Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

thr33face

macrumors 6502
Original poster
today i finally decided to clean my white macbook on the inside for the first time ever.
it is a rev.a machine, which basically means it is almost 3 years old. but since apple replaced the logicboard (when the random-shutdown issue was around, before they knew the cause) i'd say it had time for about 2.5 years to get dusty 😉

i did it because i was annoyed how when the machine got hot the fan kicked in (like it's supposed to) but the temperatures dropped like only super-slowly, which meant that the fan was constantly spinning at high-speed => annoying.

i've been planning on cleaning it for about 4 months now, but i: pick one: was too lazy, had no time, liked the warm macbook in the cold winter 😉

anyway:
taking the macbook apart was super easy, even with a flathead screw-driver 🙂. the ifixit guide helped a lot to get in quickly.
only the right side of the keyboard took some fiddling to get off.

approx. times:
disassembly: 25mins (keyboard fiddling)
cleaning: 35mins
re-assembly: 10mins

some dusty impressions:

this is the underside of the keyboard. one can clearly see where the fan was and where the hot and dusty parts are. this came off easily with a micro-fibre cloth.


a "little" dust here 😱. that thing under the fan definitely shouldn't be there. one should only see nice copper fins there.

and clean enough:

after some time cleaning it with cotton-swabs, toothpicks (yes 😀), and a lot of air i consider it to be reasonably clean.
btw: does anybody else have a "better" sticker on the ram slot? does this indicate the logic-board replacement?

now when the fan kicks in it actually lowers the temperature and also spins down again. 😀
 
Great write-up! It's crazy how much dust was in there. I'll probably do this to my MacBook for its first birthday.
 
i will probably have to do this also . my house is an old farm house so everything gets coated in dust in about a day.
 
btw: does anybody else have a "better" sticker on the ram slot? does this indicate the logic-board replacement?

On the Core Duo MacBooks the "better" sticker means it is a 2GHz board.....

The 1.83 MacBook has a "Good" sticker and the BlackBook sticker is "Best"....

They came out of the factory with the stickers on, so your "old" logicboard would have had a "Better" sticker too - so it does not represent a logicboard replacement !!
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.