“Any PC enthusiast knows that thermal paste is something to be applied in precise amounts. Maybe Apple could take a lesson from all of us out there who have tacked a cooler onto a CPU. Apparently, the recent rash of toasty MacBooks can be attributed to excessive amounts of silicon thermal paste applied between chips and heat sinks. A number of MacBook users have, in heated desperation, resorted to cracking open their MacBooks only to find minuscule amounts of thermal silicon between the chip and sink, but massive amounts of silicon paste spilling out around the edges. Now, if the silicon thermal paste had been applied properly all these MacBooks wouldn’t be cooking themselves to death,” J. Micah Grunert reports for Neoseeker.
“Some MacBook users had cried that their computer was running at just over 50 Degrees Celsius. But once a better thermal paste replaced the silicon, temperatures dropped to roughly human body temperatures, some 35 to 39 Degrees Celsius,” Grunert reports.
Full article here.
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Ummmm… doesn’t a cooler case mean toastier chips??? I mean, if the case was so hot, it means the thermal paste was doing it’s job and transferring heat from the chips to the metal case. So, now, if the case is cooler, then is the heat trapped on the chips? Maybe these guys should check their chip temps before they get too excited. Or maybe I’m missing something. First post?
Jon – That is exactly what I was thinking… Where does the heat go now?
I’m glad MDN posted this article, apparantly quality control is dropping considerably at Quanta Computer, Apple’s (and just about everyone else’s) laptop computer maker.
Apple is having a hard time demonstrating their hardware is better when they are made as cheaply as cheap Dell PC’s.
Get cracking Apple, your reputation for quality is going downhill in a hurry.
1: Mac OS X security
2: Whine, speaker and heat problems on MacBook Pro’s.
3: Aperture
Perhaps the Apple folks are getting pushed to hard lately?
It’s time to pimp you MacBook Pro thermal paste.
You don’t know the history of chip fabrication. I do.
Some step-by-step photos would be nice. My MacBook could cook a steak.
The first two posters are wrong.
If there is too much thermal paste, the paste will act as a insulator, thereby preventing heat transfer to the copper heatsink, creating the high default temperatures on MBPs.
Apple should have used a thin film of thermal paste — less than 1mm thick — on the MBP chips. This is the proper way, and allows unencumbered heat transfer from chip to heat sink, resulting in cooler temperatures.
Pop QUIZ:
Who is a loser?
Al Jazzoo
I tried a thermal paste makeover. The blistering and pain was pretty bad. But it was definitely an improvement.
Jon, a cooler case means cooler chips.
is this what the new commercial will be about?
“The Mac Book Pro: the best notebook in the world can even make your breakfast” (Show two eggs sunny-side up sizzling on a flipped over MBP)
::sigh::
I noticed that many MacBook Pro users reported in the Apple forums that resetting the PMU fixed their heat issues.
In fact, it may well be that taking your MacBook Pro apart enough to re-apply heat sink compound has the side-effect of resetting your PMU, which actually fixes the heat issue.
I doubt that a tiny bit of extra paste will matter that much in this case. This is a Core Duo, not an Athlon64. When they apply the heat sink, it squishes the paste pretty thin anyways, and the paste around the chip doesn’t matter at all – only between the CPU and heatsink.
Bah! You think chip temperature is all that hot? Pre-Energy Star days, you could face two 21-inch displays towards each other and scramble eggs with all the radiation in that space.
I’m a mechanical engineer who’s designed plenty of power supplies and other printed circuit boards. HERE’S HOW IT WORKS:
1) Thermal paste has MUCH poorer conductivity than solids such as ceramic, metal and plastic.
2) Thermal paste is applied between plastic or ceramic chips and metal heatsinks to improve thermal conductivity between them.
3) Isn’t this an oxymoron? No. Because the interface between the two flat surfaces is imperfect. It is neither perfectly flat nor is it perfectly smooth. Consequently, there are areas that touch (fabulous heat conduction), and areas (both macro and micro) that have air between them. Air is a much poorer conductor of heat than thermal heat sink grease (“silicone” grease) so the compound improves conductivity only if it replaces air without diminishing solid-to-solid contact area.
4) You only want a small, nearly transparent coating of the thermal heat sink compound before mating the surfaces. You want the compound that would otherwise interfere with the perfectly touching areas to easily squeeze out of the way and only stay in the areas where there are macro-size debonds and micro-size (surface roughness) spots.
5) If one has applied too much compound before mating the parts, you can float the heat sink atop a couple-mil-thick layer of “thermally-conductive” heat sink compound. Again, the stuff has better conductivity than air but it’s much worse than solid-to-solid conductivity. So floating the part is bad.
6) If the chip runs hotter, it heats up its local area of the printed circuit board and the nearby case rather than shed it’s heat into the heatsink (which, in turn, sheds its heat into the fan-forced air).
7) If you have good chip-to-heatsink conductivity, the chip is cooler, the case is cooler, the heatsink is hotter, and it means the air coming out of the ventilation ports is hotter. This is good.
8) Proper heat sink compound application is the most poorly understood thing on the world’s assembly lines and even some line supervisors still think that if “some’s good, more’s gooder”.
Jon:
Interesting question. Perhaps Apple will be able to utilize the heat energy produced by the chips to also power the CPU. You know, like cold fusion, so battery life can be extended for weeks and weeks. What we need is a little civil disobedience and violate the laws of thermodynamics.
Al Jizzoo: go back to your DULL/HP laptop and blow-dry your porn-start afro with the huge fans on the bottom.
Farkin’ tool.
SB
Oh, and notwithstanding some pooh-poohs from others about hot chips aren’t bad, they’re wrong.
If an engineer added a heatsink, it was done to keep something from overheating (most likely the chip). There is a logarithmic relationship between chip life and temperature. An over-capcity heatsink costs more money and takes up more space (a serious constraint in a laptop computer) so it’s not like there is excess heatsink capacity; engineers almost NEVER get excess heatsink capacity. If the heat isn’t getting into the heatsink at the “advertised” rate (under ideal conditions with the proper application of heatsink grease), then something’s getting too hot and that’s not good.
Step-by-step instructions
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/85.1.0.html
Jon: See Greg’s post – hot laptop case = poor thermal dissipation.
MacBook Pro owners – go get some Arctic Silver thermal paste, apply thin transparent layer between heat sync and CPU. Then see temperature drop 10-20 degrees as a minimum.
Greg L – Thanks for the informative post!
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If this was happening to Dell laptops MDN would be jumping all over them for their crappy laptop heaters because Apple has a great vertical business design model that gives them superior design, engineering and control. And they would complain about the shoddy work and components in the Dell.
But Apple has defective products and its a learning experience for us all.
I believe if anyone attempts this procedure their warranty is voided on their Apple heater….laptop.
Now you know what´s delaying the next iBooks – they are too damn hot!
anyone visit the Apple support forums lately? They’re beginning to look like a Dell forum. There some real quality conrol issues mentioned.
Also, it appears from reading the comments that Apple is deleted users who post negative comments about problems they are experiencing with MacBooks. Buyer Beware.
So who’s going to buy a first generation anything by Apple after this?
Doesn’t anybody test these things before they are sent out???