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Has anyone re-applied thermal paste on a rMBP?

M

Maximus434

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 11, 2006
109
0
If so, did it decrease your temps/increase clock speed for intensive tasks?

My 2014 2.8GHz is excellent, but, I don't think it's reaching its potential as temps get too high and it clocks back. I know all rMBPs will clock back when running intensive tasks but mine is running 200-300MHz slower than some people with the 2013 2.6GHz machine (see CPU throttling tool thread). I would be willing to re-paste it myself and just wondering if anyone had any success with this route?
 
I did years ago, and it had negligible effect (5c) I was happy with the result, but by the same token it was a lot of work just to save 5c.

Some people swear by it, and there are certainly macs that have improperly applied thermal paste that will probably benefit more then others.

My current MBP runs in the low 40s (celsius) most of the time, I see little need to re-apply the thermal paste.
 
Question: what's the problem with thermal paste and Apple being unable to get that right in the manufacturing process?

If thermal paste is a bottle-neck to product leadership, why haven't they figured this out by now?
 
SAdProZ said:
Question: what's the problem with thermal paste and Apple being unable to get that right in the manufacturing process?

If thermal paste is a bottle-neck to product leadership, why haven't they figured this out by now?
Click to expand...

It is the opinion of some (many?) that its not applied correctly and its causing heating issues. You need to only apply a razor thin coating, but when you open up your MBP in many cases you see the stuff oozed out between the heat sink and the CPU (or GPU). Too much thermal paste has an opposite effect, causing higher temps.
 
maflynn said:
It is the opinion of some (many?) that its not applied correctly and its causing heating issues. You need to only apply a razor thin coating, but when you open up your MBP in many cases you see the stuff oozed out between the heat sink and the CPU (or GPU). Too much thermal paste has an opposite effect, causing higher temps.
Click to expand...

Thanks. So why hasn't this been worked out? Why no quality control?
 
SAdProZ said:
Thanks. So why hasn't this been worked out? Why no quality control?
Click to expand...

Here's where people are really dissenting. Apple's laptops have had this type of application of thermal paste since the PowerPC days. I don't think its something that is a QC issue, or a "problem". What I mean by this, that is the intended manufacturing process for some reason, personally, it looks sloppy and is very un-apple like.

Steve Jobs made sure that original Macintosh looked beautiful inside even though it was his expectation no one would see it because it was sealed (you needed a special "mac cracker" tool to open it up). Here we have for an extended period of time, at best something that looks rather sloppy and at worst causing higher temps.
 
I have replaced the paste on mine and have seen very little difference, though the factory application on my unit ended up being alright. There was more than was necessary but coverage of the actual die was thin and even.

Using a better paste has seemingly led to my laptop taking a little bit longer to hit 100 degrees C under load, but it certainly still gets there.

The issue with apple's laptops these days is that their cooling is just insufficient and is unable to dissipate the heat the chips produce. They do the job, and that is about it.

Ideally, no chip should be able to hit it's thermal limit, even under torture test. If it does, then the cooling needs to be beefed up.
 
Maximus434 said:
If so, did it decrease your temps/increase clock speed for intensive tasks?

My 2014 2.8GHz is excellent, but, I don't think it's reaching its potential as temps get too high and it clocks back. I know all rMBPs will clock back when running intensive tasks but mine is running 200-300MHz slower than some people with the 2013 2.6GHz machine (see CPU throttling tool thread). I would be willing to re-paste it myself and just wondering if anyone had any success with this route?
Click to expand...


If within the first 14 days, take it back to Apple and get a replacement.

I built PCs for years with AMD and Intel CPUs. I would not risk a new rMBP under warranty for a possible gain of 200Mhz of clock speed.
 
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