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Re-applied the thermal paste on my MacBook Pro... AMAZING results!

vv-tim said:
What makes you think that sold = ineffective?

According to what I've read, Arctic Silver 5 actually hardens over time and becomes MORE effective if it has a solid connection.

But obviously, this guy is out of warranty :/
Click to expand...

Thermal pads (also know as TIMs) are not the same as AS5. They start off as solids but are "squishy". Their behaviour under heat is not the same as thermal pastes. If the pads loose their squishyness and become hard and brittle they are a lot less effective.
 
17" same thing

has anyone done any research into the 17" macbook pro? is it as bad as the 15"? i would be scared to do this myself for fear of turning my MBP into a paperweight. this post inspired me to check my PB17" 1.33ghz running temp...just browsing and listening to music it is sitting on arround 60?C. i do not remember it getting this hot...would the fact that it is getting old have anything to do with it...buildup of dust or somthing...?

i think i will wait on buying my MBP...it just seems like there is so many problems with them. from the vastly underclocked graphics card/ram to the inproperly applied thermal paste...(im woundering if reaplying the thermal paste correctly would enable you to clock the X1600 at what ATi recommended without worrying about overheating, i understand it would make the battery life short, and the fans would be on alot)

seriously...i could not care less about the battery life or ammount of noise the fans make. the fans could be on full all the time and the battery could last 30 mins for all i care...i just want my MBP to run as cool and as fast as possiable without risk of damage to the hardware.

my only concern about overclocking (or actually clocking the X1600 at what is recommended) would be actually damaging the X1600.
 
vv-tim said:
What makes you think that sold = ineffective?

According to what I've read, Arctic Silver 5 actually hardens over time and becomes MORE effective if it has a solid connection.

But obviously, this guy is out of warranty :/
Click to expand...

When I say solid I mean SOLID, as in the pad will crumble when you remove the heatsink. AS5 should always retain a semi-solid/semi-liquid state in order for it to be most effective, no clue if it will ever dry up over long term testing. Even if it did it would still be more effective than a thermal pad because its made of silver.
 
mishi said:
has anyone done any research into the 17" macbook pro? is it as bad as the 15"? i would be scared to do this myself for fear of turning my MBP into a paperweight. this post inspired me to check my PB17" 1.33ghz running temp...just browsing and listening to music it is sitting on arround 60?C. i do not remember it getting this hot...would the fact that it is getting old have anything to do with it...buildup of dust or somthing...?

i think i will wait on buying my MBP...it just seems like there is so many problems with them. from the vastly underclocked graphics card/ram to the inproperly applied thermal paste...(im woundering if reaplying the thermal paste correctly would enable you to clock the X1600 at what ATi recommended without worrying about overheating, i understand it would make the battery life short, and the fans would be on alot)

seriously...i could not care less about the battery life or ammount of noise the fans make. the fans could be on full all the time and the battery could last 30 mins for all i care...i just want my MBP to run as cool and as fast as possiable without risk of damage to the hardware.

my only concern about overclocking (or actually clocking the X1600 at what is recommended) would be actually damaging the X1600.
Click to expand...

I have no qualms about my MBP in any department. Originally it was running in the mid-high 50's and I was ok with that. But being a computer modder I just couldn't get by without knowing that it could possibly be better. I tore mine apart and reapplied with AS5 and my temps have so far dropped about 10*c at idle and load. I'd say it was definately worth it. I didn't get the instant gratification as AS5 needs about 4 or 5 days of running to cure and reach is maximum thermal transfer peak. Quite happy with everything though, and would have been content with it even before reapplying the TIC.

The X1600 in these things are completely hardlocked at the speed they ship them at. I've tried every tweaking program I can think of and I can't get it to overclock 1mhz higher than where they have it nor can I unlock any additional pipes :( Sad but it's alright, the stock performance of the card in the 17" MBP's is amazing as is!
 
FragTek said:
I have no qualms about my MBP in any department. Originally it was running in the mid-high 50's and I was ok with that. But being a computer modder I just couldn't get by without knowing that it could possibly be better. I tore mine apart and reapplied with AS5 and my temps have so far dropped about 10*c at idle and load. I'd say it was definately worth it. I didn't get the instant gratification as AS5 needs about 4 or 5 days of running to cure and reach is maximum thermal transfer peak. Quite happy with everything though, and would have been content with it even before reapplying the TIC.

