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Showing posts from August, 2013

Tracking CPU temperature over time

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Temperature Gauge is a neat little app that logs the temperature from every sensor in any Mac. From around 2007, Apple has continued to include a bewildering number of these sensors, but I'm just going to look at a single example that can be found on any computer - The CPU . Experiment 1: iMac (2013) vs Macbook Pro (2010) Taking an iMac from 2013 (quad-core Intel Core i5) and a 13 inch Macbook Pro from 2010 (Intel Core 2 Duo), I compared their temperatures from switch on. After the operating system was loaded, each computer played a standard definition video lasting 5 minutes. To keep things as controlled as possible, both computers were running the same version of Mac OS X and were tested at the same time in the same room to keep the ambient temperature constant. The fans in each machine were kept at a fixed rate using smcFanControl . As expected, the iMac consistently runs at a reduced temperature because it contains a more efficient processor and provides more volume