Thermal Paste Renewal

[Hexley]

Anyone disassembled, cleaned, removed the old thermal paste and then applied a new pea-sized amount of Arctic MX-4 onto their Macbook Pros?

How was your experience?

 

[shardey]

What year? That makes a difference as some older models like the pre-retina needed to remove the logic board and the retina models didn't need to remove the logic board. The newer ones with the butterfly keyboard needed the logic board remove to access the screws for the heatsink.

I recently did a 2019 16" with the i9/5500 4GB with TFX made by Thermalright. The pea method is not advisable with that since it's a very thick paste (even using a hair dryer) and needed to be spread with the provided spatula. It noticeably dropped my idle/load temps while gaming. I run custom aggressive fan curves as well so it made the fans not spin up so quickly due to lower temps.

Be sure to have quality screwdrivers while performing the removal of both the bottom case and the internals. I saw quality because the last thing you want to do is have to drill out a screw that you stripped. I had to do this on a 2012 rMBP with one of the case screws.

I have a Wiha 75965 65 piece kit that includes the Torx bits and Pentalobe bits to remove the screws Apple likes to use.

 

[Macdctr]

I think with older laptops it is a good idea to "refresh" the thermal paste on the CPU and/or GPU. I recently picked up a pristine Early 2013 15-inch MBP for free and have been running benchmarks on it to see how efficient the cooling on this laptop is. So far I have not found any need to repaste my CPU/GPU as CPU temps have been running at a very consistent 102 degrees (under normal operations). Not bad for an 8 year old laptop.

I'm in the mindset of repasting older laptops as fresh thermal paste is never a bad thing as long as you know how to properly apply them.

 

[shardey]

I think with older laptops it is a good idea to "refresh" the thermal paste on the CPU and/or GPU. I recently picked up a pristine Early 2013 15-inch MBP for free and have been running benchmarks on it to see how efficient the cooling on this laptop is. So far I have not found any need to repaste my CPU/GPU as CPU temps have been running at a very consistent 102 degrees (under normal operations). Not bad for an 8 year old laptop.

I'm in the mindset of repasting older laptops as fresh thermal paste is never a bad thing as long as you know how to properly apply them.

102C or F? If it’s Celsius then that’s literally maxing out the temps since an early 15” 2013 uses an Ivy bridge CPU (3635qm/3740qm/3840qm) rated at a max of 105C.

 

[Macdctr]

102C or F? If it’s Celsius then that’s literally maxing out the temps since an early 15” 2013 uses an Ivy bridge CPU (3635qm/3740qm/3840qm) rated at a max of 105C.

102F which is 38C. I should have clarified that...

 

[shardey]

102F which is 38C. I should have clarified that...

Yeah I would say those are some good temps for that age of a laptop.

I had the early 2013 15" with the 3740QM and applying new thermal paste was a breeze. The 17" 2011 I had and my current 2018 15" and 2019 16" had to have the logic board removed. Either way the paste I have used was much better than Apple's as well as the excess amount they have used.

 

[dono42]

I have a 15" MBP Mid-2012 that was showing high and large swings in temperatures +70ºC - +80ºC doing normal day to day work stuff. Decided to do a re-paste. I followed the ifixit process. I was concerned about brittle cables because this laptop is on 8-10 hours a day. Glad to say everything went well and temperatures have dropped to 60ºC range.

Origanal paste was brittle (excess amount as @shardey observed). Cleaned up with alcohol and arctic clean. Artic clean is worth it, it removed material I could not see and the alcohol did not remove. Added Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut grease.