Macbook Pro Battery + Heat = Bad!

Hello everyone –

MB Battery

Having worked around Lithium batteries for several years now it’s always interesting to see one swell up with no apparent physical damage to it. With news stories of iPhone batteries spontaneously combusting on airlines and in people’s beds, it makes you wonder what caused these events. I’m no scientist, but what I do know is that heat can play a big role in the health and life-span of batteries. Laptops, cellphones and tablets are great portable devices that people literally take with them everywhere. However, the worst abuse I see and hear about is people who use their laptop in bed and lay them on a blanket or pillow as they watch a movie. Guilty as charged… I forget sometimes myself! This becomes somewhat of the perfect storm of “heat” for lithium batteries.

Watching videos and especially movies can push a computer to near 100% sustained useage of the CPU and graphics card for hours on end. Given the fact the CPU and GPU (Central Processing Unit) or as some call it the “chip” and the Graphics Processing Unit which handles and decodes all graphics and video. Pushing these two components generate a lot of heat, as in pushing upwards of 180 to 200+ degrees farenheit. Typically at 212F the computer will shut itself down to protect itself.

In addtion to the fans running full speed, the design of say a macbook aluminum body will try to dissipate heat, and now in contact with a blanket or pillow, is effectivly acting like a layer of heat trapping insulation! Not exactly what the engineers had planned on. This all adds up to a lot of heat that the computer cannot dissipate fast enough to keep things nice and cool. Over time this takes its toll on many parts of the computer from the battery, graphics card, fans and other heat sensitive components. Bottom line heat is the enemy of pretty much any gadget with a battery and CPU so some small steps to keep the gadgets cool can prevent all sorts of nasty things!

So when things go wrong and your battery fails come see us at Mission Repair to your gadgets back in working order. We service many models of Macbook Pro’s and can get you a new battery and make sure your battery never looks like the one above.

Have a great day!




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