[UPDATE: April 27, 2010: This article was originally published on April 26, 2010 at 1:24pm EDT with an attribution error. We have changed the headline and also changed body of article to correctly identify “Australian PC Authority.” We apologize to “PC Advisor” for our error.]
“This works to a degree, but the unfortunate side effect is that when things run really hot the entire laptop body heats up to an uncomfortable level. This can quite easily shift a laptop from being pleasantly warm in one’s lap to something that is dangerous to one’s health,” Baxter and Gillooly report. “Such situations are why product marketers made a concerted effort in the early half of this decade to shift the naming of such devices from laptop to notebook.”
Baxter and Gillooly report, “During testing of the latest Core i7-620M based 17in Macbook Pro we noticed that there were problems running certain tests in our benchmark suite. The score being spat out for the Photoshop tests – fourth in a suite of six test applications – in particular was quite low, and we wondered whether it was down to heat issues. When the test was then successfully run as a standalone test with the Macbook sitting on its side, unibody base exposed to the air, we suspected that the Core i7 was struggling within the Aluminium shell of the Macbook.”
MacDailyNews Note: Just a bit of clarification: The MacBook Pro was being put through benchmark tests which naturally push the hardware to its extremes in order to measure maximum results. During normal use, these extremes might never be reached. (Unless you’re trying to watch an Adobe Flash video. 
)
Baxter and Gillooly continue, “To test our suspicions further we booted into Windows (hooray for Boot Camp) and watched what happened when the CPU was loaded to full… We then switched to Maxon’s Cinebench 11.5. This is a 3D rendering benchmark that is used to test multithreading in CPUs, and loads up all cores with rendering tasks. During this test the Core i7 spiked at 95 degrees Celsius, tantalisingly close to the boiling point of water.”
MacDailyNews Note: The temperature noted is under Windows, not Mac OS X, running a benchmark app designed to max out the processor, and measures the processor surface temperature, not the MacBook’s external case temperature.
Baxter and Gillooly continue, “We repeated the Cinebench test in OS X, and, as with the Windows version, the CPU temperature climbed precipitously high – topping out at 90 degrees Celsius. The underside heat sensors were only registering 39 degrees when this happened, even though the underside near the CPU was almost too hot to touch.”
MacDailyNews Note: 39° C equals 102.2° F.
Baxter and Gillooly continue, “Worryingly the heat buildup in the CPU doesn’t register on the enclosure sensors. This is despite the chassis getting hot to the touch, and the heat buildup being registered on all the hardware-based sensors in the Macbook Pro.”
MacDailyNews Take: What the hell is worrying about that? It’s proof positive of Apple’s excellent hardware design. The part that the user can touch gets warm, but not dangerously so, while the processor when abnormally stressed to maximum levels hit temperatures that do not exceed Intel’s thermal spec for the MacBook Pro’s Intel Core i7 Mobile Processor (I7-620M) of 105° C.
Baxter and Gillooly continue, “To test just how much an influence cramming the Core i7 into the unibody Macbook Pro has we re-ran the tests on a Fujitsu Lifebook SH 760. This uses the same Core i7-620M CPU as the Macbook, but is designed with a copper heatsink that vents out the left side of its plastic shell. The CPU started out with an idle temperature of 40 Degrees. After 3 consecutive Cinebench runs the maximum CPU temperature seen was 81 Degrees, a full 20 below that experienced with the Macbook. It was also cool to the touch.”
MacDailyNews Take: Meaningless. Baxter and Gillooly’s own tests prove that Apple’s 17-inch MacBook Pro Core i7 processor does not exceed Intel’s thermal spec of 105° C even when running a test designed to maximize processor load. Australian PC Authority has added an update to their article: “Update: Just to clarify the comments about the HWMonitor screenshots. The version used (1.15) predates the Core i7-620M CPU’s release. This means that HWMonitor incorrectly reports the CPU as a Core i5. The Cinebench program in the background of the shots reports the CPUs correctly as 2.6GHz Core i7-620M models in both laptops. The references to the CPU in the Fujitsu Lifebook are correct.”
Baxter and Gillooly continue, “Apple sits the Core i7 at the top end of its Macbook Pro Range. From our testing in both Windows and OS X it seems that while the CPU is powerful, the heat output associated with it running at full load is definitely a cause for concern. In this case the fantastic looks of the unibody Aluminium design are let down by the sheer amount of heat buildup experienced.”
MacDailyNews Take: Bullshit. The MBP’s i7 heat output is within Intel’s own safe operating temperatures and the MacBook Pro’s case seems to be executing one of its main missions, to dissipate a processor’s heat before it reaches the user, in excellent fashion, as Baxter’s and Gillooly’s own tests prove.
Baxter and Gillooly continue, “The generally cool styling of the Macbook Pro just doesn’t seem too capable when put up against the sheer output of Intel’s Core i7 processor. This is reinforced by the Fujitsu Lifebook running 20 degrees cooler in the same tests with the same CPU.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: To recap: The MacBook Pro’s Core i7 processer never exceeds Intel’s thermal spec limit. The MacBook Pro’s case gets warm under maximum and abnormal processor stress, up to 3.6° F above normal human body temperature, or 98.6° F. OMG, alert the media!
Enjoy the overblown hyperbole this piece of propaganda is sure to generate among the less-than-critical thinkers throughout the blogosphere and mainstream tech media.
