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One person on SomethingAwful re-pasted their MBP (of unknown age), and saw reduced temperatures. They never said it was "overheating", Macs (and all Intel/AMD p

One person on SomethingAwful re-pasted their MBP (of unknown age), and saw reduced temperatures. They never said it was "overheating", Macs (and all Intel/AMD processors...) have thermal throttling so they can't "overheat", and it's normal for thermal paste to degrade within 2-3 years. It's also normal for laptops to get clogged with dust; I saw a huge reduction in temps on my MBP after I cleaned out the heatsinks, having taken the cover off and found them clogged. The person posted pictures of the original paste job from the factory. The amount of paste is not unreasonable, and what was instead evident was that the paste had dried out, which, again, is normal. That didn't stop people from overreacting and declaring a corporation (one famous for obsessively controlling its production chain) to be idiots. It did not have "10x the thermal paste needed." GamersNexus has solidly disproven the "too much paste causes overheating" myth. Excess paste just squirts out the sides, which is not a problem unless it is conductive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUWVVTY63hc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUWVVTY63hc What caused people to really lose their minds was a screengrab that was claimed (with no evidence whatsoever) to be from the repair manual showing wildly inappropriate levels of thermal paste being applied. The screenshot was never confirmed and given the source - again, SomethingAwful - it was almost certainly not the repair manual or factory instructions (the factory instructions wouldn't be in English, for starters...) https://www.techpowerup.com/11403/overheating-macbook-pro-mystery-solved https://www.techpowerup.com/11403/overheating-macbook-pro-my... Seems Pepperidge Farm's memory isn't as good as you thought, or you're pushing some sort of agenda.

watersb 4y ago
Useless anecdotes, but I have seen specific product lines with problematic thermals that was a result of incorrect application of thermal compound. I've seen way too much thermal paste on Mac laptop boards. Not just Apple; for a while I think 2007-2010, I was seeing a number of very inexpensive desktop computers with cooked thermal compound on AMD CPUs. These observations aren't worth much, but it doesn't surprise me if a new Mac has thermal issues in the field. Although my M1 MacBook Air is the best, coolest-running machine I have ever had.
miles 4y ago
> claimed (with no evidence whatsoever) to be from the repair manual showing wildly inappropriate levels of thermal paste being applied. ... the factory instructions wouldn't be in English The claim was for the service manual, not repair manual: http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=295925 http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=295925 Apple used to produce detailed service manuals in English: https://www.applerepairmanuals.com/the_manuals_are_in_here/iMac_flatpanel.pdf https://www.applerepairmanuals.com/the_manuals_are_in_here/i... More on the overheating issue: https://paulstamatiou.com/macbook-too-hot-to-handle-literally/ https://paulstamatiou.com/macbook-too-hot-to-handle-literall...
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  The commenter I responded to specifically claimed: > Remember that time about 15 years ago when MacBook Pros were all overheating and the root cause was Apple was adding 10x the amount of thermal paste needed at the factory? Many people saw the images from the repair (oh, I'm sorry, service) manuals and directly claimed that was how systems were being prepared in the factory. > Apple used to produce detailed service manuals in English: I'm aware of that. The factory does not use repair (or "service") manuals, and they would not be written in English. > More on the overheating issue That post does not show a Macbook Pro, does not show over-application of thermal paste from the factory, and does not contain any evidence of impacted thermals. Further, it claims: "anything more is overkill and can hinder the cooling properties of the heatsink." Read this slowly: over-application of non-electrically-conducting thermal paste is not harmful. The heatsink clamp force is designed with the viscosity of the thermal paste in mind to generate the desired film thickness. It will just ooze out the sides. Someone who over-applies thermal paste, or uses thermal paste that is too viscous, might need to wait some period of time for the excess paste to migrate out. Until it does, thermals might be impacted a bit. It is well known in the OC'ing PC community that you need to wait a day or two for thermal readings to be meaningful.
  - miles 4y ago
    Apple admitted the service manual was theirs: https://gizmodo.com/thermal-greasy-apple-sics-lawyers-on-something-awful-171394 https://gizmodo.com/thermal-greasy-apple-sics-lawyers-on-som... "After a Something Awful denizen took apart his MacBook Pro and discovered that Apple had slathered on far too much thermal grease, he found that using a more modest amount dropped his MacBook Pro's temperatures by several degrees. Now the forum has recieved a threatening letter from Apple's legal staff, requesting a link to this image [pictured above] be removed because 'The Service Source manual for the MacBook Pro is Apple's intellectual property and is protected by U.S. copyright law.'" Like many others [1,2,3,4,5], I saw a lot of these MacBook Pro overheating issues resolved by removing the profusion of thermal paste and replacing it with a sane amount of Arctic Silver. [1] https://www.teamfortress.tv/8399/macbook-pros-and-overheating-fix-success https://www.teamfortress.tv/8399/macbook-pros-and-overheatin... "But what really fixed everything, was replacing the factory thermal paste with my own application of Arctic mx-4. My core temps are now 15-20 degrees celsius cooler. No joke [TL;DR]Apple did a really bad job of applying the thermal paste on my 2011 Macbook Pro. So bad that the excess of paste around the diodes were causing overheating. I cleaned up their shitty job and put on Arctic Mx-4 and now my fps is higher than it ever was. Here are pictures of what I found. This is embarrassing because it makes Apple look pretty bad." [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2xfzzi/if_you_havent_already_changed_your_thermal_paste/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2xfzzi/if_you_havent... "I own a Late 2008 Macbook unibody, and lately the temps of the macbook were insane, until today. I was reading up on how Apple applies way to much thermal paste from the factory and boy were they right. I got around to opening the case and pulled the logic board earlier today. Looked at the thermal paste and it just seemed like they put it there. No real care for it working or not. Here: http://imgur.com/9z0cZwU http://imgur.com/9z0cZwU Anyways, I cleaned up the thermal paste, and reapplied Arctic Silver 5. It made a huge difference! Temp at Idle before were roughly 55-60 degrees celsius. Temp at Idle after are at 40 degrees celsius." [3] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/its-official-macbooks-have-bad-thermal-paste-applied.202247/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/its-official-macbooks-h... "It's official: Macbooks have bad thermal paste applied" [4] https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=95&t=496198 https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=95&t=496... "Early Macbook Pro - Overheating, too much thermal paste!" [5] https://free-info-pages.com/my2011macbookpro/replacing-thermal-paste-on-the-cpu-and-gpu.html https://free-info-pages.com/my2011macbookpro/replacing-therm... "Why reapply thermal paste? Too much paste reduces the rate at which the CPU transfers heat to the heatsink. Subsequently, temperatures (both idle and load) increase. You can see the gobs that were used on my 15″ MacBook Pro here, on both the i7 2.2 Ghz CPU and the AMD 6750m GPU, as well as the heatsink"
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