The X1600 in these things are completely hardlocked at the speed they ship them at. I've tried every tweaking program I can think of and I can't get it to overclock 1mhz higher than where they have it nor can I unlock any additional pipes :( Sad but it's alright, the stock performance of the card in the 17" MBP's is amazing as is!
Click to expand...


i deffinatley read somewhere that you can just use the standard ATi utilities with windowsXP to clock it at what ATi recommended. so far i have heard nothing about being able to overclock it (correctly clock it) under OSX but if i were going to play games i would be using XP anyway.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/19/overclock-your-macbookpros-gpu-if-you-dare/

read all the comments, its in there somewhere :p
 
so ive been reading up a bit about this thermal paste thing, and although the last post is more than half a year old i thought i'd still ask. i have a mbp c2d which runs idle at around 50°c-ish, under load it goes up to 75°c and waking up from sleep its in its 30°c. i just wanted to know if the issues have been solved with the 2nd gen mpb's (bought mine in late december last year) or if they still took a dump on the heatsinks with the paste?
 
Not sure if this has been asked/answered yet - but is this something I can have Apple fix, since my MBP is only 2-3 weeks old?
 
So the recent activity on this thread got me interested in trying this again. I have a MBP core duo 2ghz 256 meg video.

It took me about 2 hours. Mine was the same giant glop of thermal paste as seen before. The video chip was actually not covered well at all. There was a big glop, but it was to one side of the chip. I'll have to play with overclocking in Windows again and see if that improves.

I used smcfancontrol to show me temp and fan speed.

Original

On smooth cool surface idle
~50c fans at about 1000 rpms

On wood desk idle
~61c fans at about 1200 rpms

On wood full load
peak 87c, but hovering more around 85c, fans at about 3000 rpms


After Artic Silver 5 + clean fans and vents

On smooth cool surface idle
~40c fans at about 1000 rpms

On wood desk idle
~55c fans at about 1000 rpms

On wood desk full load
peak 85c, but hovering more around 82c, fans at about 2000 rpms

There was definitely a big difference at idle, not as much at full load, though the fans never got above 2000 rpms so it was much quieter. Some (maybe all?) of the improvement I'm sure was simply cleaning the fans and vents, there was quite a bit of dust on the vents of the right fan. Unfortunately I didn't take a data point after cleaning the fans but before redoing the thermal paste.
 
ewinemiller said:
So the recent activity on this thread got me interested in trying this again. I have a MBP core duo 2ghz 256 meg video.

It took me about 2 hours. Mine was the same giant glop of thermal paste as seen before. The video chip was actually not covered well at all. There was a big glop, but it was to one side of the chip. I'll have to play with overclocking in Windows again and see if that improves.

I used smcfancontrol to show me temp and fan speed.

Original

On smooth cool surface idle
~50c fans at about 1000 rpms

On wood desk idle
~61c fans at about 1200 rpms

On wood full load
peak 87c, but hovering more around 85c, fans at about 3000 rpms


After Artic Silver 5 + clean fans and vents

On smooth cool surface idle
~40c fans at about 1000 rpms

On wood desk idle
~55c fans at about 1000 rpms

On wood desk full load
peak 85c, but hovering more around 82c, fans at about 2000 rpms

There was definitely a big difference at idle, not as much at full load, though the fans never got above 2000 rpms so it was much quieter. Some (maybe all?) of the improvement I'm sure was simply cleaning the fans and vents, there was quite a bit of dust on the vents of the right fan. Unfortunately I didn't take a data point after cleaning the fans but before redoing the thermal paste.
Click to expand...

i highly doubt this is accurate. on a mpb, the fans run at 2000rpm each when youre idling. they go up to 6000 rpm if youre under full load and get quite loud too.
 
v1q said:
i highly doubt this is accurate. on a mpb, the fans run at 2000rpm each when youre idling. they go up to 6000 rpm if youre under full load and get quite loud too.
Click to expand...

So, are you privy to super secret information the developers of smcfancontrol and istat pro do not have? If so please educate us.

I took this screen shot after playing WoW for a bit, it was still a little warm.

mbptemp.jpg
 
ewinemiller said:
So, are you privy to super secret information the developers of smcfancontrol and istat pro do not have? If so please educate us.

I took this screen shot after playing WoW for a bit, it was still a little warm.

mbptemp.jpg
Click to expand...

did you install the firmware update for your mpb? cause mine run idle at 2000rpm.
 
v1q said:
did you install the firmware update for your mpb? cause mine run idle at 2000rpm.
Click to expand...

