If you have any of the Air models which lack fans, there's a common hack of putting thermal pads between the CPU heatspreader and case, effectively turning the bottom case into a large heatsink, and giving your system a longer maximum performance before throttling.
The downsides is that this makes the bottom of the case quite hot on a place you can touch, but putting a plastic hardshell over the entire laptop deals with that, and also gives protection.
The author should benchmark a few months afterwards. A common problem with using "PC" thermal pastes (for lack of a better word) is that they experience more pump out than whatever they use for laptops, so a few months later the performance might end up worse than before he changed the paste.
I recently paid 60 euros to get my 14" m1 macbook cleaned, it was extremely dusty inside, so much so that the left fan started making strange squealing noises and then a pinging sonar-type sound every few seconds. Luckily with the combination of the fan control app and the built in apple diagnostic tool I managed to determine it was probably the fan and brought it to the local service shop to disassemble and clean. Now the only things left are to replace the original battery which is at 75% and replace the rustling speaker which was damaged by ants getting inside through the vents and chewing on it.
i think it's worth it to know for MacBook Air users instead (like me). I think mine is wearing out and what's annoying is it throttles on some web pages because the temp would spike to 106c. But not on (admittedly light) gaming or Lightroom editinf.
While I can appreciate the intent of this blog post.. I don't see how the title should be "repaste your Macbook" when touch ID breaks and the button stops working.
Doesn't Apple offer this service if you have AppleCare+? or even if you dont? that way its on them?
A nice and unexpected thing about the current MBPs is they usually have their fan completely turned off. There was barely any dust in my M1 Max MBP when I looked.
I remember doing it on a thinkpad. I didn't break any cables, I didn't need a guide, and it got significantly quieter afterwards. Macbooks are pretty, they've got a great CPU, but the repairability is just rubbish
I wonder if Apple itself offers repasting services via AppleCare. For someone like me, with little experience in handling electronics, it might be better than trying to fiddle with the MacBook’s internals.
I don't know if it is different with Apple silicon, but I had a 2018 MBP that overheated and the Apple Store replaced the logic board and upper case assembly rather than try any sort of repair of the existing board with heat issues.
I had to do this to my 2012 MBP (along with fixing the gpu solder problem) and I found it wasn't that hard to disassemble / reassemble. Also replacing the battery, upgrading the ram/storage was very easy to do. Contrast this to my 2017 MBP which has to score on the top 10 list of worst apple products of all time as far as quality and ease of repair go.
Have these new M3/4 MPBs gone back at all to being easy to dismantle or change the battery in? The OP with their M1 mentioned tearing overly thin ribbon cables.
I had to replace the fans on a 2013 MBP that I use as a linux laptop and the experience was one of the most nerve-wracking in my whole life! It really is put together to dissuade people from tweaking anything inside of it.
This. Its not a case of Carbon Black being better over other acceptable options.
The thermal paste applied in this article needs pressure on the two surfaces making contact to function at all, and to remain functional. The laptop isn't built like a desktop cooler setup.
Several years ago I replaced the thermal paste in my MacBook Pro and I did it in two steps: first to high-end paste; and second to liquid metal.
The results were impressive, and I think it’s a bit veiled how paste degradation over time impacts perceived laptop speeds. I’ve been tempted to replace the paste on new devices but haven’t taken that plunge.
someone made a youtube video not too long ago (i think was that guy who made the 3rd party ssd upgrade kits?) he said that apple uses a special type of thermal paste... not that its some super awesome unique product, it's just that its not a paste in the typical sense, like you'd use on a GPU or CPU. It's more like a "putty".
>But where I also really notice it is in idling: just writing this blog post my CPU was right at 46°C the whole time, where previously my computer idled right aroud 60°C. The whole computer just feels a bit healthier.
I get this same feeling whenever I change the fluids on my cars. I know from a practical perspective, it's very little changed, but I can't help feeling like the car just feels like it's in a better place. Which I guess it is? But I know it's entirely mental.
