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Flash on my MBA made me Infertile

J

Jophster

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 4, 2010
75
0
Ok so... It didn't ACTAULLY make me infertile but it sure is going that way.

When I watch any kind of YouTube videos, BBC iPlayer vids or anything to do with Flash, my battery life plummets and the fan and heat soar into skin melting temps.

My CPU (According to iStat Nano) reaches as high as 83oC and my heatsink around 60oc.
Uncomfortably hot and a little noisy!

Is there anyway I can remedy this or make it a little less work for my Rev A MBA. (I am using Chrome Browser)

Ta muchly.
Joe. UK
 
A

al2o3cr

macrumors regular
Oct 14, 2009
210
0
Jophster said:
Ok so... It didn't ACTAULLY make me infertile but it sure is going that way.

When I watch any kind of YouTube videos, BBC iPlayer vids or anything to do with Flash, my battery life plummets and the fan and heat soar into skin melting temps.

My CPU (According to iStat Nano) reaches as high as 83oC and my heatsink around 60oc.
Uncomfortably hot and a little noisy!

Is there anyway I can remedy this or make it a little less work for my Rev A MBA. (I am using Chrome Browser)

Ta muchly.
Joe. UK
Click to expand...

Um, not using Flash? Seriously, the Flash plugin is the biggest CPU hog I've ever seen. Just playing a 480p video on Youtube is sufficient to load a 2Ghz C2D at 50% on each core. Oddly enough, using ClickToFlash and playing the H264 HD video from Youtube takes considerably less...
 
J

Jophster

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 4, 2010
75
0
al2o3cr said:
Um, not using Flash? Seriously, the Flash plugin is the biggest CPU hog I've ever seen. Just playing a 480p video on Youtube is sufficient to load a 2Ghz C2D at 50% on each core. Oddly enough, using ClickToFlash and playing the H264 HD video from Youtube takes considerably less...
Click to expand...

Hi
Not really a viable solution. I work with YouTube everyday and "avoiding it" isn't really an option.
I also can't use ClickToFlash because I am using Chrome because I can't set google search in safari to use UK.
 
G

glitch44

macrumors 65816
Feb 28, 2006
1,121
157
switch to html5 in chrome
make sure you have the beta of the flash plugin, which is supposed to be more efficient.
 
L

LinMac

macrumors 65816
Oct 28, 2007
1,270
43
Flash 10.1 Prerelease is a lot more efficient than the Flash 10 or Flash 9 versions. The HTML5 Youtube option is also excellent if you use Chrome.
 
Anuba

Anuba

macrumors 68040
Feb 9, 2005
3,791
394
Jophster said:
Ok so... It didn't ACTAULLY make me infertile but it sure is going that way.

When I watch any kind of YouTube videos, BBC iPlayer vids or anything to do with Flash, my battery life plummets and the fan and heat soar into skin melting temps.

My CPU (According to iStat Nano) reaches as high as 83oC and my heatsink around 60oc.
Uncomfortably hot and a little noisy!

Is there anyway I can remedy this or make it a little less work for my Rev A MBA. (I am using Chrome Browser)

Ta muchly.
Joe. UK
Click to expand...
Get the Flash 10.1 beta.

10.1 is a major overhaul, they've reduced memory usage by 55% and increased rendering speed by 87%. Some guy over at Gizmodo said that after installing the 10.1 beta, the CPU load when watching Hulu videos on his Mac in fullscreen dropped by nearly 60% compared to 10.0.

I tried it on Windows and found that the fans on my laptop would no longer spin up when I watched YouTube videos in fullscreen.
 
J

Jophster

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 4, 2010
75
0
Anuba said:
Get the Flash 10.1 beta.

10.1 is a major overhaul, they've reduced memory usage by 55% and increased rendering speed by 87%. Some guy over at Gizmodo said that after installing the 10.1 beta, the CPU load when watching Hulu videos on his Mac in fullscreen dropped by nearly 60% compared to 10.0.

I tried it on Windows and found that the fans on my laptop would no longer spin up when I watched YouTube videos in fullscreen.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... interesting... I have literally done EVERYTHING...
Changed to HTML5 & Chrome, Flash 10.1, CoolBook and still finding my fan spin up to 6200RPM and temps of 80C.
Going to upgrade to a 13" MBP, fed up of this! Just waiting for the Core i5 Updates! Hurry up Apple!
 
ayeying

ayeying

macrumors 601
Dec 5, 2007
4,547
13
Yay Area, CA
Jophster said:
Hmmm... interesting... I have literally done EVERYTHING...
Changed to HTML5 & Chrome, Flash 10.1, CoolBook and still finding my fan spin up to 6200RPM and temps of 80C.
Going to upgrade to a 13" MBP, fed up of this! Just waiting for the Core i5 Updates! Hurry up Apple!
Click to expand...

