changing thermal paste, is it worth it?

[Chopper read]

Hi, reviving my early 2014 MacBook Air. Have seen lots of YouTube vids about people changing the thermal paste. Is it worth it and needed on a MacBook Air. My fan rarely comes on.

Also, do people use geek bench? I find the App Store odd sometimes when a app has one review. It makes me not trust it 😆

many thanks

 

[casperes1996]

Hi, reviving my early 2014 MacBook Air. Have seen lots of YouTube vids about people changing the thermal paste. Is it worth it and needed on a MacBook Air. My fan rarely comes on.

Also, do people use geek bench? I find the App Store odd sometimes when a app has one review. It makes me not trust it 😆

many thanks

Worth it is subjective. If your fan basically doesn't spin anyway I'm not sure there's much point for you.

As for Geekbench and the App Store. Geekbench is widely used and respected. However most don't get it from the App Store I would guess. You can get it from there just fine, no worries, but it's also downloadable from their site or home-brew, and personally if I install it on a machine it usually happens with home-brew.
Reviews on the App Store are often region-localised, so you only see reviews made from your country. Depending on where you live this can significantly reduce the amount of reviews you see

 

[Chopper read]

Worth it is subjective. If your fan basically doesn't spin anyway I'm not sure there's much point for you.

As for Geekbench and the App Store. Geekbench is widely used and respected. However most don't get it from the App Store I would guess. You can get it from there just fine, no worries, but it's also downloadable from their site or home-brew, and personally if I install it on a machine it usually happens with home-brew.
Reviews on the App Store are often region-localised, so you only see reviews made from your country. Depending on where you live this can significantly reduce the amount of reviews you see

Great, thanks. Ill download it then. I had used it years ago but didn't know if it was still used. will have a look at what temps the cpu is running at before I start changing paste. Although its easy to do...if isn't broken... 👍

 

[Chopper read]

ok so I see Geekbench doesn't show temps.

can anyone recommend a good app for temps. I don't want to just download something random.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I think you would be wasting your time doing a mod, especially when you aren't having heat problems.

 

[casperes1996]

ok so I see Geekbench doesn't show temps.

can anyone recommend a good app for temps. I don't want to just download something random.

Intel makes their own tool, PowerGadget.

Alternatively iStat Menus is well known but costs a bit though there's a free trial.

As an alternative to iStat Menus I use the program Stats which is very similar, and can do temp, wattage, fan speed, usage and all.
It can be gotten with brew install stats
It's free and open source:

GitHub - exelban/stats: macOS system monitor in your menu bar

macOS system monitor in your menu bar. Contribute to exelban/stats development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[Geepaw]

Changing the thermal paste on a seven year old computer is absolutely a reasonable thing to do and it is inexpensive as well. Also when you open the machine it will give you an opportunity to give the internals a good cleaning as well. You will like see better heat mitigation by doing both.

 

[Chopper read]

Intel makes their own tool, PowerGadget.

Alternatively iStat Menus is well known but costs a bit though there's a free trial.

As an alternative to iStat Menus I use the program Stats which is very similar, and can do temp, wattage, fan speed, usage and all.
It can be gotten with brew install stats
It's free and open source:

GitHub - exelban/stats: macOS system monitor in your menu bar

macOS system monitor in your menu bar. Contribute to exelban/stats development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Thanks so much for your help, ran the intel one alongside the Geekbench test. It slowly went up and maxed out at 100 and the fan came on quietly. Im not sure what kind of test that was or what it proved 😂. Single score was 634. Crazy when you look at what the M1's are getting in comparison.

 

[Chopper read]

Changing the thermal paste on a seven year old computer is absolutely a reasonable thing to do and it is inexpensive as well. Also when you open the machine it will give you an opportunity to give the internals a good cleaning as well. You will like see better heat mitigation by doing both.

I am going to take the bottom off and give a clean. I also have a replacement plastic hinge cover to fit as my wife managed to crack that and it will bug me 😁. Not sure if I will do the paste or not. I do have the stuff.