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my little project. vol: thermal paste

acfusion29

acfusion29

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Nov 8, 2007
3,128
1
Toronto
ok so i had success last year in fixing RROD on XBOX 360's and as i was doing some cleaning in my room i realized i had some arctic silver 5 lying around.

i decided to take apart my unibody MacBook (and i'm posting it in this forum because i don't consider this just a MacBook as it has similar specs to the new 13" MBP) and reapply the thermal paste.

i just finished putting it together about 40minutes ago and wow, the laptop is running a lot cooler. now hopefully this keeps up and i haven't jinxed anything, but i'm impressed thus far.

i also decided to snap a picture of how the thermal paste looked when i took off the heat sink. iunno, i can't really blame Apple for this crappy job because i have abused the hell out of this computer (in terms of using it everyday for hours and hours, as well as taking it absolutely everywhere).

photovsx.jpg


but whatever, that's irrelevant now because i reapplied it with different type of paste and it seems to be working much better. i also find that my computer's running a bit faster, or maybe i'm just too happy right now :eek:

in conclusion, this little project took me an hour and half. i set up everything on my desk and had my brothers MacBook (black old school) open with the iFixit guide. i was extremely careful with every part because i didn't want to break anything.

putting it back together wasn't as bad as i thought. i did forget which screws went where but i ended up figuring that out after some time.

and i know i'm not the only one that's done this, but i decided to make this post anyways just to show my results.
 
Awesome work! Even though the results are not conclusive, it's interesting to see that this slight mod might improve the computer's performance.

Congrats!
 
Nice work. What are the before/after temps?

I remember doing this to my first generation MBP and it lowered my internal temps by over 20c.
 
Hisdem said:
Awesome work! Even though the results are not conclusive, it's interesting to see that this slight mod might improve the computer's performance.

Congrats!
Click to expand...

thanks

sn0warmy said:
Nice work. What are the before/after temps?

I remember doing this to my first generation MBP and it lowered my internal temps by over 20c.
Click to expand...

it would idle at 55 degrees c before.

it was idling at about 45 and now i have safari, itunes, mail and adium open and it's at 52.
 
You say this s a unibody MacBook with similar specs to a MBP. So I'm guessing it's the Plastic While Unibody MacBook late 2009 or mid 2010. As those match the MBP's specs. Bit then it says it's a 2.0 GHz Unibody MacBook. So I'm guessing it's really the base entry model Aluminum Unibody MacBook from October 2008? So just please clarify, what model MacBook do you have? Is it the aluminum unibody one? If yes, it doran really have similar specs to a MBP IMO. Either way you CAN blame Apple for the poor job f appoint thermal paste. I don't know why you said you couldn't?
 
Good lord...it still amazes me that Apple still cannot apply thermal paste properly. Threads like these date back to the first week of the Core Duo MBP.
 
ouimetnick said:
You say this s a unibody MacBook with similar specs to a MBP. So I'm guessing it's the Plastic While Unibody MacBook late 2009 or mid 2010. As those match the MBP's specs. Bit then it says it's a 2.0 GHz Unibody MacBook. So I'm guessing it's really the base entry model Aluminum Unibody MacBook from October 2008? So just please clarify, what model MacBook do you have? Is it the aluminum unibody one? If yes, it doran really have similar specs to a MBP IMO. Either way you CAN blame Apple for the poor job f appoint thermal paste. I don't know why you said you couldn't?
Click to expand...

it's the aluminum one

limited edition :p

iunno, like i said, i've abused the **** out of this computer. there's 294 cycles on the battery it in 17 months and it's been used a LOT. i don't know if this could have an affect on the thermal paste over time or not...
 
acfusion29 said:
it's the aluminum one

limited edition :p

iunno, like i said, i've abused the **** out of this computer. there's 294 cycles on the battery it in 17 months and it's been used a LOT. i don't know if this could have an affect on the thermal paste over time or not...
Click to expand...

The thermal paste is kinda solid when they apply it anyways. Using it wouldn't make it look crappy. If they apple it correctly, and use use the heck out of your computer and open it up, it will look just like it dis from the factory. So Apple applied a bit to much and did a terrible job. Good to see you fixed it though.
 
ouimetnick said:
The thermal paste is kinda solid when they apply it anyways. Using it wouldn't make it look crappy. If they apple it correctly, and use use the heck out of your computer and open it up, it will look just like it dis from the factory. So Apple applied a bit to much and did a terrible job. Good to see you fixed it though.
Click to expand...

oh ok ..

when i opened it up, it did look a little excessive.
 
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