Macbook overheating (major fps drop)

leFak

United Kingdom28 Posts

December 23 2012 22:34 GMT

Hi, guys I've got several problems with overheating.While playing starcraft2 my gpu temperature skycrockets to 92-94 celcius. thus i'm having major fps drops.

From ~70 fps drops down to 20 - 28:/ can't barely play with that kind of fps drops.

Any suggestions ? Right now running bootcamp win7 64bit.
(Late 2009 model) Intel 2 Core Duo 2.26 Ghz , 8 gb of ram , nvidia 9400m.

Using Lubbo's Fan control to set fan speed always at maximum(6000rpm) and using giant zalman cooling pad.

Anything else i can do to lower temperature ? thanks in advance !

Cyro

United Kingdom20326 Posts

December 23 2012 23:00 GMT

You can underclock the system by a significant margin, but otherwise there's not much you can do if its clean of dust etc already.

Blame laptop manufacturers for using parts and system design that they can't adequately cool.

Ichabod

United States1659 Posts

December 23 2012 23:10 GMT

Macbooks are quite limited in ventilation, but i've found if you can elevate it and maybe put a full-sized fan behind it, you can achieve much lower temperatures than a regular cooling pad alone.

Source: Experience with my Late 2008 Macbook with 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, 8GB RAM and 9400M

leFak

United Kingdom28 Posts

December 23 2012 23:27 GMT

On December 24 2012 08:00 Cyro wrote:
You can underclock the system by a significant margin, but otherwise there's not much you can do if its clean of dust etc already.

Blame laptop manufacturers for using parts and system design that they can't adequately cool.

How to do that underclock ? it is gonna lower the performance of sc2 ?

I was thinking about removing the lower case and just put like this on cooling pad ? gonna be much more ventilation , but it's not gonna hurt my laptop ?

Alryk

United States2718 Posts

December 23 2012 23:31 GMT

20-28 fps sounds normal... that's normal for lategame haha.

Granted your temps are high. Did you say it was dust free? Might be hard to do with MBP but that's where you could start.

PyooPyoo

United States5 Posts

December 23 2012 23:45 GMT

The problem is the fact that Macbooks aren't really design for heavy gaming program like sc2....
Heh, if you're serious about playing sc2 to the point you will take the lower case off, I recommend another computer/laptop that is more suited for playing games. Don't get me wrong, Macbooks are good for everything else BUT games.

Cyro

United Kingdom20326 Posts

December 23 2012 23:48 GMT

The problem is the fact that Macbooks aren't really design for heavy gaming program like sc2....

They are not designed to be able to run their hardware at stock settings in a reasonable situation without running into temperature issues, in order to keep size/weight/noise down and a ton of other factors. It benefits a lot of people but fucks a lot of others, i think its a really big design issue. You shouldnt have to underclock your CPU/GPU by like 30% in order to get non-throttling temps in a stress test.

How to do that underclock ? it is gonna lower the performance of sc2 ?

Not really sure with MBP, and yes by a pretty big margin if you do it enough to make a real difference

Communism

United States176 Posts

December 24 2012 00:40 GMT

I have a 3 year old asus notebook, that has always ran really hot when i played games on it, like so hot sometimes you could burn yourself if you werent careful. What solved all of my problems (because I was having fps drop when it was hot especially after the first year) was getting the coolermaster CM Storm laptop cooling fan. It is built for laptops with a 19"+ screen, but whatever your laptop size is it will fix the problem guaranteed. This fan is humongous, with 2 i think 5 or 6 inch fans and a variable speed control that goes up to 11 (figuratively speaking lol).

Here is a link to the fan Storm Gaming Notebook Cooler

It is expensive and gigantic and requires its own power supply, but it will fix all of your overheating problems. It also has extra usb ports you can hook up to your laptop as well, although im not sure how useful that is.

Even if you dont get this notebook cooler, if you just take some small house fans like from walmart or wherever, and angle them at the back of your screen down towards all your connection ports, it will help immensely. The coolermaster broke (most likely due to me not taking very good care of it because i didnt) and since then I have just been using an 8" house fan that has done the trick and gets rid of all the fps drops.

Communism

United States176 Posts

December 24 2012 00:41 GMT

P.s. do not buy any other notebook cooler besides the one I showed you, I have never even seen one other cooler that actually keeps it cool, not even one. (that doesnt mean that another doesnt exist, but this one is amazing)

leFak

United Kingdom28 Posts

December 24 2012 11:49 GMT

#10

How stupid would be if I've just put my laptop without lower case on a cooling pad ?

http://imgur.com/DzLxj.jpg

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