That's funny. My MacBook Air almost never goes to 6200RPM fans anymore, even in the upper 80 deg C temps. Sometimes, I want the fan to be running at 6200RPM so it doesn't burn a hole in my desk but it doesn't want to anymore.
 
J

Jophster

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 4, 2010
75
0
ayeying said:
That's funny. My MacBook Air almost never goes to 6200RPM fans anymore, even in the upper 80 deg C temps. Sometimes, I want the fan to be running at 6200RPM so it doesn't burn a hole in my desk but it doesn't want to anymore.
Click to expand...

It might be a good idea to reset the SMC. You can find details of how to do this by looking at the Apple website.
 
P

phoobo

macrumors regular
Sep 13, 2008
192
0
Not in my experience

entatlrg said:
Keep in mind the 13" MBP is going to run just as hot or hotter than your MBA, they both have one fan.
Click to expand...

I have not found this to be true. I have owned and returned 2 MBAs because of the overheating (and other) problems.

Now work all day on a MB aluminum unibody 13", which idles around 41-43 degrees C (CPU temp) and under Youtube load sometimes just touches 60, but generally hangs out in the 56-58 degree range when running Youtube video. An idling temperature over about 50-52 degrees is unacceptably warm for me. (Call me picky.)

The fan rarely runs up to an audible level.

I'm hypersensitive to heat and sound, so I can say pretty confidently that the best Apple solution in a 13" is the MB(P), preferably undervolted with Coolbook. (And underclocked to taste.) Outfitting with an SSD doesn't hurt, either, as it eliminates vibration (which also bugs me - I write all day long).

The reason for this difference is likely that the Air has much less heat-dissipating space inside. The unibodies have freer internal flow and better-designed venting that is harder (or nearly impossible) to block off inadvertently.
 
R

Ruahrc

macrumors 65816
Jun 9, 2009
1,345
0
al2o3cr said:
Um, not using Flash? Seriously, the Flash plugin is the biggest CPU hog I've ever seen. Just playing a 480p video on Youtube is sufficient to load a 2Ghz C2D at 50% on each core. Oddly enough, using ClickToFlash and playing the H264 HD video from Youtube takes considerably less...
Click to expand...

How do you get Click2Flash to show HD H264 video? In my experience the only available H264 video has been a lower resolution version (probably the one encoded for the iPhone) whereas Flash offers the true HD content.

Ruahrc
 
ayeying

ayeying

macrumors 601
Dec 5, 2007
4,547
13
Yay Area, CA
mdsll said:
Also get the latest 10.1 Beta 3 which was released yesterday. Makes use of hardware acceleration, which helps:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

(Use the uninstaller tool first to uninstall your current flash)
Click to expand...

Ahem.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/ said:
Why is hardware decoding of H.264 only supported on the Windows platform?

In Flash Player 10.1, H.264 hardware acceleration is not supported under Linux and Mac OS. Linux currently lacks a developed standard API that supports H.264 hardware video decoding, and Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs. We will continue to evaluate when to support this feature on Mac and Linux platforms in future releases.
Click to expand...
 
S

Snoball

macrumors newbie
Nov 17, 2009
19
0
entatlrg said:
Keep in mind the 13" MBP is going to run just as hot or hotter than your MBA, they both have one fan.

Our 15" MBP runs the coolest of them all, in integrated mode that is ... gets real hot with faster graphics switched on.
Click to expand...

My 13" MBP runs as cool as a cucumber.
 
entatlrg

entatlrg

macrumors 68040
Mar 2, 2009
3,385
6
Waterloo & Georgian Bay, Canada
Snoball said:
My 13" MBP runs as cool as a cucumber.
Click to expand...

With you MBP on your lap ... with some webpages open, a few app's, scrolling through photo's or maybe watching a youtube video your MBP is 'cool as a cucumber'?

We've got a few 09 MBP's in our offices and I find that hard to believe ... hook them up to a 24" ACD or run VMfusion and they roar louder than the MBA's.

(This is stock MBP's I'm talking about, no Coolbook installed.)

My point is my 15" MBP takes the same load much better, runs cooler and quieter (in integrated graphics mode) than the 13" MBP by quite a margin, it's not something I expected but it is my experience ....
 
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