12" PB heats up - is this normal?

W

wazowski

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Hi,

I just bought myself a 12" powerBook. Just getting used to it. I have noticed that my notebook heats up quite quickly. The left hand side to the mouse track area gets quite hot. So does the left side (near the power cord input) closer to the display. Is this normal?

Please advice.
 
The 12'' alubook is known to heat up the case a lot stronger than other alubooks. My brother has a G4 867Mhz model (one of the first) and it's getting quite hot.
The crucial point here seems to be the definition for hot. It didn't burn my hands but gave me a quite uncomfortable feeling. Of course, this only happenes when your system is stressed. It shouldn't heat up like this while you are writing mails and browsing the web.
 
The left area next to the track-pad houses the hard drive. This can get quite warm. Never hot enough to burn you, but hot enough to be noticeable at times. I've gotten quite used to it.

The area near the near the power cord and just below the keyboard on the left houses the processor and the video chip. You can bet these will get hot :). It is nothing to worry about though. The reason the Aluminum powerbooks get so hot is because they act as large heat sinks, and conduct heat very well. The downside is that they get kinda hot. The upside is your fan won't have to work as hard to cool down the laptop as some other PC based laptops do.
 
The iBooks do get warm, except that they don't get as hot since they are made of plastic. However, the fan does go on more than on the Powerbook. Which figures...

No idea about the 15" though.
 
make sure that you have the processor speed on Automatic (you can have it on High, Automatic and Low). you change this in the energy preferences. this way it slows down while you are doing simple stuff like writing, and reduces the heat.

go to versiontracker.com or macupdate.com and download temperaturemonitor lite if you want to keep an eye on the temperature.

my powerbook 12' is usually around 47 °C, but goes down to around 44 when i am not using it. the fan kick in at about 48°C and goes into overdrive at about 52°C.
 
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