Just reapplied my thermal paste = better performance?

Early 2011 MBP 2.2GHz i7 8GB

With all the reports of defective GPU's in my unit, I decided to reapply my thermal paste. It's not a solution, but thought it would help a little. I've had a few graphical glitches, and random restarts lately. I don't have money, but I thought I could at least do this.

This was my first time doing this, and I think it was a success. There was a lot of dust in my MBP. Got rid of most of it, and reapplied the thermal paste. I could see the results instantly after booting up my Mac. I would recommend this to anyone who has time and a technical hand to do this. There was definitely too much paste on before.

What I didn't expect, was the better performance. Apps seem to be opening faster. System Preferences always seemed to load slow, but now it's only one bounce. Could the collected dust be the cause of the slow performance? Could the cooler temps affect performance?

Well either way, I'm happy, I just hope don't run into anymore of the reported problems with the early 2011 MBP's. Here are some pics.


So So Dusty


Definitely too much


Nice and shiny

Comparison

snaky69 said:

Because the process is automated. It just puts a blob on and counts on the heatsink to spread it.

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You'd think a company like Apple would take special attention to this. I don't think it would be that hard to automate a smaller glob. Seeing as how it cools it down much better.

maflynn said:

That's a lot of paste, but not surprising.

I did it back in the day on my old white MacBook and it only helped about 5c.

I will say that apps opening faster makes no sense at all, unless you were constantly suffering from the CPU being throttled.

What were your before and after temps

Click to expand...

That's what I thought too, I don't know why it would affect performance, but everything seems to be "snappier". Could be placebo, I don't know.

I've added a comparison image of the temps. They're not exactly the most controlled comparisons but I think in general, the temp is cooler. A good 8º while idling (CPU & GPU) difference while idle. While active, 10º cpu difference, and 18º! for GPU, which was my initial concern.

For the Idle temps, before and after. I would shutdown all my programs (after some normal use), and let the computer idle for 10 mins, then took a screen. For the active. I would run the same programs, Sketchup, Keyshot (while rendering), VLC, and a YouTube video in the background, then took a screen shot. I might not have run them as long as I did in the "before" screen. Might do that one again later.

So take it for what you will. I'm pretty satisfied with it.