Does Flash make the fans race on ALL Macs?

[mark-itguy]

Not certain this is the best place for this question, but...

When my kids play Flash based games in a Safari window on our MacBook, it gets the CPU hot enough that the fans race up to full throttle. AFAIK, that is commonplace.

My question: does this happen with all encased Macs, such as the iMac and Mac Mini? Or, is in only Mac laptops that this happens on?

Trying to decide whether to buy an iMac or Mac Mini for kids who play a lot of Flash games...

 

[slpdLoad]

It runs almost all Macs to upwards of 90% CPU usage. No getting around Flash's poor performance on the Mac.

However, the iMacs and the Mac Mini are far quieter (completely inaudible to my ear) compared to the laptops (leafblowers) when running at full bore.

 

[hamlinspahn]

iMac

My iMac and MB both increase the fan with flash but also do on other things. My question is why does it matter that is what the fan is for to cool the computer when the processor heats up.

 

[mark-itguy]

It runs almost all Macs to upwards of 90% CPU usage. No getting around Flash's poor performance on the Mac.

However, the iMacs and the Mac Mini are far quieter (completely inaudible to my ear) compared to the laptops (leafblowers) when running at full bore.

Thanks. Part of my question pertains to not just the noise, but the fact that fans running at full throttle is bound to wear them out prematurely.?.

Maybe I should change the angle of my question a bit...

Does the constant use of Flash cause an equally premature death to the constantly racing fans on all encased models, such as an iMac and Mac Mini? Which model (other than a Mac Pro) would be the best choice knowing the kids will play a lot of Flash?

 

[TMRaven]

Playing bloons td4 (very intensive in the later stages) gets my i7 iMac up to 30% cpu usage, but the fans barely increase at speed, I think it was from 940rpm to 1050rpm or so on the cpu fan. Quiet as can be.

 

[newuser2310]

Imac fans are super quiet except when i ramp them up when using windows.

 

[Nihilvor]

My question: does this happen with all encased Macs, such as the iMac and Mac Mini?

No, Flash doesn't do that unless you're using Safari. Do you have Firefox installed on your computer? Use that instead; flash will usually work fine (I've never had any issues) and your processor won't max out.

 

[drewdle]

I get the same thing with a brand new MacBook w/4Gb of memory installed. Flash on Mac OS X doesn't tap the graphics processor so the CPU does all the work. I'm not sure if Snow Leopard offloads some of that work onto the GPU through the OpenCL interface, but I haven't noted a difference in fan behaviour in SL vs Leopard using flash.

This is also the reason why older Macs have issues keeping up with YouTube.