gaming monster which are overclocked and even have water-cooling systems... of course casual players dont make that affort but in general, it is easier to cool desktops than laptops

I'm going to take my rmbp for a replacement htis week, and see if the new one runs better. This is definitely not normal.

Good luck Sohan Tanna with your rmbp

Check the processes in activity monitor, there may be something running that uses up cpu.

I too just purchased a new 15" Retina MacBook Pro. Yesterday, with the mbp plugged into its charger, but with the top closed and nothing running, it suddenly became too hot to touch. I've had many Mac laptops, and I know they can get quite hot, but in this case the temperature was alarming to the point that I unplugged it with thoughts of a potential fire hazard. When I opened the top, the fans came on and things cooled down, but the fans were not running w/ the top closed.

This seems to be a serious issue with the 2012 mbp, not to be dismissed as "it's just normal," as some of the posts have suggested.

Any ideas? It has only happened once, but I've only had the new laptop for a few days.

Thanks

Clearly for you guys getting overheat something is wrong.

My 2012 retina MBP 15 2.66 is COLD all the time even under heavy load. I mean it's barely warm. I even posted about how doing mostly the same kind of stuff (VMWare Fusion/Windows 7) on my older 2012 MBP would have the fans screaming due to processor activity, on this retina model it barely notices.

I've had three VM's (Win7 32, Win7 64, Win 8) all runnig at the same time. In the VMs I'm using compilers for .NET, Delphi, etc, meanwhile in MacOS I have mail, skype, web browser, Coda (for web page development) and I'm switcing between all of this and the retina MBP just sort of lopes along barely getting warm.

So clearly in my opinion something is not right.

When you first startup yoru new MBP there is a process that indexes the drive and that can heat things up a bit but as the first responder stated it should calm down and go away. There will be some heat heat that exits from the vent in front of the display but it should not cause the unit to get too warm.

Without a doubt there are some processes that will warm up any machine. Last night I was doing a disk clone backup and that got it warm. But for mine in normal use it barely breathes.