MacBook Air Heat Sink

[nico2205]

Hi guys!
After I once opened my MBA Mid 2013 to put on a better thermal paste, I've always wondered why Apple did not apply any thermal paste on the graphic part of the chip?... And if I would gain any performance (I do play games on it from time to time ...) if I would apply some paste on the GPU side of the chip too ....

 

[motrek]

Hi guys!
After I once opened my MBA Mid 2013 to put on a better thermal paste, I've always wondered why Apple did not apply any thermal paste on the graphic part of the chip?... And if I would gain any performance (I do play games on it from time to time ...) if I would apply some paste on the GPU side of the chip too ....

Interesting question because the graphics are on-die and there's almost no way to tell which side/corner of the die is the "graphics part"... so I suspect you are referring to a different chip or something else... can you post a picture?

 

[nico2205]

Interesting question because the graphics are on-die and there's almost no way to tell which side/corner of the die is the "graphics part"... so I suspect you are referring to a different chip or something else... can you post a picture?

Hi - sure
On the pic (source: ifixit teardown of MBA 13" 2013) you see the SoC unit; (I'm guessing-) the (bigger-) red circled part of the chip is the CPU and the smaller, orange circled is the GPU part ...
So when I opened my MBA, only the red marked part of the chip was covered with thermal paste ... (and other MBA users report the same...)

 

[motrek]

Hi - sure
On the pic (source: ifixit teardown of MBA 13" 2013) you see the SoC unit; (I'm guessing-) the (bigger-) red circled part of the chip is the CPU and the smaller, orange circled is the GPU part ...
So when I opened my MBA, only the red marked part of the chip was covered with thermal paste ... (and other MBA users report the same...)

Image

No, the graphics are still integrated onto the die. Whatever that is, it's not graphics.

Okay, I checked the iFixit teardown and they say this other die is the Platform Controller Hub, whatever that is.

Anyway apparently it doesn't get very hot because it wasn't on-chip before and it didn't have a heatsink so they must not put thermal paste on it because it doesn't matter.

 

[Gav2k]

As above its just the platform controller hub which replaces the North and South bridge from older systems bring it into the chip to reduce latency. I wouldn't recommend putting paste on it as the cpu will actually heat it up

 

[nico2205]

ok - thanks for the information!