Windows Gaming, CPU temperature and potential damage. - Macbook Air on Bootcamp Win7

[robertpovall]

Hello all!

I'm CERTAIN that this question will have been asked before and I do apologise for annoying anyone or potentially breaking a forum rule but I desperately need an answer from more modern sources than some of the old posts and I need one soon for personal reasons.

Right so straight to the point - i'm gaming in a Win7 bootcamp on my 2013 Macbook Air with i7 upgrade, 8ram and the space upgrade.

Running old/new games is pretty perfect when they're all on low graphics options and in power saving mode which further cuts excess energy usage, my CPU heat is always a very safe number and if I touch my laptop's CPU area it's pretty cool as if I was just surfing the web.

HOWEVER, my question is if I was to push my Air and stick it in high performance mode and up all my game graphics to the maximum, it still plays smoothly BUT the temperature is through the roof, the fan kicks in to regulate it but obviously it's still hot to the touch. 90o and above.

My question is: can prolonged high performance usage which pushes the laptop to the limit and creates heat ever have any kind of damage for my laptop? in terms of simply not working, hardware problems and battery/cpu problems?

the reason i'm desperate for a response is because I have had a bad experience with ASUS, i received a poorly designed laptop and it ended up having severe battery problems and in the end became dangerous to have in the house for unknown reasons but now I'm very aware that machines really can explode.

disclaimer: yes i know i should invest in a big gaming pc but i'm travelling and can't so i'm using my mac.

thank you )

 

[Sadisterr]

Hi, of course, prolonged heat, let's say above 90C is nothing good to your hardware. But we can't estimate at all, how much your Air will last. It is generally better to keep your CPU under 85C and GPU under 80C.

 

[ArthurWellsley]

Cooler

What about getting a cooler to place underneath your Air?

http://laptop-coolers-review.toptenreviews.com/

 

[Gav2k]

No it won't cause issues and will shut off before it goes pop if an issue were ever to arise.

 

[Nightarchaon]

The big problem isn't damage to the CPU, it will throttle itself to keep at its thermal tolerance before it damages itself, the real problem, the one you will notice, is that as the throttling starts the performance you see gets worse and worse, so the harder you push the APU, the worse the gaming performance you will get as it gets slower and slower.

The macbook airs just don't have the airflow or heatsinks to run at high thermal load for a prolonged period, even using steam streaming and off loading the hard work to a beefy gaming PC my friends air maxes out its temp just decoding the video.

You get what you get though, so light + portable work rig doesnt = heavy and cool gaming rig, you get to choose one, not both with the tech at hand.

 

[DrewCam]

i was playing games with cpu usage around 100% however when i downloaded Istat it told me that my cpu temp in Celsius was 70 degrees is this bad for gaming? after letting it cool its gradually reduced but i was in shock just how hot it got. I do use a fan whilst playing games but i was under the impression if it was to hot the mac would just shut down which has never happened.

 

[casperes1996]

Not that bad

i was playing games with cpu usage around 100% however when i downloaded Istat it told me that my cpu temp in Celsius was 70 degrees is this bad for gaming? after letting it cool its gradually reduced but i was in shock just how hot it got. I do use a fan whilst playing games but i was under the impression if it was to hot the mac would just shut down which has never happened.

70C isn't that bad. I've had my MBP at 98°C for many consecutive hours no problem.

 

[DrewCam]

70C isn't that bad. I've had my MBP at 98°C for many consecutive hours no problem.

Ah ok thanks man! This was running in native not boot camp also. Hopefully it's nothing to worry about was just concerned.