My tests on heat generation

D

daj

Member
I have read a number of discussions on the topic of heat generation from the MacBook Pro so I thought I would run a few test… these are obviously not done under laboratory conditions however I have attempted to control the environment and conduct the same tests each time.

I was interested in the heat generated by the Mac using native OSX, Parallels VM and Apples Bootcamp.

The ambient temperature was 17.5 centigrade; I attached the digital heat sensor to the underside of the Mac, in the middle at the back; the Mac battery was fully charged and running on power. Each time I started the Mac the casing was showing a temperature of 18.

I started up the necessary operating system and took the temperature reading for the outside of the Mac at the end of each of the following:

(a) Left the Mac sitting idle for 30 minutes
(b) Downloaded a 101Mb file from the internet (wireless connection)
(c) Surfed the internet for 5 minutes (wireless)
(d) Copied a 2.3Gb file from a DVD

My temperature observations were as follows:

All temperatures in degrees centigrade

...............(a)....(b).....(c)......(d)
OS/X...........25.0...26.0....26.5....28.0
Paralells VM...27.0...28.5....30.0....31.5
Bootcamp.......30.0...31.5....32.0....35.0


Notes:
For Paralells VM all tests were conducted within the VM and not on OS/X
Bootcamp and Parallels VM were both running Win XP SP2

Sorry for all the dots above -- it was the only way I could get all the figures to line up!
 
Great that you are running these tests, May I suggest that you try it while using CoreDuoTemp to gather the data? That would allow others to compare.
 
I did consider it, but it only runs in OS/X which is no good for the BootCamp side of things. I could probably have found a similar tool for running in WinXP but I wanted to keep as many of the components as consistent as possible.

Also, from reading this and other forums people were more concerned as to the temperature of the casing of the MBP -- which afterall is the bit which you are most in contact with!
 
This seems to show that Parallels does a better job of power management than XP, but the combination is not as good as native OSX. This has implications both for temprature management and battery life. I'm still wondering if the Parallels processor usage when Windows is idle (task manager showing 1% processor usage) can be improved to make the battery last longer.

I also wonder if anyone has any idea how hot the case (or the reported processor temp) can be before the life of the machine is reduced by the overheating. I also wonder how consistent and accurate the internal temp sensor is -- can I really believe that when it indicates the machine isn't overheating (assuming I can find a spec somewhere) that it's telling the truth.
 
Parallels guest OS (e.g. WinXP) runs as an application (parallels Workstation) within Mac OS X.
So there is no real comparison of the three. It is still reinforsing the obvious that MacOSX does better power management than WinXP on the same hardware (like using boot camp to repartition the drive..).

Also, to have accurate results, make sure you use the same brightness in the dispaly (perhaps similar color background too?) and no other things running (e.g. background scan of antivirus etc..) or external USB devices that may draw power etc.

Still, thanks for sharing your tests results here.
 
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