Should my airport card be...

70 C in my late 2007 white MacBook? It stays at 69 or higher, and I believe it may be the reason for my fans continuously coming on.

It also seems to stay around 77 C during the day.

Thanks!

The airport card running at 70°C is normal. Mine has been running at that temp for the past 18 months since my MacBook was new. However, 77°C during the day seems a bit high to me but I'm not sure.

Your fans are not specifically tied to the heat generated by the airport card. Rather they are thermally controlled by the overall temperature mostly driven by heat dissipation from the CPU and GPU.

Regards.

chscag said:

The airport card running at 70°C is normal. Mine has been running at that temp for the past 18 months since my MacBook was new. However, 77°C during the day seems a bit high to me but I'm not sure.

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I agree. My Airport card right now is 69° and it is always the warmest piece of hardware in MB. Now, mind you, I am downloading something right now.

I can't really comment on whether or not 77° is reasonable or not but I do agree that it seems that it's a bit warm. After doing a quick search online, most people seem to have it running at high-60's/low-70's. What are you doing in terms of network usage when you see it get to 77°?

vansmith said:

I agree. My Airport card right now is 69° and it is always the warmest piece of hardware in MB. Now, mind you, I am downloading something right now.

I can't really comment on whether or not 77° is reasonable or not but I do agree that it seems that it's a bit warm. After doing a quick search online, most people seem to have it running at high-60's/low-70's. What are you doing in terms of network usage when you see it get to 77°?

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Usually nothing more than surfing the web with Safari and possibly watching some videos here and there. Nothing too crazy, which has made me worried.

tomster2300 said:

Usually nothing more than surfing the web with Safari and possibly watching some videos here and there. Nothing too crazy, which has made me worried.

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Watching the videos is what really makes the CPU's & GPU run hot.

If I'm not watching videos...my laptop runs 10-15C cooler.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

Watching the videos is what really makes the CPU's & GPU run hot.

If I'm not watching videos...my laptop runs 10-15C cooler.

- Nick

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I agree, especially if it's a Flash video. I don't know if this would directly increase the temperature of the Airport card though. That said, if you are using a lot of bandwidth (which definitely comes from streaming large amounts of content), it makes sense that the card temp will increase to reflect the increase in usage.

vansmith said:

I agree, especially if it's a Flash video. I don't know if this would directly increase the temperature of the Airport card though. That said, if you are using a lot of bandwidth (which definitely comes from streaming large amounts of content), it makes sense that the card temp will increase to reflect the increase in usage.

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Yes...the Airport card detail does add an interesting "twist" to the situation. I would think that if the temperature of the MacBook is increasing due to watching video content...that basically most components inside the laptop are warming up simply due to the increased heat (conduction or convection) inside of the little MacBook "box".

- Nick

Comparison between MB & MB Air

Hi, everybody,

I installed iStat Menu yesterday in MB Air and today in MB.
In MB with PC cooler, I surprised to find the Airport card temperature is around 65 C, but 48 C for CPU.
So, I checked iStat Menu in MB Air.
It looks normal; 34 for AP and 45 for CPU, lower than ~10 deg from CPU.

Is the temperature of AP in MB really normal??

My MB's Airport card right now is 56 but it just woke up from sleeping. It will no doubt get in to the high 60s as the day goes on.

After installing Snow Leopard yesterday the Airport temperatures have been staying in the 60s, low 70s. It's too early to say anything definite, but could software fix an issue like this? I guess making things operate more efficiently would cause less strain on a part, in turn equaling less heat. I haven't tried charging my battery past 99% though (which is when the fans usually come on). I've reset the SMC controller numerous times to solve this, but nothing has permanently fixed it so far.

What do you guys think? I'm loving Snow Leopard btw - my entire Macbook is running faster. Its kind of breathed new life into my two year old machine.