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February 13, 2008

hardware

Hot or Not: MacBook Air temperature tests to come

Posted Feb. 13, ’08, 3:17 PM PT by Brian Chen
Category | Hardware

mbair_3q.gifSleek and sexy, the MacBook Air is quite a hot item. But just how hot does it get on your lap? Here at Macworld Lab, we’re planning to put the Air (and other Mac laptops) through some tests.

Before we get started, we’d love if all you hip PowerBook/iBook/MacBook/MacBook Pro/MacBook Air users would help us out. What are you doing with your notebook when it seems to feel particularly hot (e.g., watching an iTunes movie, playing Doom 3, packet sniffing your neighbor’s WEP password)?

Comment with your suggestions and we’ll see what we can do with our test procedures.


15 Comments

rorey racoon said:

MacBook; anything to do with flash! Youtube also.

February 13, 2008 3:42 PM
jackfrost Author Profile Page said:

I'm in the same boat as @rorey. Anything with flash on my Macbook starts those fans cranking and causes Safari to hog at least one of my cores.

February 13, 2008 4:03 PM
Matthew said:

Want to cook some steak? Use a MacBook Pro and video chat with iChat. Whoa daddy!

February 13, 2008 4:10 PM
jackfrost Author Profile Page said:

Almost forgot: printing. Using my USB printer is sometimes enough to get those cores up to 100%.

February 13, 2008 4:24 PM
wesg Author Profile Page said:

@Jackfrost
Printing? wow, interesting.

For me, my MB cranks up to overdrive with Parallels, iSquint and when applications freeze up (the usual suspects). iStat Nano clocks the fans up to 6200 RPM max and I've had a temp of 78 degrees.

February 13, 2008 4:30 PM
fletcher Author Profile Page said:

If you bring up a half dozen QuickTime HD trailers it will usually exercise the processors pretty good. Loop the trailers and resize them manually.

Also, setting the laptop on a fabric surface like a couch will tend to heat it up. I try to leave my laptop on hard surfaces if it is running so it doesn't get too hot.

February 13, 2008 4:33 PM
Dean said:

The hard disk is easily the hottest component in my iBook G4. A SuperDuper! full drive image will get the drive good and hot. For what it's worth, my drive is a Hitachi Travelstar 80 Gig.

Surprisingly, my MacBook runs cooler than the iBook most of the time. This could be due to the 4 Gig of RAM in my MacBook. My iBook has only 768 MB.

TemperatureMonitor is great for this kind of testing too.

February 13, 2008 4:45 PM
Kevin said:

I use SMC Fan Control and crank my fans to max. It stays nice and cool, and it isn't that loud.

February 13, 2008 5:03 PM
wesg Author Profile Page said:

@Kevin

What kind of computer is it?

February 13, 2008 5:10 PM
Jay said:

MacBook; open really large .pdf's like textbooks, highlight them, and then save it.

February 13, 2008 5:34 PM
Hellibelle said:

MacBook, VMware fusion running WinXP cranks the fans up so high I can feel the breeze.

February 13, 2008 10:48 PM
Kelmon said:

Ripping a DVD with Handbrake certainly pushes my MacBook Pro to the limits of temperature. This test isn't much use on the MacBook Air but I would expect that encoding video files through QuickTime or other such application would have the same effect. Mind you, I wouldn't dream of doing this with the laptop actually on my lap.

February 14, 2008 12:14 AM
Franco said:

EasyWMA that burns the processor! it was the first thing i used when i got my mac and i was scared when the fans kicked up!

February 14, 2008 7:32 AM
Kevin Lewis said:

Sorry, SMC Fan control on 17" Mac Book Pro.

February 14, 2008 8:35 AM
Tommy said:

Who needs heat this winter? Using my MBP takes care of my heating bills. It gets super HOT!

February 14, 2008 10:38 AM

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