Is your Macbook Air overheating? Here’s a technique I’ve been using for the last couple of years, works everytime. I suspect it still works on the new models – I *suspect* they have the same basic design flaws as the original, from looking at the case.<\/p>\n
Those vents along the rear underside of the case … don’t work. I don’t know how they ended up there, but I suspect it was a triumph of “looks” over “not breaking the expensive laptop” (until Apple patched OS X, just running Flash was enough to cause OS shutdowns on a regular basis).<\/p>\n
Grab your Air, hold it at the hinge (so the lid doesn’t slam down and switch the laptop off), and tilt it towards you 90 degrees.<\/p>\n
i.e. the keyboard half of the laptop should be vertical, resting on the long, bottom, edge.<\/p>\n
The vents now vent air straight up – unimpeded – instead of down-and-out (impeded by the case itself).<\/p>\n
I can usually get an Air that’s been running “hot” (fans very loud and noisy) for minutes \/ hours to cool down in under 60 seconds using this technique.<\/p>\n
Why does this matter?<\/p>\n
Well … once an Air is cool, it tends to stay cool. i.e. it’s crap at bringing it’s own temperature down, but it’s got enough oomph to *keep* it at whatever temp is current. So, manual intervention fixes the problem.<\/p>\n
What do you do if your Air starts beeping?<\/p>\n
(hint: this is the never-actually-explained-to-you hardware warning that “your CPU is about to melt. Cool it down NOW or buy a new laptop”. I wonder how many people realise what’s happening when they hear that screeching, high-pitched beep and think “WTF?”)<\/p>\n
As above, only shut the lid too.<\/p>\n
This may seem counter-intuitive – after all, this will reduce the air-surface of the Air by about 50%, reducing it’s ability to cool down.<\/p>\n
In practice, although that’s true at low temperature, at high temperature the heat is already concentrated in the top-left corner of the keyboard (where the CPU sits) – and most of the case is too far away to help.<\/p>\n
In practice, closing the lid causes OS X to suspend processes, which normally takes enough load of the CPU that the laptop \/ hardware is able to cool itself MUCH faster – but only if you’re holding the whole laptop vertically, with the vents pointing upwards.<\/p>\n
I’ve found this normally cools an Air from “max fans” to “silent” in under 15 seconds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is your Macbook Air overheating? Here’s a technique I’ve been using for the last couple of years, works everytime. I suspect it still works on the new models – I *suspect* they have the same basic design flaws as the original, from looking at the case. Problem: vents in wrong place Those vents along the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}