April 2010 MacBook Pro Heat issues.

Question

My first post and first Mac, so please be patient....
MCP 15" HiRes glossy, Intel i7, 500G 7200rpm HD, (you know the rest)
I had bought my MBP in late April, the machine is great had no issues at all outperformed any comparable machine I put it up against. After having it a couple weeks I decided to push the video card a bit to see how it handled gaming. I reopened my World of Warcraft account and noticed a great deal of heat being put off by the machine(too hot to touch above function keys). For days I read forums on both Apple and World of Warcraft to see if the heat output is normal or not.
Things unclear to me are what exactly is Apple, Nvidia, and Intel claiming to be normal operating heat levels? (Exact temps please, I monitor using istat)I am running World of Warcraft between 160 F and 170 F and occasionally in the 180's with the frame rate dummied down to 30 fps and some other settings reduced. I should not have to do that. Its used on a flat surface, no obstructions. I refuse to buy an extended warranty for a built in system killer such as heat(would rather return and pay less). Did a hardware test everything passed. Fans running normal between 2000 and 3000rpms during use. Like I said in the first sentence this is my first Mac and think this is a little too hot in my opinion, but I am no expert so if i am wrong please tell me. I love the notebook but am worried about the heat, and cannot afford to shell out another $2200 in a year or two for a notebook that over time failed from heat issues.
I am coming from an HP ZD8000 with a 256mgb ATI video card that had only gotten a little bit luke warm at maximum settings and 60 fps in World of Warcraft, but that desktop replacement had 4 fans.
Should I have Genius bar do a GPU test? or is this heat acceptable?

Answer 1

Nate, welcome to Apple Discussions!
In short, your temperatures are perfectly normal. In fact, they're a bit on the cool side. I assume you're reporting the CPU diode ("CPU") temperature using iStat? If so, the temps are completely and perfectly normal.
170ºF is only 76ºC. The CPU is rated up to 105ºC (221ºF). If you've got the fans speeding up at that temperature then it is running perfectly normally. You've got a lot more room there before anything ever becomes damaged. And, rest assured, if the temperatures ever climbed to a point where damage is possible (I've never heard of that and I've been on these MBP forums for 2 years) then the machine will automatically shut itself off. There is no way that you could do damage to it with heat.
Like I said in the first sentence this is my first Mac and think this is a little too hot in my opinion, but I am no expert so if i am wrong please tell me.
You're wrong. It's perfectly normal. You don't need to be worried. They're designed to run warm under heavy load. People use these things for rendering and encoding video all day long. Yours will be just fine if you play Warcraft on it once in a while. Bump up the settings a bit too; I don't see why that would generate any more or less heat.
I am coming from an HP ZD8000 with a 256mgb ATI video card that had only gotten a little bit luke warm at maximum settings and 60 fps in World of Warcraft, but that desktop replacement had 4 fans.
Well, that's the problem. That thing was plastic, correct? And probably 2" thick? With huge fan vents on the back? The MBP is exactly the opposite of that. Metal conducts heat much better, and helps to cool the computer too. However, you also feel the heat more. The MBP is half the thickness of that thing, and doesn't have the vents either or the huge fans. All it means is it will heat up a bit more, but it's been designed just fine with that heat in mind.
--Travis