Yikes, keeping it cool in XP?

In OS X, I've got smcFan Control to keep my temps down... but what do I do in Windows?

I'm not even gaming, and I'm seeing temps of the GPU and CPU at 68C. The temps were taken by SpeedFan, but SpeedFan doesn't seem to be able to control the fans of the new Unibody MBPs.

68C is just unacceptable... especially when this is just browsing. What do you guys do to keep your MBs/MBPs cool?

 

shouldn't your GPU downclock (which translates to lower temps) with the new Nvidia drivers?

 

I'm just running the stock Boot Camp drivers.

I still need to get around to downloading new drivers, but I don't think drivers will completely solve the problem.

 

Have a look at Input Remapper. Don't let the name fool you, it has a feature to adjust the fans on the MBP.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/Input-Remapper.shtml

It works very well on my MBP (Summer 2007 Edition) running XP and/or Vista

 

I looked into that, but for some reason, that causes the brightness/keyboard backlight to absolutely just freak out.

Is that the only option?

 

Undervolt your cpu with RMClock, which will help drop temps somewhat. Windows doesn't manage the cpu thermals as effectively as OSX.

Speedfan doesn't detect a lot of newer motherboards that have come out over the past 2 years, so it's utility is minimal these days.

 

You could also run Windows XP under Parallels or vmware fusion in OSX, and the latter will regulate the temperature nicely. With the latest versions of both virtualization programs, there is a minimal trade-off in performance these days vs. running Windows native with Boot Camp.

 

I mainly use XP for some (light) gaming. Is it possible to do that now, or do your games still come out as glorified slide shows?

I'm mainly looking at a 4-year old game (City of Heroes), so that's not too demanding. But still.

I remember running XP through VMWare this past summer on my iMac, and it was horrible. Took Windows forever to load, let alone run programs.

 

According to your siggy, it says you have only 1 GB of memory on your iMac. Perhaps if you upgraded it to 2 GB at the very least you could get much better performance running games and Windows XP virtually.

 

D'oh. I forgot to change that. It actually has 2GB, 1GB dedicated to each OS.