My Macbook Pro Gets Hot Is This Normal??

That does not sound like a problem, you are feeling where the cpu and gpu reside. The MacBook Pro uses two ways of removing processor excess heat - the aluminum case and the fans. The case is a great heat sink, but with heavy duty processor loads needs help and then the fans start increasing speed as needed to keep up. If the heat load gets too much the processor starts to run back the clock speed.

The processor temperature limit is very high, well above 100 degrees so unless your MBP is too hot to touch you are fine. Gamers complain about this regularly because they are imposing a REALLY high heat load from the cpu and discrete gpu.

So, the question becomes, do you hear the fans running fast? If not, you are not even hot enough to load up the fans.

Yeah, my MacBook, albeit a couple of years older but still with an earlier version of the i7 processor, gets pretty hot when pushing it with Photoshop, Logic or Final Cut.

It isn't a particular problem unless it starts affecting performance - the harder your processor is working, the more heat it will start to kick out. On top of this, if you use a separate monitor or a graphics intensive app, the discrete graphics GPU (NVIDIA Chip) is also going to be adding to that heat.

**Adding to this** As Summer has decided to finally hit Britain, I have opted to buy a cooling platform to sit my MacBook on, it just gives a little boost to the cooling so the fans of my laptop don't have to work quite as hard. Seems to be making a significant bit of difference!

What cooling fan did you buy? I'm looking for one.

I bought a Belkin CoolSpot Anywhere. Seems to pretty good so far - quiet, cool, discreet. Has helped stop my Mac from ramping its own fans full up all the time during the hot weather. USB cable is a little short (I wanted to plug it into a Hub rather than direct into my Macbook), but apart from that, I'm quite happy with it. At the very least the lead can tuck into the unit in the case you need to take it with you elsewhere 😀

Do you have a 13 inch or 15? And the retina or non retina? I have the non retina 13 inch and it gets really really hot. I want to know if this will work on it.

I actually have the 17", but it is sized for the 15", but compatible with 17, 15 & 13 inches, so it would work with it. The official compatibility and specs are on the Belkin product page for the product I bought

Alright, thanks! 😀

i am surprised that you would have a problem like that if you just bought a new computer. I'd go to the apple store and ask them. maybe, the programs you run are too much for that type of computer. I have an old macbook pro laptop 2009 with a very similar problem. ever since switching to mavericks the computer runs hot and the fan goes to max making a lot of noise. whenever i have my computer on these days; i run the activity monitor to monitor processes. i've seen some process hogs: ManagedClients that spawn 15 instances. And Google Helper.

I have a Macbook Pro 17 inch and it becomes very very hot specially when I watch a movie on Netflix for exemple.When I touch under my computer, it almost burns my fingers and I hear a fan running constantly. Is it normal ? What could be the problem ? What should I do ? thank you

Thanks

You are very welcome...if a little searching thorough an almost year old thread found what was troubling you, then you made very efficient use of these Communities. Congratulations on a job well done.