MBP6,2 Thermal Paste

[Lwis]

Just thought I'd let you all know that I decided to take the plunge and reapply the thermal paste on my MBP6,2 today.

I used some Grimex wipes to clean off all of the thermal paste, took a few mins (the wipes are REALLY good)

I'm testing through now and It's at around 5000RPM under a stress test, peaking at around 90C, before this would probably have caused a shutdown. I'm still amazed at how bad of a job Apple do. It's as if they cut open a tube and smeared it EVERYWHERE.

Here are some pics, probably should have used my camera and not my iPhone, oh well.

Messy job by Apple:

My clean up job:

And my reapplied AS5:

 

[maflynn]

This has been discussed Ad nauseam and for the most part, the temp savings for re-applying the thermal paste is negligible. I did it myself and found only a few degrees better.

While I agree that it looks messy, there does not seem to be a major impact on temps.

You should have run some stress test before the re-application because you'll never know much or how little the temp difference is

 

[Lwis]

This has been discussed Ad nauseam and for the most part, the temp savings for re-applying the thermal paste is negligible. I did it myself and found only a few degrees better.

While I agree that it looks messy, there does not seem to be a major impact on temps.

You should have run some stress test before the re-application because you'll never know much or how little the temp difference is

I use iStat and monitor my temps quite closely, I do alot of programming and building seems to be quite stressful for my MBP. For me anyway, this has been noticeably cooler and will hopefully increase the longevity of the hardware.

 

[maflynn]

What were your temps before and what are they now?

Did you compare with the same fan speed?

 

[dusk007]

The temps will never change much unless the fans already run at 6000rpm.
What matters is the fan speed needed at certain load scenarios.
My 6.2 MBP driving an external screen only stays at 2000rpm if there is pretty much no load. Running a VM or some movie always means more noise and the difference is quite noticeable between 2000 and 2600 if you run with a dead silent SSD.
On Intel GPU it needs serious load to ramp up the fans.
If a reapplied Thermal paste helps keep fans at 2000 rpm in th former scenario it is a win.

@maflynn Temps will not change much because the fans will simply run slower.

 

[Dark Void]

looks like you did a pretty nice job, i'm also curious about your temp improvement.

 

[maflynn]

That's why I mentioned fan speed in my post.

You need to be comparing apples to apples when doing a before and after benchmark of the temps.

 

[dagamer34]

I argue the temp difference isn't as important as the fans, since they are the final regulator. Apple's power management will allow for a hotter chip before it spins up any fans so that's a more important factor.

Also, depending on the thermal paste you use, it'll take up to 200 hrs until you get optimal efficiency.

 

[Lwis]

looks like you did a pretty nice job, i'm also curious about your temp improvement.

Initially, my temps have dropped by around 7-9C during Idle and this scales up to a 6-10C drop during load. It's enough to keep the fans from having to spin up frequently because the heat is dragged out more efficiently, with more paste in there the heat takes longer to build, but then takes even longer to dissipate.

Another thing to note is that most compounds conduct, this can be quite harmful to chips when applied like this. But as mentioned, I won't see the true effect of this until 200 hours has passed, or enough heat has been generated that the compound is truly 'baked'.

Although the temp drops are trivial, I'm quite happy with the outcome and it gives me piece of mind that my chips are safer and will probably provide me with a longer lifespan.