I posted a little while ago about reapplying thermal paste on the 2010 MBP. I wanted to do this not because my temps were sky high and my machine was overheating, but for 2 reasons: First, I knew for a fact that when I opened the machine up and peeled off that heatsink, I would be absolutely sure to see a mess of (presumably) low quality thermal paste slathered on there like A1 on a cheap steak. I knew that a proper application would lower the temps at least somewhat, and give me peace of mind that it was a job done right, rather than a rushed effort done by a chinese child who couldn't care less. Second, I pride myself on being a DIY person, as well as a person who likes to learn new things. I know many of you will think or say how stupid it is to take apart your MBP and "void" your warranty for "no reason", but I consider this type of thing fun, and a learning experience. Should I ever need to actually fix a problem or replace an internal component, it will be all the easier to do so now that I have a greater knowledge of how the innards of an MBP work. So, without further ado, the pics!
I didn't take too many pictures because better quality ones can be found on ifixit's teardown, but here they are anyway. (BTW, ifixit is a GREAT source for anything of this nature, major props to them) Most of the pics are blurry because I have an old camera and because I had shaky hands (high on caffeine pretty much all the time).
As you may know, battery removal requires a triwing Y0 screwdriver. I ordered the 26 piece kit from ifixit and it's awesome, couldn't have done any of this without it. A shot of my tools and the progress thus far, measured in screws.
Here is the MBP with the battery removed. I of course took great care in keeping everything perfectly intact. There's no way to tell that the battery was removed, so it would be pretty difficult for Apple to prove I voided the warranty.
Fans taken out, all cables disconnected.
For the most part, taking the whole thing apart was pretty straightforward. It took me a long time because I was being extra careful. Really the only difficult parts involved the logic board itself. Just as I thought, after I took off the heatsink, I discovered thermal paste spread around like goddamn cake frosting.
The heatsink was just as bad. Sorry again about the terrible quality pics.
It was a real chore to clean all this stuff off without spreading it even more. A mixture of Q-tips soaked in rubbing alcohol and a small microfiber lint free cloth did the job. Here you can see the nice shine on the chips' heatspreaders.
The heatsink cleaned up nicely as well. I had a strong urge to lap the damn thing with 2000 grit like I did for my desktop's heatsink. If I had more time and patience I probably would have done it
Finally, here is my application of Arctic Cooling MX-2. I couldn't do a perfect job because my trusty little plastic spreading tool was nowhere to be found, so I did the best I could with my finger wrapped in plastic (credit card was too big). I used around a 10th of how much was originally on the chips, I think.
And that was basically it. Putting it back together was much harder than taking it apart. The biggest problem was putting the logic board back in without damaging anything. The microphone that hangs underneath it was impossible to position right, until I re-read what ifixit said about sticking it in its position in the speaker, and after that it was super easy. I reconnected all the cables, put the battery back, closed her up, and booted up. At the login screen, I was shocked to see that my keyboard wasn't working. I had a feeling during the reassembly that the keyboard ribbon wasn't fully inserted, and I turned out to be right. I had to open the MBP back up (luckily battery removal wasn't necessary) and shoved it in there as far as it would go. After that, everything was perfect.
So, results! As I expected, nothing tremendous. My original idle CPU temp was around 43-45 degrees, after it was about 5 degrees cooler, around 37-38. Highest load temperature, conducted with 4 instances of "yes > /dev/null" in terminal, was about 86 degrees. The fans were running at 3k RPM, set with smcfancontrol. After the thermal paste job, load temps dropped almost 10 degrees, topping out at around 76-78. The GPU temps dropped almost 10 degrees as well during CPU load (don't have the exact numbers, I deleted the text file where I had recorded them). So overall, not a total waste of time!
That's basically it. I wouldn't recommend this to everyone, but if you're a tech enthusiast and like taking things apart, it was definitely fun. Thanks for reading!
I didn't take too many pictures because better quality ones can be found on ifixit's teardown, but here they are anyway. (BTW, ifixit is a GREAT source for anything of this nature, major props to them) Most of the pics are blurry because I have an old camera and because I had shaky hands (high on caffeine pretty much all the time).
As you may know, battery removal requires a triwing Y0 screwdriver. I ordered the 26 piece kit from ifixit and it's awesome, couldn't have done any of this without it. A shot of my tools and the progress thus far, measured in screws.
Here is the MBP with the battery removed. I of course took great care in keeping everything perfectly intact. There's no way to tell that the battery was removed, so it would be pretty difficult for Apple to prove I voided the warranty.
Fans taken out, all cables disconnected.
For the most part, taking the whole thing apart was pretty straightforward. It took me a long time because I was being extra careful. Really the only difficult parts involved the logic board itself. Just as I thought, after I took off the heatsink, I discovered thermal paste spread around like goddamn cake frosting.
The heatsink was just as bad. Sorry again about the terrible quality pics.
It was a real chore to clean all this stuff off without spreading it even more. A mixture of Q-tips soaked in rubbing alcohol and a small microfiber lint free cloth did the job. Here you can see the nice shine on the chips' heatspreaders.
The heatsink cleaned up nicely as well. I had a strong urge to lap the damn thing with 2000 grit like I did for my desktop's heatsink. If I had more time and patience I probably would have done it
Finally, here is my application of Arctic Cooling MX-2. I couldn't do a perfect job because my trusty little plastic spreading tool was nowhere to be found, so I did the best I could with my finger wrapped in plastic (credit card was too big). I used around a 10th of how much was originally on the chips, I think.
And that was basically it. Putting it back together was much harder than taking it apart. The biggest problem was putting the logic board back in without damaging anything. The microphone that hangs underneath it was impossible to position right, until I re-read what ifixit said about sticking it in its position in the speaker, and after that it was super easy. I reconnected all the cables, put the battery back, closed her up, and booted up. At the login screen, I was shocked to see that my keyboard wasn't working. I had a feeling during the reassembly that the keyboard ribbon wasn't fully inserted, and I turned out to be right. I had to open the MBP back up (luckily battery removal wasn't necessary) and shoved it in there as far as it would go. After that, everything was perfect.
So, results! As I expected, nothing tremendous. My original idle CPU temp was around 43-45 degrees, after it was about 5 degrees cooler, around 37-38. Highest load temperature, conducted with 4 instances of "yes > /dev/null" in terminal, was about 86 degrees. The fans were running at 3k RPM, set with smcfancontrol. After the thermal paste job, load temps dropped almost 10 degrees, topping out at around 76-78. The GPU temps dropped almost 10 degrees as well during CPU load (don't have the exact numbers, I deleted the text file where I had recorded them). So overall, not a total waste of time!
That's basically it. I wouldn't recommend this to everyone, but if you're a tech enthusiast and like taking things apart, it was definitely fun. Thanks for reading!
