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Which Mac is easiest to open, clean the fans, repaste the CPU
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All Apple laptops are more or less tedious to disassemble. Particularly for thermal paste replacement. I’ve experience negligible benefit from changing the thermal paste on the half dozen MBPs I’ve done since 2011. Only my 2019 16” MBP appeared to benefit in an appreciable way (running cooler ~1-3° C under load). New paste didn’t change anything for my 2011s, 2012s with Nvidia discrete GPU or the recent paste and battery replacement on my 2015 MBP with AMD discrete GPU. I was hoping new paste would make a difference with my 15” 2019 with AMD Vega 20, but only realized about a 1° C reduction in temp. All this to say that I’ve opened up and cleaned out and repasted a fair share of MBPs going back to 2011. Unless you’re running a 2019 16” MBP under regular heavy load, repasting may not be worth the effort. But everyone’s experience is different, mileage may vary etc.
Bottom line, they were all easy to clean out with compressed air. Just pop the bottom plate off and blow out the vents, the fins, the fans. That has done more good (in my experience) than repasting. For all the MBPs I’ve owned the past 14 years, the disassembly needed to repaste is a relative pain. For me, I’d say 2011-2012 was easiest, 2013-2015 roughly the same, 2016-15” 2019 moderately more difficult in the sense that there are more screws and ribbons to disconnect. Lastly, I felt the 2019 16” was slightly more challenging because of a few more screws than prior years and the way some connectors and ribbon cables were routed. And for the 16” with the 5500M graphics, at least on mine, you have to be careful as there is a bit of thermal heat sink tape (?) that goes from the actual heat sink to over the video memory and it’s on there with adhesive. If you don’t lift that off the video memory first before lifting up the motherboard, the thermal tape or whatever it’s called will tear off.
I haven’t done anything to Apple Silicon MBPs mainly due to their superior cooling, and the systems really aren’t old enough yet to warrant the effort of a repast (imho). But as with Intel MBPs, quite easy to remove the bottom plate of Apple Silicon MBPs and blow out the dust on occasion with a can of air.
Bottom line, they were all easy to clean out with compressed air. Just pop the bottom plate off and blow out the vents, the fins, the fans. That has done more good (in my experience) than repasting. For all the MBPs I’ve owned the past 14 years, the disassembly needed to repaste is a relative pain. For me, I’d say 2011-2012 was easiest, 2013-2015 roughly the same, 2016-15” 2019 moderately more difficult in the sense that there are more screws and ribbons to disconnect. Lastly, I felt the 2019 16” was slightly more challenging because of a few more screws than prior years and the way some connectors and ribbon cables were routed. And for the 16” with the 5500M graphics, at least on mine, you have to be careful as there is a bit of thermal heat sink tape (?) that goes from the actual heat sink to over the video memory and it’s on there with adhesive. If you don’t lift that off the video memory first before lifting up the motherboard, the thermal tape or whatever it’s called will tear off.
I haven’t done anything to Apple Silicon MBPs mainly due to their superior cooling, and the systems really aren’t old enough yet to warrant the effort of a repast (imho). But as with Intel MBPs, quite easy to remove the bottom plate of Apple Silicon MBPs and blow out the dust on occasion with a can of air.
Seemingly at least some “PC” aspects — more Dell-like but still:
If you’re willing to be a little patient.
One of the teardowns with fewest tabs and no adhesive. Which is in contrast to something like the Macbook Air or most MacBooks:
And even though I haven’t put a lot of concern into cleaning my Macs, except for the Intel Mac mini that needed to have hair dryer equivalent airflow to cool almost any workload state, I can still respect planning ahead if you keep and want to maintain a system for several years. And amounts of dust and other debris in a cooling system that would significantly lower airflow could cause notable performance (blips).
www.techpowerup.com
I could scour the Internet for hours and find all kinds of examples/demonstrations though I’ll stop with this collection:
If you’re willing to be a little patient.
The following video is regarding NAND upgrade but, in our current context, provides a good demo of the disassembly and reassembly to reach at least the fan/blower.
One of the teardowns with fewest tabs and no adhesive. Which is in contrast to something like the Macbook Air or most MacBooks:
And even though I haven’t put a lot of concern into cleaning my Macs, except for the Intel Mac mini that needed to have hair dryer equivalent airflow to cool almost any workload state, I can still respect planning ahead if you keep and want to maintain a system for several years. And amounts of dust and other debris in a cooling system that would significantly lower airflow could cause notable performance (blips).
Let’s begin with some explanation:
Thinking about repasting my laptop - is it worth it?
First of all, my laptop: Lenovo L340-17IRH Gaming (81LL00F5CK) Nvidia GTX 1650 Intel Core i5-9300HF 16 GB RAM 1 TB SSD (from how many posts about the l340 i've seen here, it looks this laptop has really crappy cooling lol) So i've had thermal throttling problems while gaming for a few months...
www.techpowerup.com
I could scour the Internet for hours and find all kinds of examples/demonstrations though I’ll stop with this collection:
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The only correct answer is obviously the Mac Pro.
Good luck with that one though, hasn’t been updated in years and starts at $7000.
Good luck with that one though, hasn’t been updated in years and starts at $7000.
I think this topic was made just for attention. Nobody needs to replace thermals or anything in todays mac ; only if you live in a very dusty environment, in that case you dont need a mac. Yes, mac mini and mac pro are the easiest but you need to keep them for more than 8-10 years to need dust or thermal replacement in an normal working space
i think this topic can be closed
Good day
i think this topic can be closed
Good day
Question:
"Which of the latest Apple computers is the easiest to open, clean the fans, repaste the CPU?"
Answer:
If you're interested in a new Mac, those are probably the wrong questions to be asking.
(I'm thinking that the new m4 or m4pro Mini has the "easiest access" to the internal fan...)
"Which of the latest Apple computers is the easiest to open, clean the fans, repaste the CPU?"
Answer:
If you're interested in a new Mac, those are probably the wrong questions to be asking.
(I'm thinking that the new m4 or m4pro Mini has the "easiest access" to the internal fan...)
Moderator Note:
Looks like OP's question has been answered. Thread closed.
Looks like OP's question has been answered. Thread closed.
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