Hi all ,

I received a Macbook Pro on the 8th March as a birthday gift from my parents. It's the 15" Quad Core i7 2.7ghz.

When using it casually, as in browsing the net and typing up Uni work it gets REALLY hot.... I have just used a digital thermometer and it was reading 49 degrees when measuring the bottom of the Macbook. For the first time the fans have just went crazy and sounded like it was going to take off!

Have any of you lot had similar issues? I plan on going to the Genius Bar but I can't risk not having a computer for any length of time (dissertation time at Uni).

Thanks

Sounds about normal, I've found most Apple products to get very warm in normal use - vents are not good design, darling

Nothing to worry about all Apple do that, they run hot compare to Microsoft based one.

Download "sMC Fan Control" application, it is free and let you set custom fan speed. Standart Mac is running about 1200 RPM on the fans, but you could go up all the way to 3800 RPM. If you are gamer there is options for different settings (profiles) my Mac is running on 2900 RPM and never getting hot any more.

Here you go:

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23049/smcfancontrol

Sounds about normal, I've found most Apple products to get very warm in normal use - vents are not good design, darling

I like the idea of my 2009 MacBook (aluminium) venting up the screen to hide the vents.......just can't see where it's supposed to draw the air in from, unlike my HP. Have noticed that either side of the pad-thing does get quite warm....am looking forward to using it as a hand-warmer.......especially whilst it's running Windows

Sounds about normal, I've found most Apple products to get very warm in normal use - vents are not good design, darling

So practicality has been ignored over small aesthetics.... I love Apple, but, that is crazy

My 2010 macbook pro also gets warm, seems to be the norm. The air intake and outlet are both along the lower edge of the screen.

My MacBook Pro gets warm but my Dell work laptop gets too hot to actually use on your lap.

Having an I7 MBP and an I7 MSI, must say the MBP is getting more than warm. Especially as the vent goes out to the back (under the screen), it is unbearable as a lap top laptop. Legs are getting too warm.

But the MSI is in another league, I could warm my entire living room with that! That is not warm, that is hot. And even in idle the fans will kick in. That is why that one is downstairs standing on a cooler.

The MBP is getting warm as soon as the ATI has to do more (flashplayer....), as long as I am just surfing the web, it will stay cooler.

Download istat pro or SMC fan control it will give you a rough temp of your macbook, with SMC fancontrol you can control the speed of the fan if you wanted.

Takes me back to my days of iBook G3 ownership... They got so hot they damaged the solder on the GPU chip... I managed to temporarily fix it and get a couple more months out of it... The "fixing" involved removing the bottom cover, placing a tea light on top of the GPU and running it for a while and then placing a couple of shims in-between the bottom cover and the GPU... ah the memories!

Phil

I wouldn't say that's normal for "normal use". I would say you could have a rogue process or something that is using up an abnormal amount of CPU time (Flash, anyone?), thus creating the heat. To put it into perspective, I have the 17" MBP (SandyBridge as well, like yours) but mine is lovely and cool to the touch when in use. It only gets hot if I use Windows in BootCamp and do some gaming.

One thing I would try is get a little utility called gfxCardStatus. This will let you switch on demand between the two inbuilt graphics cards (Intel and ATI Radeon). This allows you to keep temperature low and battery life high as sometimes Mac OS does like to get a bit erratic when deciding when to use the ATI card.

Also to put into perspective (without wishing to start the whole Mac vs PC debate), Macs do run warmish, mainly because they're made out of aluminium and thus it is part of their design to dissipate heat all over the body. Also, when you actually consider similar powered PC laptops (I had a Core i7 Dell XPS 17), the temperature comparison is actually worse for PC hardware I find. The Dell also had a metal top, but was unbelievably hot from about 15 minutes after boot up until shutdown - very irritating and made last summer's worth of coding very unpleasant - enough to drive me to buy Mac again by September.