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Resolve your MacBook Temperature Problem
- Thread starter amac4me
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ITASOR said:
What would it be like to work in thermal paste factory???
I can't believe we have five pages of posts about a computer with absolutely no problems, except for some guys that find pieces of plastic or people that are complaining about glossy screens
Macnoviz said:
I disagree. When the processor's temperature gets so hot that Intel's thermal protection circuit kicks in and throttles down the clock speed from 2.0 GHz to 1.67 GHz I think that's a BIG problem. If I buy a 2.0 GHz machine I expect it to run at 2.0 GHz under full load, not 1.67 GHz.
Cheers, Joe
Could you please do me (and as far as I know every non US country in the world) a favour? Maybe mention it when you mean Fahrenheit and not Celsius. It's really confusing otherwise.
David
David
I disagree with the intensity of the statement. Not only does the article mention what wasn't measured, much of it is irrelevant to the cause. Core temperatures, idle temperatures, and room temperatures weren't of concern to the original experiment. The tests occurred in the same room with the same ambient conditions, and the goal was to lower the peak case temperature, not to determine the relationship between CPU and case temp (attempting to do so would have produced are far more complex article). All the temperatures reported were Celsius (regardless of the Fahrenheit thermometers) to my understanding, probably in consideration of the international community.shewhorn said:
The only egregious fault was the lack of before temperatures--maybe the friend's MBP didn't have a heat problem and his did. Even if that's the case, it proves that not all MacBooks have a heat problem, which is still valuable information.
matticus008 said:
Perhaps I missed something re: farenheit vs. celsius but the article that I read does report temps in farenheit. Here's a quote from the article:
I still feel that the test wasn't planned very well, the fact that they didn't take a before reading illustrates that point (we can at least agree that it would have been useful to get a before reading).
What do we know from this test? We know that Greg's laptop's chassis temp is 97F and James' laptop's chassis is 95F. That's pretty much all we can conclude from that test. Maybe James' laptop was running at 105F before the test or maybe it was running at 93F. We'll never know that.
You point out that the tester's goal was to reduce chassis temperature, I'd agree there but this statement (in my personal opinion at least) exhibits a lack of understanding of the problem:
The "glowing reports on the web" (the ones where there's a 20C drop in temps at load) all reference the processor's core temperature, not chassis temperature so if those were the results he was after the goal was doomed from the get go. Based on hit results that would mean an external chassis temp that's less than a comfortable room temperature (61 degrees F for a 20C drop in temps).... unless there's a fridge (or a phase change cooler) attached to the thing it's not going to happen (well, unless you're using your MacBook Pro on top of Kirkwood or Squaw in the winter). I bet my PowerBook chassis gets to at least 80F to 85F just sitting on my legs for a 1/2 hour (wearing shorts... no commando browsing here
). Of course I'm not sure exactly what his expectations were, I'm just making some assumptions based on the article but without asking him I don't know.Cheers, Joe
P.S. What part of the Bay Area? I lived in the SF/Bay Area for 7 years (Sunnyvale, Palo Alto and Mountain View). I miss the Bay Area (I moved back to New England last year
)
Willis said:
people are that untrusting that he's actually gotta take photos of his plastic for ya or what
Oops, I guess it's the other way around. Fahrenheit and not Celsius.shewhorn said:
We can also conclude that stock MacBooks can and do run at similar temperatures and that Arctic Silver isn't going to help everyone. That's valuable information to have in writing. A before temperature would have been immensely helpful, but they readily admit they didn't take one. Pointing out the major problem with your method is more scientific than most "articles" and "experiments" on the Internet, so I guess I'm trying to give them a little credit for trying, is all.
My PowerBook gets to 116˚F (47C) on a fairly regular basis near the vents and the RAM door. Occasionally it might even venture a little hotter. Surprise, computers get hot. Some of the responses seem to suggest that people were unaware of this basic fact.I bet my PowerBook chassis gets to at least 80F to 85F just sitting on my legs for a 1/2 hour (wearing shorts... no commando browsing here
I've lived in Palo Alto and San Jose, but now it's the East Bay or possibly SF proper. I haven't selected a property yet as I'm still technically a Vancouver resident.P.S. What part of the Bay Area? I lived in the SF/Bay Area for 7 years (Sunnyvale, Palo Alto and Mountain View). I miss the Bay Area (I moved back to New England last year
Willis said:
I read a thread where a store employee went and keyed a BLACK macbook and it was 100% black through and through, then I read that the Black is actually aluminum (silver underneath) like the MBP whereas the white are plastic. Hard to know what is or isn't true.
I did notice the other day in the Pasadena store, that the SPACE BAR for the black had a bit of silver showing through, but it was a clean edge, not flaky.
Has anyone, just for fun, weighed the white and then the black.
The cases are black polycarbonate plastic, not painted, and not aluminum. Like the iBook, the MacBooks have a hefty metal "cage" under the plastic to reinforce them. In the iBooks, this was magnesium. The MacBooks may or may not still use magnesium. The individual keys on the keyboard are a different kind of plastic, possibly ABS, and black ABS will look grey or white when stressed as a natural property of the plastic.retroz311 said:
In response to your other question, the processors are all soldered throughout the entire MacBook line, including the Pros.
There aren't "pins" in the sense you're thinking--it's not that they glued the CPU into place with solder, it's that there is no socket. A normal mainboard has a ZIF socket which you place your packaged CPU into and then strap your cooling device on top. A notebook has no such socket, and the cooling unit is more tightly connected to the whole affair. This saves considerably on vertical space, allowing notebooks to be less than 2" thick, and some to be as thin as 1" vertically, like the MacBooks.retroz311 said:Dang, as in every pin, or just 4? Why go through the trouble? With the new Procs at the same pin config, you just know the PC to Mac users will try to un solder. Wonder how easy it would be to switch them out?!
It would be almost impossible to successfully swap out a notebook processor, not only because of the sensitivity and difficulty in doing so, but also because no one sells unpackaged CPUs for the task. Packaged meaning the substrate and pins system builders are used to seeing when they remove the "CPU"--that's actually a structure containing more than just the CPU core(s).
retroz311 said:
The keys on the black Macbook actually have some kind of protective plastic on them. You can peel that off if you remove the keys one by one and grab the thin black layer on the back of the key and peel it of. You then have a silver key with black labels like on the Macbook Pro. The keys are plastic indeed but in a silver color. To remove the black plasic of the case, remove the battery and scratch one black spot with a knife or scissors until it goes off. Then you can gently pull on it to reveal the metal bottom of the Macbook. The top and display stickers are tougher to remove as there's nowhere to grab the black sticker. It took me nearly 2 hours to clear my Macbook from this black stuff. The only things that remain black are: power button, ports, mouse pad and button, ventilation grille on the back, battery release switch and the battery itself. The IR-Sensor and the sleep LED on the front and the iSight remain black too of yourse (looks ugly likeo on the Macbook Pro). I'll try to take pictures with the iSight and a Mirror tonight and post them there.
Dont up date your software on the macbook, the intel update, make the book whine, removed it and reinstalled and it back to perfect!
MrCrowbar said:
you have to reinstall osx......its worth it though, just did it myself and dont update thesoftware with the intel again.......