Is a hot MacBook Air anything to worry about?

[StraightlineBoy]

I have a fully upgraded 2012 MacBook Air complete with i7 CPU and notice that while I copes fine with running Rocksmith 2014 (via Steam) that the machine gets warm and the fan runs constantly while I'm playing. My assumption is that I'm probably shortening the life of my MacBook by having it run warm like this for long periods. Would a new MacBook Pro fare better (I notice that the Geekbench scores for a 13 inch retina pro are only about 10-15% better than my Air) or would they run hot too (therefore I'd be wasting money on a new machine) or am I concerned for no reason?
The Air does seem to cope ok and quickly cools down at the end of a game.

 

[kch50428]

Warm with fan running on heavy use... expected... if it gets to hot to hold... that's an issue you might like to have diagnosed.

 

[Bazza1]

Fan vents heat thru keyboard, but if you leave (and use) your Air on a desk / table on a regular basis, grab a soft eraser, cut it in half and stick each half under the back corners. Radiant heat dispersal thru the metal frame can be assisted by the additional air flow under it.

 

[Lrover]

A hardware test would need to be run on this system. This sounds like your "heat sink" that probably needs to be replaced or have more of the thermal paste to improve cooling, keeping your chips from over heating!