How much damage can this eventually do?

[slapguts]

My 1st gen MBA has taken to overheating horribly lately.

I suffered the "kernel_task" issue, so I installed CoolBook.

I no longer get the kernel_task going nuts, but once my MBA hits 106 degrees, it puts itself to sleep, sometimes it shuts itself down completely.

 

[Onimusha370]

in short... 106 degrees is a killer.
my rev.d rarely hits above 80 but when it does, i immediatly crank the fans up to full and try and steady what i'm doing. in my opinion, anything over 80 can cause long term damage, but i'd love to be proved wrong

 

[Nightarchaon]

I have an early 2008 MBP 4,1 that hits these temps (105+) but i can only get it to do it when doing the following.

Having a webpage with flash content (seems h.264 flash EATS cpu time)

and

Using Handbreak to encode video for the ATV

solution, i installed the safari Click to flash module, and similar flash blockers in chrome an firefox, and use CPUTHROTTLE whenever i need to use handbreak, forcing handbreak to use 75% of one CPU drops encoding speed by around 5FPS and the cpu rarely gets over 80 degrees.

I think its criminal that the coders of these things don't fix there code so it doesn't fry CPUs .. especially handbreak which has numerous threads about overheat issues on windows mac and linux platforms.

Of course, your problem could be completely unrelated. But to date all heat issuesI have seen with Macs has been one or the other of these as root cause if the fans still work.

 

[axu539]

I have an early 2008 MBP 4,1 that hits these temps (105+) but i can only get it to do it when doing the following.

Having a webpage with flash content (seems h.264 flash EATS cpu time)

and

Using Handbreak to encode video for the ATV

solution, i installed the safari Click to flash module, and similar flash blockers in chrome an firefox, and use CPUTHROTTLE whenever i need to use handbreak, forcing handbreak to use 75% of one CPU drops encoding speed by around 5FPS and the cpu rarely gets over 80 degrees.

I think its criminal that the coders of these things don't fix there code so it doesn't fry CPUs .. especially handbreak which has numerous threads about overheat issues on windows mac and linux platforms.

Of course, your problem could be completely unrelated. But to date all heat issuesI have seen with Macs has been one or the other of these as root cause if the fans still work.

The 1st gen MBA had terrible thermal management, and overheating was really just a design flaw.

I agree that flash should use less CPU and the issue has been somewhat alleviated by 10.2's GPU acceleration.

Regarding handbrake, I think it is an awesomely written piece of software. Handbrake is SUPPOSED to use CPU power to 100% since video encoding is, in itself, a very CPU intensive task. Thus, more CPU usage = faster encode. To take care of the heat issue on your MBP, I would suggest 2 things:
1. Use a utility to crank up the fans instead of undervolting the cpu for handbrake (all you're doing is making the computer work almost as hard for a longer period of time).
2. Reapply thermal paste on your MBP. I'm pretty sure the 4,1 was one of the models that had terrible thermal paste application. I've heard you can get temps of around 20 degrees C lower on average.

 

[chrono1081]

I think its criminal that the coders of these things don't fix there code so it doesn't fry CPUs .. especially handbreak which has numerous threads about overheat issues on windows mac and linux platforms.

Of course, your problem could be completely unrelated. But to date all heat issuesI have seen with Macs has been one or the other of these as root cause if the fans still work.

There is no way to fry the CPU. CPUs will automatically shut down to prevent damage if they get to hot.

As for heat issues, the only issue is that too many people get too paranoid over watching their temps and often get concerned for no reason. (Not saying this is the OP's case but its the case in general).

 

[Nightarchaon]

The 1st gen MBA had terrible thermal management, and overheating was really just a design flaw.

I agree that flash should use less CPU and the issue has been somewhat alleviated by 10.2's GPU acceleration.

Regarding handbrake, I think it is an awesomely written piece of software. Handbrake is SUPPOSED to use CPU power to 100% since video encoding is, in itself, a very CPU intensive task. Thus, more CPU usage = faster encode. To take care of the heat issue on your MBP, I would suggest 2 things:
1. Use a utility to crank up the fans instead of undervolting the cpu for handbrake (all you're doing is making the computer work almost as hard for a longer period of time).
2. Reapply thermal paste on your MBP. I'm pretty sure the 4,1 was one of the models that had terrible thermal paste application. I've heard you can get temps of around 20 degrees C lower on average.

Handbreak throttled to use only 75% of one cpu core loses so little in terms of speed and reduces thermal load and stresses by such a high amount that i would like it as an option in the software itself, im not undervolting the CPU, im throttling the handbreak application itself, the cpu remains at the same voltage. id rather lose the 3-5fps encoding speed than lose the whole system AGAIN to thermal issues, and yes, running a CPU at its thermal limits for many many hours will shorten, and eventual KILL the system, thats why there are thermal limits.

My MBP was killed by handbreak, thankfully applecare replaced it, this one ive stripped down, Arctic silvered and put metal bladed aluminium fans in instead of the shoddy plastic stock ones.

Blizzards Starcraft 2 initially burnt out CPUs and GPUs by maxing them out when on the menu screen, they acknowledged this and patched the app, Handbreak and Flash are doing exactly the same thing, saying its "by design" doesnt change the fact it will kill a cpu if used a lot (by a lot, i mean i need 18hr runs at handbreak sometimes..casual, 1hr runs probably wont be so bad in the long run).