Yes, do you perhaps have a core duo 2 in yours? That may be the difference. I seem to remember hearing the idle fan speed was different on the 2s. This is one of the fairly early MBPs, just a core duo, no 2.
 
ewinemiller said:
Yes, do you perhaps have a core duo 2 in yours? That may be the difference. I seem to remember hearing the idle fan speed was different on the 2s. This is one of the fairly early MBPs, just a core duo, no 2.
Click to expand...

yea i got a c2d. honestly tho, i dont know why the fans would be upped on that one since it has like 2-3 mw difference in heat. makes me want to try out reapplying the thermal paste even more :\ but i wont dig into it until i have further confirmation that it is still an issue.
 
To resurrect this old thread from the dead...
In case anyone wonders, it seems that Apple has switched to some kind of standard size thermal pads since the Core 2 Duo MBP's. While swapping the hard disk in my MBP Core 2 Duo (Oct 2006), I couldn't resist my curiosity and removed the logic board too. You can see what it looks like in the attached pictures. The pads are still slightly larger than necessary, but it looks a lot better than the 'mayonnaise' from the early MBP's.

Of course I had to apply new thermal grease when reassembling, and I used Zalman's "Super Thermal Grease" which is comparable to Arctic Silver 5. However, Temperature Monitor doesn't show a considerable drop in temperature compared to the standard grease, so it seems the latter does a good job and it's rather pointless to take the newer MBP models apart.
 

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Glad i read the last post!!

Wow i am glad i read the last post! because i was sincerely on my way to Radio Shack to acquire some of this thermal paste.

and then i was gonna take my beloved apart...
Still have to change my though?
 
DrLex said:
To resurrect this old thread from the dead...
In case anyone wonders, it seems that Apple has switched to some kind of standard size thermal pads since the Core 2 Duo MBP's.
Click to expand...
That grease is NOT thermal pads. It is the same paste they have been using, Shin-Etsu. In your case, it is only 4x too much paste, in my case, it was like 100x too much. Here is my thread from back in June of last year when I redid my paste, I saw a huge improvement in temps.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/316736/
 
DrLex said:
To resurrect this old thread from the dead...
In case anyone wonders, it seems that Apple has switched to some kind of standard size thermal pads since the Core 2 Duo MBP's. While swapping the hard disk in my MBP Core 2 Duo (Oct 2006), I couldn't resist my curiosity and removed the logic board too. You can see what it looks like in the attached pictures. The pads are still slightly larger than necessary, but it looks a lot better than the 'mayonnaise' from the early MBP's.

Of course I had to apply new thermal grease when reassembling, and I used Zalman's "Super Thermal Grease" which is comparable to Arctic Silver 5. However, Temperature Monitor doesn't show a considerable drop in temperature compared to the standard grease, so it seems the latter does a good job and it's rather pointless to take the newer MBP models apart.
Click to expand...

Good to hear!
 
Anyone got any other sources to confirm that the newer MBP's have less thermal paste? I'd hate to finally get one only to find that I need to take it apart.
 
JWest said:
Anyone got any other sources to confirm that the newer MBP's have less thermal paste? I'd hate to finally get one only to find that I need to take it apart.
Click to expand...

I am wondering the same. I just bought a 2.2GHz. I pray that the thermal paste is not like that. That is just wrong, its like somebody just spread it like mayo.
 
nikhsub1 said:
That grease is NOT thermal pads. It is the same paste they have been using, Shin-Etsu.
Click to expand...
Indeed, I used the wrong word. What I meant is that they now seem to use some pad-shaped applicator to limit the amount of paste.

JWest said:
Anyone got any other sources to confirm that the newer MBP's have less thermal paste? I'd hate to finally get one only to find that I need to take it apart.
Click to expand...
Well, as you can see from my previous post, taking mine apart didn't improve the temperatures. I think we can assume that the cooling system works correctly now.

By the way, you don't even need to take it apart to see if there's an excess of paste in there. You can actually look at the spots where the chips meet the heatsink, if you close the lid and shine a flashlight through the ventilation grill at the back. It's not so easy to see, but if you use the pictures from my previous post, you can make a guess at where the chips are. In my MBP it looks like the attached picture, but mind that this is with only the strictly necessary amount of thermal paste applied.

But the best way to check if it the cooling system works, is to download a utility like Temperature Monitor and see if you're getting suspiciously high temperatures.
 

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