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    Macbook Pro 15'' and heat

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by Daruki, Jun 12, 2011.

  1. Daruki

    Daruki Notebook Enthusiast

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    How warm does the new Macbook Pro 15'' 2011 get? I'm going to University this fall and I will only play a few games, but mostly just watch movies/surf/work.

    Also, since I won't be doing anything excessive on it, there is a deal for a Macbook pro 15'' 2010 model with an i5 Intel core. Will that produce less heat?

    Thanks
     
    Daruki, Jun 12, 2011
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  2. gobipie

    gobipie Notebook Enthusiast

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    This is something I had trouble believing but the lower the heat of your graphics card, the better it performs. For some reason, I never thought that something as trivial as "heat" could affect performance until I saw it for myself and what a difference it made.

    The white macbook from late 2009 had a problem with overheating so the smart people on the internet came up with a solution called smcfancontrol (on the mac side) and macfan (on the windows side). It makes the computer much, much cooler during games (90' C vs 60' C) and, most important, it makes games run smoother. The game I tested it on and continue to use it with is StarCraft II.

    If you have issues with turning up your fan to the max 6,200 rpm for fear of damaging or wearing out your fan, consider this: you only need to do it when you're playing games and, if and when you are playing games, your fan will eventually rev up to that speed after it detects the heat. The problem is that the fan is super slow at detecting heat and so what I experienced was a period of "stuttering" before the fans kicked in and the game smoothed out. Controlling the fans allows you to skip that period.

    Of course, the new macbook pros are much stronger so I have no idea what heating problems there might/might not be.

    Mac/SMC Fan Control for Windows (+ Temp) | Download Mac/SMC Fan Control for Windows (+ Temp) software for free at SourceForge.net
     
    gobipie, Jun 18, 2011
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