What is your MacBook case temperature.

[wako]

So I just called Apple about my Moo and somehow we got into talking about the temperature. I told him that I had stuck a thermometer on the outside of the case to measure it and it had reported about 120 Fahrenheit. This was under the load of relatively about 50-55% CPU usage. When the guy heard of this he quickly told me to take it in for inspection because the outside should never be that hot. I told him the condition it was under and he said it should still usually be around room temperature but never that hot. He even transferred me to a product specialist who questioned me a bit about it.

I was wondering if any of you guys have done this before. What is the temperature of the outside (case)? Preferably can someone put their CPU usage around 50% when you measure it? I found playing music with visualization works best. Or simply put in the terminal command.


FYI: CoreDuoTemp tells me internal temperature of the CPU. You actually need a thermometer to measure it.

 

[Makosuke]

Hmm... I've measured a Pro, which has much different heat properties for several reasons, but at half load it generally won't get that hot. MAYBE the stripe above the keyboard might hit that temp at 50% load (it'll get significantly hotter with both cores maxed), but even at full load the hotspot on the underside (under the processor) was about that temp.

Nowhere I'm generally touching (palm rests, trackpad, keyobard, edges of the underside) gets above 100F under normal use.

 

[iGary]

I don't have a MacBook, but I do think people are way too paranoid about this.

Probing your laptop with a thermometer?

I'd take it in if it was too hot for me to use, personally. I wouldn't be probing around looking for trouble.

Meh. I guess I am just tired of MacBook moo-dirt-temp threads.

 

[aristobrat]

If it's worth anything (I know these are MBP temps, not MB):

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2006/05/23/thermal-paste-question.html?page=3

 

[wako]

I don't have a MacBook, but I do think people are way too paranoid about this.

Probing your laptop with a thermometer?

True... but I guess Im just spoiled by PC laptops that are able to cool efficiently.

 

[Makosuke]

True... but I guess Im just spoiled by PC laptops that are able to cool efficiently.

Dude... I'd like to know what brand that is. I admit that I buy far more Windows towers than I do laptops, but the Dell laptop I used recently (a nice bulky 15", not a compact one like the MacBook or even thin MBP) was viciously hot and the fan ran constantly. A late-model Toshiba wasn't much better. When it's back from its current trip (it's a work laptop) I'll be happy to put an IR thermometer on it and see what I get for comparison.

I'm not saying that there are no cool PC laptops, I'm just saying that a lot of them are every bit as hot as the MB/MBPs, and I think people are blowing a lot of stuff way out of proportion.

The only reason I took a thermometer to mine was so I'd have some real surface temperature numbers to post instead of wild speculation or assumptions.

 

[Rovman]

I took the case temp a while back with an IR thermometer, i can't remember exactly but i believe it was around 60c at its hottest point.

A lot of people when trying to get the temps as high as they can just do "yes > /dev/null" but remember this doesn't take into account heat from the GPU. Both the GPU and CPU share the same Heatsink/fan so to get your temps literally as high as they will go, you need to run 2 instances of yes dev/null whilst doing something graphically intensive aswell.

 

[Sesshi]

Best place to buy a (cheap) IR thermometer in the UK?

 

[aristobrat]

Dude... I'd like to know what brand that is.

At work we use IBM ThinkPad T60s and Dell Latitude D620s (both are dual-core) and none of their cases get anywhere close to the case temp of my MacBook (and my MacBook is way cooler than the MacBook Pros I used)...

 

[drj434343]

PB temps

Just for the sake of being thorough, I've measured my 15" Powerbook 1.67 Ghz, and found the top left keyboard strip and bottom left of the case to be about 118 degrees F under sustained full load. Hot to the touch, but not enough to burn me.

 

[wako]

Dude... I'd like to know what brand that is.

I have two friends. one of them has an XPS unit with a 6800 in it. It definitely does have the fan on most of the time, however it is never too hot to put it on your lap, and it always just warm to the touch. NEVER hot.

Another friend, has the new M1210. It is as hot as my former 12'' PB when it gets into extreme loads (mostly playing games), never as hot as the MacBook

 

[Rovman]

Best place to buy a (cheap) IR thermometer in the UK?

Got mine on ebay for about £15.

It's a TN2 Infrared non-contact thermometer.

Pretty much just very simple/basic one. Only bought it to measure my MacBook case temp.

 

[aristobrat]

I was wary of the inexpensive ones because some of their margins of error were +/- 10 degrees, which seemed kinda huge.

 

[Makosuke]

I was wary of the inexpensive ones because some of their margins of error were +/- 10 degrees, which seemed kinda huge.

Yeah, if that's the margin of error, it's not going to be telling you anything other than very generally what's hotter than what--certainly nothing worth talking about. Those are more for measuring the order of magnitude of very hot things--a car engine block or something.

It's interesting, that comment about the toasty 12" PB reminded me. A friend has an 867MHz 12" ALPB, and when it was running 10.2 the fan rarely came on but it got VICIOUSLY hot under any sort of load--easily as hot as my MBP, if not hotter (and it's a lot smaller, so the wrist rest area and keyboard were MUCH hotter).

After upgrading to 10.4, the fans come on noticibly more, and the thing is nice and warm, but nowhere even close to as hot as it used to be. MUCH cooler.

Which, of course, makes me wonder if we're not still in line for a "re-think" of noise-vs-heat for the current machines. Could happen. If 10.5 cranks the Core Duo all the way down to 1000MHz to save power when it's not under load, that'll additionally reduce idle temps.

 

[vv-tim]

Dude... I'd like to know what brand that is. I admit that I buy far more Windows towers than I do laptops, but the Dell laptop I used recently (a nice bulky 15", not a compact one like the MacBook or even thin MBP) was viciously hot and the fan ran constantly. A late-model Toshiba wasn't much better. When it's back from its current trip (it's a work laptop) I'll be happy to put an IR thermometer on it and see what I get for comparison.

I'm not saying that there are no cool PC laptops, I'm just saying that a lot of them are every bit as hot as the MB/MBPs, and I think people are blowing a lot of stuff way out of proportion.

The only reason I took a thermometer to mine was so I'd have some real surface temperature numbers to post instead of wild speculation or assumptions.

Dell E1405. With extended battery... 7 hours of battery life... extremely cool even playing WoW. Dual core 1.83ghz.

Now... I have an Apple (repasted) MacBook Pro that runs at a lovely temperature as well A little bit warmer than the E1405, but tons more lovely.

 

[SC68Cal]

The one thing that would be interesting to know would be if the temperatures that are being reported on all these temp programs are from sensors on the die, meaning they are as close to the processor as possible, or if these are temperatures inside the actual casing, and for comparison see if we can get temperature readings on die for older PPC processors.

EDIT: Found an interesting article

http://www.overclockers.com/tips507/

"The in-socket thermistor is not designed to be a precision CPU Temp measuring tool; it is there to prevent your CPU from self-immolation by acting as an early warning tool. The further this tool is from the CPU Case Top, the more likely it will be affected by factors which render it useless for detailed heatsink comparisons on the same motherboard, leading to potentially erroneous comparisons."

 

[Sesshi]

Thanks for the pointer Rovman, got a TN1. Undoubtedly I shall be in a pointing frenzy after I get it.

 

[wako]

The one thing that would be interesting to know would be if the temperatures that are being reported on all these temp programs are from sensors on the die, meaning they are as close to the processor as possible, or if these are temperatures inside the actual casing, and for comparison see if we can get temperature readings on die for older PPC processors.

EDIT: Found an interesting article

http://www.overclockers.com/tips507/

uhhhhhhh.....


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