Advice: Reapply the Thermal Paste!

[Cattywampus_]

Just some friendly advice to anyone who experiences crazy temps on the Macbook Pro range.

I have MBP 17" 2.8Ghz - and the CPU would reach 103 degrees Celsius with the fans on full speed - even occasionally when playing games pushing higher than that.

I was going to call Apple Care and ask them to sort it but knew it would be a long process - so took matters into my own hands.

Disassembled the MBP using guides from iFixit. Cleaned the chips and the heatsink of the huge goops of paste. Applied my own MX2 - reassembled - crossed fingers and hoped everything worked.

Good news - it does.

I am currently running 2 dev/null to max both cores and have got a few HD flash movies running and CPU is averaging 75 degrees Celcius - over 25 degrees drop.

And to think I tolerated this high temps for all these months

 

[xxBURT0Nxx]

what are you considering high temps? I'm just curious.

For example, I don't game on my mac, but playing hulu, or other flash video sites gets the bottom and top left above the keyboard fairly hot. CPU usage is usually <10% but CPU temps go up to ~160* F.

With the discrete GPU on GPU temps are around 140* F, integrated usually registers 130* F.

I don't really have plans to redo the thermal paste because it doesn't really bother me, i don't grab the bottom of the laptop when it's on a desk playing a movie just curious what people are considering "high temps"

 

[NZed]

Just some friendly advice to anyone who experiences crazy temps on the Macbook Pro range.

I have MBP 17" 2.8Ghz - and the CPU would reach 103 degrees Celsius with the fans on full speed - even occasionally when playing games pushing higher than that.

I was going to call Apple Care and ask them to sort it but knew it would be a long process - so took matters into my own hands.

Disassembled the MBP using guides from iFixit. Cleaned the chips and the heatsink of the huge goops of paste. Applied my own MX2 - reassembled - crossed fingers and hoped everything worked.

Good news - it does.

I am currently running 2 dev/null to max both cores and have got a few HD flash movies running and CPU is averaging 75 degrees Celcius - over 25 degrees drop.

And to think I tolerated this high temps for all these months

Have you blow the fans with compressed air yet? That should also bring down a couple celcius

 

[fat jez]

Try doing running a Prime 95 stress test. It will generate much more heat, as it's getting the CPU to do some real work. Would be interesting to see what your temperatures reach then.