Will Heat Eventually Shorten the Lifespan of MacBook Air m1?

[darngooddesign]

If they are like previous versions of MBA and MBP, replacing battery in MBA is heaps easier.

I just replaced the trackpad in my 2014 MBP and getting the battery out wasn't that hard. A little bit of acetone to soften the adhesive and then wiggle a plastic card underneath to cut the softened adhesive. Why is the M1 Air's battery easier to replace?

I was just checking out my old non-retina MBP, and I forgot how nice the whole battery mechanism was.

 

[deeddawg]

There's never been in history a known issue of MacBooks experiencing a meltdown of any type due to heat.

Never say never.

Worth repairing on a MBP 15" Retina mid-2012 the solder joints of the U8900 chip causing GPU VCore failure ?

I have a MacbookPro 15" Retina mid-2012 going black screen whenever it switches to the dedicated GT650M NVidia GPU instead of the integrated GPU. This is apparently a well-knowned issue due to the bad solder joints of the U8900 power buck converter causing GPU VCore Failure. It has been...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Argon_]

I just replaced the trackpad in my 2014 MBP and getting the battery out wasn't that hard. A little bit of acetone to soften the adhesive and then wiggle a plastic card underneath to cut the softened adhesive. Why is the M1 Air's battery easier to replace?

I was just checking out my old non-retina MBP, and I forgot how nice the whole battery mechanism was.

The M1 Air uses the same battery affixment system as the previous Intel model. Pull tabbed tape. Essentially command strips.

No acetone or prying required.

 

[darngooddesign]

The M1 Air uses the same battery affixment system as the previous Intel model. Pull tabbed tape. Essentially command strips.

No acetone or prying required.

Very nice. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be and an old credit card cut the acetone-softened tape easily.

 

[Maconplasma]

Never say never.

Worth repairing on a MBP 15" Retina mid-2012 the solder joints of the U8900 chip causing GPU VCore failure ?

I have a MacbookPro 15" Retina mid-2012 going black screen whenever it switches to the dedicated GT650M NVidia GPU instead of the integrated GPU. This is apparently a well-knowned issue due to the bad solder joints of the U8900 power buck converter causing GPU VCore Failure. It has been...

forums.macrumors.com

LMAO the moment I saw Louis Rossman's name all credibility was gone! Also that's not a meltdown and it certainly isn't common, especially the fact that you had to show me video example for a Mac that was made 9 years ago. Since then heat complaints have been the #1 issue and after 9 years there hasn't been an issue with defective Macs over heat. 🙄

 

[deeddawg]

LMAO the moment I saw Louis Rossman's name all credibility was gone! Also that's not a meltdown and it certainly isn't common, especially the fact that you had to show me video example for a Mac that was made 9 years ago. Since then heat complaints have been the #1 issue and after 9 years there hasn't been an issue with defective Macs over heat. 🙄

Did you miss the big grin smiley?

The point was simply what was stated - never say never.

The point was NOT to suggest that heat-related failure was anything anyone should be concerned with in modern computers -- particularly if they're not in some manner overriding the manufacturer's design such as with overclocking.

BTW - I'd also put any concerns about fans in the same category. Highly improbable that it'd ever be an issue during the computers functional lifetime.

 

[pshufd]

Daughter installed World of Warcraft and says that the laptop doesn't heat up at all. Son has an Asus with a GTX 1650 Ti which has double the GPU but it gets "uncomfortably warm". The Asus' graphics are better but WoW is actually quite good on the M1. There's a YouTube video showing WoW running at 120 FPS on a high-resolution monitor.

So very, very impressive in terms of compute and compute/watt.

I'm going to try to be patient and wait for the M1X. I will ask her to try out my trading programs (she uses one of them too).

 

[theSeb]

Good grief. Did you miss the big grin smiley?

The point was simply what was stated - never say never.

The point was NOT to suggest that heat-related failure was anything anyone should be concerned with in modern computers -- particularly if they're not in some manner overriding the manufacturer's design such as with overclocking.

BTW - I'd also put any concerns about fans in the same category. Highly improbable that it'd ever be an issue during the computers functional lifetime.

I would not say never about fans. On my Alienware 17" behemoth the CPU fan failed after two years of gaming, visual studio and document editing. I took it apart, found the exact same fan model on amazon and replaced it.

My 2012 retina MBP (the one you mentioned earlier) still keeps chugging along like a champ. The newer version of Mac OS have put more of a strain on the CPU, so the fans spin up a lot making it very much a secondary machine, but it still works when it needs to. The only thing I do is open it every year and use compressed air to get dust out. I should probably put some new thermal paste in there, but whatever.

