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    Anyone's Macbook get hot when using parallels?

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by bp08, Aug 20, 2008.

  1. bp08

    bp08 Notebook Guru

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    My macbook never gets hot unless i run parallels. I have vista installed too. Mainly in the top left portion of the macbook. It doesn't get blaring hot, but it heats up. Does the virtual machine require the graphics card to be heavily used? Is that why it gets hot ? My main question is why doesn't it get hot when using mac osx, but it does when using vista?
     
    bp08, Aug 20, 2008
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  2. ltcommander_data

    ltcommander_data Notebook Deity

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    Have you checked your CPU usage? Virtual machines require constant CPU usage, even when you are doing nothing in the virtual machine itself since there are a ton of background stuff going on to keep a second virtual computer running. When I use VMWare Fusion it usually has 20-30% usage on one core when the guest OS is doing nothing.
     
    ltcommander_data, Aug 20, 2008
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  3. chen

    chen Notebook Deity

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    Your graphic card has to work hard to run Vista....it's now a standard that you need at least Intel x4500 to run it....I think that's why it heats up......plus you are runny MAC OS too
     
    chen, Aug 20, 2008
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  4. Omela

    Omela Notebook Consultant

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    For me same. Even my old ASUS was hot sometimes. MacOS more CPU friendly, and stop unused processes. Windows Vista and XP not so successful with it.
     
    Omela, Aug 20, 2008
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  5. Sam

    Sam Notebook Virtuoso

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    I'm not surprised, Parallels will use more resources than say surfing the internet, so it will get hot and the fans will speed up. Nothing out of the ordinary :).

    When you use Parallels, you are running Windows Vista while running Mac OS X. That uses more resources than normal!
     
    Sam, Aug 20, 2008
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  6. Bwen

    Bwen Notebook Evangelist

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    Mine gets extremely hot as soon as I VMWare Fusion finishes loading Windows, you can hear the fans quite easily as it starts spinning something like 5500 rpm
     
    Bwen, Aug 20, 2008
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  7. Arthaven

    Arthaven Notebook Enthusiast

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    Heh, my MBP gets pretty hot on the back end just surfing the internet for a couple hours. I just don't lay it on my bare skin. Not that it's THAT hot but it's enough to make you think.
     
    Arthaven, Aug 21, 2008
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  8. jimboutilier

    jimboutilier Notebook Evangelist NBR Reviewer

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    When my Macbook runs XP under PArallels, it consumes about 10%-15% of my CPU at idle. That is more like 15% to 25% running VISTA. That warms up the CPU's a bit when you add that to normal use over that baseline.

    However the only time I really notice Parallels causing heat/fan issues is when I plug in a USB device. Until I answer the question "Do you want parallels to use this device" it pretty much pegs one CPU. And often I don't notice the little window asking the question and don't want parallels to use the device so my first reminder is a high fan speed.
     
    jimboutilier, Aug 21, 2008
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  9. ubercool

    ubercool Notebook Deity

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    Same issue here with VMware Fusion, running that separate OS is very processor intensive! :)
     
    ubercool, Aug 21, 2008
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