To game or not to game

[efirmage]

Hi there, I just got my new air and absolutely love it. I had seen pretty impressive graphics performance. What I didn't expect was the fan noise. I knew it was loud, but this thing sounds like the old G5's! It makes me kind of scared to play games to be honest. Are they going to substantially decrease the life of my machine? Do you think a laptop cooler would really help with this?
Wanted to hear your opinions on this and if the noise had discouraged any of you from gaming.

Thanks!

 

[Marconelly]

You can play games just fine on it as long if you can get used to fan noise (my suggestion - use headphones, you'll want them for games in any case). With these new MBAs, fan is loud, but they are kept just slightly warm even with most intensive games. Nothing skin-skorching like the old models.

 

[foiden]

I almost never notice the fan noise, these days. Mostly because I'm always somewhere with enough residual noise for which the fans hardly cut into. Well...there is one exception. My Gateway 6831fx makes a lot of fan noise while gaming. It was completely made to do so, though. So it wasn't that much of a surprise but more of something that you just dealt with. Fortunately, the speakers are loud, or I used headphones.

 

[zstar]

I am worried over this exact same problem here. I think the OP is more interested in finding out if gaming will substantially impact on battery life in the long term (i.e. by going through charge cycles much more quickly) or it has adverse effects through overheating of the processor, RAM, logic board issues leading to permanent and/or long term damage.

If anyone could shed some light on the long term effects of gaming on a laptop not built for gaming, I would really appreciate the insight. It IS my first mac so...

 

[BornAgainMac]

I wouldn't push it. The heat will reduce the life of your machine.

 

[FAsnakes]

I game everyday on the Air. If the laptop pops then i'll get a replacement - that's what apple care is for.
Enjoy your computer!

 

[Marconelly]

The battery life is a valid concern, but battery replacements are reality of today's electronics. I'm sure you'll be able to buy a battery on ebay for cheap soon enough, if not already.

The components from what I've seen do not overheat, CPU goes up to around 80 celsius - but if you're worried about that, install coolbook and make it force the CPU heat not to exceed 75 or 70 degrees by dynamic clock throttling. Problem solved.