Since the MBA does not have fans it's actually more likely to not suffer a complete heat failure, but this isn't the dark ages of computing any more. Even when my fan started to fail and then failed completely in the Alienware the CPU did not fry itself. With thermal constraints, constant monitoring and thermal throttling complete failure due to heat is not very likely.

My little fanless 2015 12" MacBook still runs fine too. It's does take about 8-12 hours to update Xcode though (excluding the download times) so there is a lot of thermal throttling going on there, but as a travel laptop for emails and documents it works a treat. I expect the new MBA to last a long time.

 

[deeddawg]

I would not say never about fans. On my Alienware 17" behemoth the CPU fan failed after two years of gaming, visual studio and document editing. I took it apart, found the exact same fan model on amazon and replaced it.

My 2012 retina MBP (the one you mentioned earlier) still keeps chugging along like a champ. The newer version of Mac OS have put more of a strain on the CPU, so the fans spin up a lot making it very much a secondary machine, but it still works when it needs to. The only thing I do is open it every year and use compressed air to get dust out. I should probably put some new thermal paste in there, but whatever.

Since the MBA does not have fans it's actually more likely to not suffer a complete heat failure, but this isn't the dark ages of computing any more. Even when my fan started to fail and then failed completely in the Alienware the CPU did not fry itself. With thermal constraints, constant monitoring and thermal throttling complete failure due to heat is not very likely.

Exactly - while fan failure isn't non-existent, IMHO it's so rare as to not really be a concern. Per a chat with my company's desktop team, handling laptops for thousands of employees, they've hardly ever seen that type of fault. In thirty+ years of personal computer building/ownership (and a few years of sysadmin before Y2K), I've not seen a fan failure. Of course this is just anecdotal - but it'd be interesting to see real figures on the matter.

... and as you mention, if a fan fails it won't take out a modern computer, and fan replacement isn't difficult.

As for the M1 - in several weeks ownership I've heard my MBP's fan exactly once. If it does run at other times it's done so silently.

Thus I continue to suggest folks focus on criteria other than fan-repairs or thermal-longevity when deciding whether the MBA or MBP is the better fit to their needs.

 

[theSeb]

Exactly - while fan failure isn't non-existent, IMHO it's so rare as to not really be a concern. Per a chat with my company's desktop team, handling laptops for thousands of employees, they've hardly ever seen that type of fault. In thirty+ years of personal computer building/ownership (and a few years of sysadmin before Y2K), I've not seen a fan failure. Of course this is just anecdotal - but it'd be interesting to see real figures on the matter.

... and as you mention, if a fan fails it won't take out a modern computer, and fan replacement isn't difficult.

As for the M1 - in several weeks ownership I've heard my MBP's fan exactly once. If it does run at other times it's done so silently.

Thus I continue to suggest folks focus on criteria other than fan-repairs or thermal-longevity when deciding whether the MBA or MBP is the better fit to their needs.

I could not agree more with your post and especially the last sentence. The fanless design makes the MBA even more attractive considering that dust won't be a factor in maintaining the machine.

 

[bobmans]

I could not agree more with your post and especially the last sentence. The fanless design makes the MBA even more attractive considering that dust won't be a factor in maintaining the machine.

That's so true, dust buildup is a huge issue on laptops, especially on compact-built ones that you can't just open up and clean. I'm sure the MBA has been designed to thermal throttle enough to stay well below the max temps that could cause any harm.

 

[Argon_]

I would not say never about fans. On my Alienware 17" behemoth the CPU fan failed after two years of gaming, visual studio and document editing. I took it apart, found the exact same fan model on amazon and replaced it.

My 2012 retina MBP (the one you mentioned earlier) still keeps chugging along like a champ. The newer version of Mac OS have put more of a strain on the CPU, so the fans spin up a lot making it very much a secondary machine, but it still works when it needs to. The only thing I do is open it every year and use compressed air to get dust out. I should probably put some new thermal paste in there, but whatever.

Since the MBA does not have fans it's actually more likely to not suffer a complete heat failure, but this isn't the dark ages of computing any more. Even when my fan started to fail and then failed completely in the Alienware the CPU did not fry itself. With thermal constraints, constant monitoring and thermal throttling complete failure due to heat is not very likely.

My little fanless 2015 12" MacBook still runs fine too. It's does take about 8-12 hours to update Xcode though (excluding the download times) so there is a lot of thermal throttling going on there, but as a travel laptop for emails and documents it works a treat. I expect the new MBA to last a long time.

Toss an ice pack under the 12"MB for the update. One of my cousins used to have an early Intel black MB. He'd have a few ice packs on hand while playing games for short term FPS boosting.

 

[Wolff Weber]

Regarding battery in Air vs Pro: IMO it does not make a big difference whether You stick in the charger at 40 or 30% after a whole day of work.
PS: My M1 Air 8|8|512 would be perfect if it was 15”. Period.