At the very least, Apple ought to demand a prominent retraction and apology.
Lee: Also check this thread at a forum with comments about the article. There are a handful of people admitting that their MBPs ovearheat frequently
I’ve not seen anyone of the few actual Mac users in that thread talking of “overheating”. Just the usual 98% clueless anti-Apple ranting.
Overheating is when the chip is either throttling down for thermal protection or actually getting damaged by heat. That is a completely different issue from having the opinion that the machine should remain cooler when using the notebook in bed on the blanket – which is explicitly warned against by all manufacturers!
Apple is constantly battling against overheating issues when implementing new CPUs in their products. Its a known fact and a reason it took so long for Core i7 to be adopted in Macbooks.
ivid: Apple is constantly battling against overheating issues when implementing new CPUs in their products. Its a known fact and a reason it took so long for Core i7 to be adopted in Macbooks.
You’re funny.
“Battling overheating” is called implementing a proper cooling solution in engineering circles. And Apple is doing that.
One can argue about the tradeoffs they make (usually towards battery life, even if that means at full throttle the machine is better suited for a tabletop than to your lap), but their cooling systems normally work properly.
Whether that particular test machine had a bug or whether an SMC firmware update may be necessary for all of them will remain to be seen, but Apple has no more problems with overheating (see above) than any other notebook manufacturer, even though they’re building their machines to much more challenging specs (high-power chips in extremely compact machines).
Still in denial that Apple’s design could be implemented more efficiency. That’s the mark of the worst kind of fanboy. You’re completely in denial about the fact that Apple’s cheap design is allowing these CPUs to get dangerously close to Intel’s absolute maximum ratings. It is not common for CPUs to get anywhere near this hot, and I think the small rational part of your brain that is left knows that.
Enjoy your overheating fashion icon toy laptop.
Lee: Still in denial that Apple’s design could be implemented more efficiency. That’s the mark of the worst kind of fanboy. You’re completely in denial about the fact that Apple’s cheap design is allowing these CPUs to get dangerously close to Intel’s absolute maximum ratings.
“Denial” requires an actual reality to be denied in the first place.
My very real MacBook Pro is an earlier model, but it has a similar heat production and the same cooling architecture. And it works exactly as designed and the cooling system always remains in full control.
So the fundamental design is sound.
In question is at most whether:
– the writers of that article arrived at that result by their own manipulation (either by intentional or incompetent fiddling with unsupported low-level utilities),
– the individual tested machine had a defect and because of that inexplicably failed to ramp up its fans (see the screenshot with the fans idling at 2000rpm while the CPU is at maximum temperature) or
– there is an SMC firmware bug in the series which fails to control the fans properly (there is no corroboration of that being the case thus far, however).
The conclusion that the entire cooling system was defective is premature and outright idiotic under these circumstances – it most certainly isn’t. But proper journalists would have investigated instead of merely regurgitating old but disproven prejudices.
You don’t seem to have any actual insight or experience of your own either, but you are talking of “denial”? Laughable!
You don’t have a clue about these machines.
Maybe apple should simply decrease the cpu frequency. This is what I did with my regular windows pc as the fans got too loud.
my little software
Joerg: Maybe apple should simply decrease the cpu frequency. This is what I did with my regular windows pc as the fans got too loud.
That is done automatically and dynamically nowadays, when the computer is idling. What did you think why an idling computer was producing so much less heat?
And even at full power MacBook Pros are normally cooled sufficiently to maintain that performance.
Steve’s machines do not get too hot. The authors shall be punished! Ve have our vays!!! The temp is perfect. If you have the fever, bed down with a MBP and it will break the fever!! Then shave with your iPhone!!
In truth the larger screen MBP are running a low end i7 Intel hip with only two cores. I guess four cores would burn a hole in your desk. Plus it would not be as fast as the two cores because Steve learned how to make two run faster than four. What a country!!!
Hello! The temperatures referenced in the article are CELSIUS, not farenheit, people!!! The report was created in Australia, where they don’t use farenheit.
Please do your homework before assuming the people doing the testing are idiots… The MacBook Pro DOES run very hot as I can attest (I own one).
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Ping, stop being such a insulter. I’m getting ready to return my 15″ MacBook Pro with i7 because it is tremendously hot. And I really did compare this to another i7 laptop (not i5), and it really did run 30-40 degrees C cooler in Windows. And yes, the MBP runs just as hot in OS X. Grow some sense, Ping, people aren’t trying to engage in a design discussion or some stupid semantics about what “overheating” means technically. WE JUST MEAN IT’S HOT, REALLY FREAKING HOT, AND MUCH HOTTER THAN COMPETING PRODUCTS WITH SIMILAR SPECS. If you’d come to my house, I’d show you, but I wish you’d just shut up – are you really so arrogant that you think we can’t tell what HOT is? Anything other than Web browsers and stupid little toy programs will light this thing up to over 90 degrees C, making it useless as a LAPtop. What a shame, because the design is otherwise nice, but there’s no way I’m keeping this freaking $2000 toaster.
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Yeah i can fry some eggs on my mid 2010 macbook pro running a core i5 2.53ghz cpu. I use smc fan control and push fans to 5,000 rpm to alieviate the problem.
They probably should go back to to the apple 2e at least they didn’t over heat and you could play Paratrooper on them.