“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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For some tasty pasty pics:
http://home.sc.rr.com/mixedbag/MBP/Photos.html
Great link, Frank. Wow, somebody was just slopping the stuff on those chips. The “pipe” is pretty cool (pun intended).
Eric: “So who’s going to buy a first generation anything by Apple after this?”
I’ve had several aluminum PowerBooks, and my new 1.83Ghz MacBook Pro runs cooler than any PowerBook I’ve ever used. I’ve even played Quake 4 on it for a while, and the fans stayed really quiet.
As far as I can tell, the MacBook Pro is the coolest and quietest professional Mac laptop yet.
The 12″ PowerBook, on the other hand, is another story. Run a 3D game on it for 20 minutes and it will be sizzling hot with its fans screaming like banshees. Sucks big time.
What the big deal, my 12inch 1ghz Powerbook runs in the low 60’s on days when the heavy lifting needs to be done.
During the winter when it is cold in the house I just turn on Quake 4 on my Apple notebook and within 15 minutes the whole house is warmed to toasty 72 degrees F.
This is the post that started it all:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2141610#2141610
And here are pictures to support the method:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1864582
Greg L:
Two great posts. Clear, concise, AND informative. Thanks!
Nick says: “I’ve had several aluminum PowerBooks, and my new 1.83Ghz MacBook Pro runs cooler than any PowerBook I’ve ever used… As far as I can tell, the MacBook Pro is the coolest and quietest professional Mac laptop yet. The 12″ PowerBook, on the other hand, is another story. Run a 3D game on it for 20 minutes and it will be sizzling hot…”
Maybe you’ve gotten a recent MBP; one that has the firmware patch, and maybe better thermal compound application. The reason I say this is that your statement runs counter to my experience – The MBPs I’ve been around are just as hot as the worst 15″ PB I ever owned (a 1.33Ghz model). Plus, I don’t think the 12″ PB had worse heat problems than the other PB sizes. In fact, with it running at slower clockspeeds, it should run cooler by definition. Again, from my own experience, 12″ PBs in general have only been just a little hotter than equivalently sized iBooks (which they are in fact base on), and the iBooks have never had a heat issue.
I think the problem here results from a combination of things: First, Apple rushing a product to market in order to get bragging rights about introducing Intel’s Yonah before any of the Windows crowd (and to show how swimmingly the Macintel transition will go). And second, that Intel’s new generation of CPUs aren’t as cool and efficient as Apple (indeed, the world) expected. The latter has been noted by many in the blogosphere – how a 65nm die shrink has netted little if any gain in power efficiency, even when comparing the old Pentium M to the Core Solo. That seems to indicate that much of the space gained from going to 65nm was taken up by architectural changes – i.e. necessary improvements in gaming and multimedia – which in turn uses more electricity.
Granted, the Yonah is more capable than the Pentium M, and thus you can look at the increased computing power as sort of an efficiency improvement, theoretically. However, using the dual core G4 could have achieved that over the last PB too (and the DC G4 uses LESS power than it’s predecessor). Plus, the reality of bigger batteries in MBP netting no improvement in computing time, and really high temperatures, aren’t theoretical at all.
Unless you do this, of course
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”shut eye” style=”border:0;” /> Then it’s all good.
Ah, the Odyssey67 who is married to the PPC is back in full force…
Interesting arguments.
Tell us what you think about this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=zmaAZwkhYeQ
Odyssey67:
I might have gotten lucky with this one… I did reset the PMU first thing, since I heard it fixed overheating problems. I applied the latest firmware patch first thing too, like people are pretty much supposed to do.
I also read that Apple is replacing MacBook Pros that run really hot, so that might be a better idea than tearing your MacBook Pro apart to re-apply heat sink compound (voiding your warranty).
I’ve used 867Mhz and 1.5Ghz PowerBook 12″ models, and they were both super hot and had super loud fans that came on frequenty.
I’ve had PowerBook 15″ 1.25, 1.5 and 1.67Ghz models, and they were all pretty toasty and the fans came on quickly when I booted up a game, but the fans are much quieter than the 12″ PowerBook fans.
I’ve had a 1.67Ghz 17″ PowerBook, and it was the quietest and coolest of the PowerBooks I’ve had, but not as good as the new MacBook Pro.
“Too Hot!”
Yeah, I’ve done a similar test in a Mac store. The Intel-based Macs boot so much faster than the “old” G5 ones – largely due to EFI I’m pretty sure.