I don't think it is entirely mental - I had thought the same, but I recently had a very cheap rental car for months, so long they called it back to the shop for an oil change and then gave it back to me... that car drove SO much better after the oil change, the engine was quieter and smoother and the difference was obvious because the car had no vibration or sound insulation.
I wouldn’t trade a modern Macbook for an old one by any stretch, but man, you could really have some fun with those older models.
I gave my modded 17" 2009 "cafeteria tray" Macbook Pro to my father, and after using it for many more years, he brought it in for… something. I had replaced the internal optical drive with an SSD and reformatted it as a “Fusion Drive” (a kind of smart multi-drive partition that would put commonly-accessed things on an SSD and large rarely-used storage on an HD, identified as a single drive), apparently every Genius Bar employee crammed around the table because they had never seen any Apple computer like it :D
> My favorite memory of my M1 Pro MacBook Pro was the whole sensation of “holy crap, you never hear the fans in this thing”, which was very novel in 2021.
I had that same "wow, no fan" when I got my M1 Mac (still have my 2014 Intel MBP and the fans come on almost immediately)
> this dang thing still seems to just shrug at basically anything I throw at it.
Unfortunately, this year I started playing with stable diffusion stuff, while it might be possible to optimize, what I have (automatic1111 and comfyui), is slow and my fans come on. Slow = 6x to 12x slower than friends with gaming PCs.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 97.9 ms ] threadThe downsides is that this makes the bottom of the case quite hot on a place you can touch, but putting a plastic hardshell over the entire laptop deals with that, and also gives protection.
You can also put cabinet fans under the macbook to draw air away.
AC Infinity ones are nice for that. Had to do that with an old i9 macbook pro that was completely incapable of cooling itself due to being too thin.
Doesn't Apple offer this service if you have AppleCare+? or even if you dont? that way its on them?
After reading this, an Apple middle manager is gathering an emergency meeting to figure out who fucked up
Have these new M3/4 MPBs gone back at all to being easy to dismantle or change the battery in? The OP with their M1 mentioned tearing overly thin ribbon cables.
You can buy TCRS Carbon Black if you really need to repaste a Mac part instead of swapping a new part that was pasted at the factory.
The thermal paste applied in this article needs pressure on the two surfaces making contact to function at all, and to remain functional. The laptop isn't built like a desktop cooler setup.
The results were impressive, and I think it’s a bit veiled how paste degradation over time impacts perceived laptop speeds. I’ve been tempted to replace the paste on new devices but haven’t taken that plunge.
https://fluffyandflakey.blog/2019/04/13/increasing-thermal-h...
>[After] Max CPU temperature: 96°C
What? Is that normal for macs?
Vaguely unrelated I'm only buying thermal grizzly paste in future...that factory tour they did was super impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsIk_mMrt2w
I wonder how my situation differs from Christian's.
I get this same feeling whenever I change the fluids on my cars. I know from a practical perspective, it's very little changed, but I can't help feeling like the car just feels like it's in a better place. Which I guess it is? But I know it's entirely mental.
I gave my modded 17" 2009 "cafeteria tray" Macbook Pro to my father, and after using it for many more years, he brought it in for… something. I had replaced the internal optical drive with an SSD and reformatted it as a “Fusion Drive” (a kind of smart multi-drive partition that would put commonly-accessed things on an SSD and large rarely-used storage on an HD, identified as a single drive), apparently every Genius Bar employee crammed around the table because they had never seen any Apple computer like it :D
I had that same "wow, no fan" when I got my M1 Mac (still have my 2014 Intel MBP and the fans come on almost immediately)
> this dang thing still seems to just shrug at basically anything I throw at it.
Unfortunately, this year I started playing with stable diffusion stuff, while it might be possible to optimize, what I have (automatic1111 and comfyui), is slow and my fans come on. Slow = 6x to 12x slower than friends with gaming PCs.