My MacBook Pro boots into Windows via Boot Camp faster than my Athlon64 box at home boots into Windows. LOL
Odyssey67:
check this link out:
http://barefeats.com/pbcd.html
It might help you feel better about Apple going with Intel.
@ Nick:
Thanks for the link. That was a great shootout. Amazingly, the MBP running on Solo outperformed the 2GHz PBk on all but Rosetta-dependent tasks and iTunes.
That bodes very well for the iBook, err, MacBook cominf out with Solo, as well as the mini.
oops, that’s supposed to be “coming”…
Yeah, I like how the 2Ghz Core Solo scored 312 in the CPU render, whereas the 2Ghz G4 scored 182. That’s pure floating point performance – hard drive speed, graphics card and memory performance are not very important.
I did some testing with my home computer, looked up results at http://www.xlr8yourmac.com and http://www.barefeats.com, and here you go:
Cinebench v95 CPU render scores:
PowerBook G4 1.5Ghz ———————- 135
PowerBook G4 2.0Ghz ———————- 182
iMac G5 2.1Ghz ————————— 294
2Ghz Core Solo MacBook Pro —————- 312
2.6Ghz Athlon64 (Win XP 32 bit) ————- 385
2.7Ghz G5 ——————————- 385
2.6Ghz Athlon64 (Win XP 64 bit) ————- 423
Dual 2Ghz G5 —————————- 521
1.83Ghz MacBook Pro Core Duo ————- 535
2.0Ghz MacBook Pro (Windows XP) ———– 528
2.0Ghz MacBook Pro (Mac OS X) ————- 575
Dual 2.2Ghz Athlon 64 (WinXP 32 bit) ——— 585
Dual-core Athlon64 2.2Ghz (winXP 32 bit) —– 600
2.16Ghz MacBook Pro (Mac OS X) ————- 610
Dual 2.7Ghz G5 ————————— 721
Dual 2.2Ghz Athlon 64 (WinXP 64 bit) ——— 757
Quad-core 2.5Ghz G5 ——————— 1105
Quad-core 2.2GHz Opteron (Win XP 64 bit) —- 1182
Anyways, you can see that Mac OS X easily outperforms Windows XP on the same hardware, so this is not a Windows-biased test. You can also see that the Intel Core Solo beats the G4 by about 70% per Mhz, and that the Intel Core Duo beats the dual G5 by about 10% per Mhz.
I especially like how the Core Duo beats the Athlon64 X2 at the same Mhz.
Rainy Day and Odyssey67:
You’re welcome. Thank you expressing your appreciation. It’s nice to know that the effort doesn’t just drop into a cyber blackhole.
Gibbering monkeys on meth could slather thermal goop better than the uninspired workers hired by Apple. Let’s get some motivated employees hired ASAP or replace them with more accommodating precision robots. Maybe the shift that produces the fewest mistakes gets a free Macbook Pro and a job. Damn, I’m a mean bastard, expecting folks to do it right the first time or at least to do it better the next time.
Dammit all, yet again you’ve missed the fact that the Mac Book Pro is a combined PC and Burger Grill. No PC can do that!
This is a Feature, Not a Problem.
Would you like Fries with that Mac?
Is it coincidence that George Foreman brings out the “G5” grill, and Apple responds with the Mac Book Pro Intel based grill, immediately rendering that old G5 based grilling system obsolete?
I for one don’t think so…
Yes, the Steve Jobs Grill may be more expensive, but it does run Mac OS X. The George Foreman Grill can’t do that!
Furthermore, unless you buy and use the extra cleaning pads, the George Foreman Grill will give you some nasty viruses.
The Steve Jobs Grill is immune to these problems!
Score another one for the Steve Jobs Grill!
Also the Steve Jobs Grill is much easier to use and comes with many more bundled applications.
Once George Foreman customers understand this they will immediately switch grills and never look back! The Steve Jobs Grill is poised for some Great Growth Opportunities!
Also the design of the Steve Jobs Grill is much better. It is slimmer, sleeker and runs on batteries, and includes the same safety power connector found on Japanese deep friers and tea kettles. These features alone are worth the price difference
Who wouldn’t want a Steve Jobs Grill instead?
The Steve Jobs Grill amazing light weight makes it easy to move between your Mother’s basement and the Star Trek conventions. Score one more for the Steve Jobs Grill.