watersb 4y ago

Useless anecdotes, but I have seen specific product lines with problematic thermals that was a result of incorrect application of thermal compound. I've seen way too much thermal paste on Mac laptop boards. Not just Apple; for a while I think 2007-2010, I was seeing a number of very inexpensive desktop computers with cooked thermal compound on AMD CPUs. These observations aren't worth much, but it doesn't surprise me if a new Mac has thermal issues in the field. Although my M1 MacBook Air is the best, coolest-running machine I have ever had.

miles 4y ago

> claimed (with no evidence whatsoever) to be from the repair manual showing wildly inappropriate levels of thermal paste being applied. ... the factory instructions wouldn't be in English The claim was for the service manual, not repair manual: http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=295925 http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=295925 Apple used to produce detailed service manuals in English: https://www.applerepairmanuals.com/the_manuals_are_in_here/iMac_flatpanel.pdf https://www.applerepairmanuals.com/the_manuals_are_in_here/i... More on the overheating issue: https://paulstamatiou.com/macbook-too-hot-to-handle-literally/ https://paulstamatiou.com/macbook-too-hot-to-handle-literall...

KennyBlanken 4y ago
The commenter I responded to specifically claimed: > Remember that time about 15 years ago when MacBook Pros were all overheating and the root cause was Apple was adding 10x the amount of thermal paste needed at the factory? Many people saw the images from the repair (oh, I'm sorry, service) manuals and directly claimed that was how systems were being prepared in the factory. > Apple used to produce detailed service manuals in English: I'm aware of that. The factory does not use repair (or "service") manuals, and they would not be written in English. > More on the overheating issue That post does not show a Macbook Pro, does not show over-application of thermal paste from the factory, and does not contain any evidence of impacted thermals. Further, it claims: "anything more is overkill and can hinder the cooling properties of the heatsink." Read this slowly: over-application of non-electrically-conducting thermal paste is not harmful. The heatsink clamp force is designed with the viscosity of the thermal paste in mind to generate the desired film thickness. It will just ooze out the sides. Someone who over-applies thermal paste, or uses thermal paste that is too viscous, might need to wait some period of time for the excess paste to migrate out. Until it does, thermals might be impacted a bit. It is well known in the OC'ing PC community that you need to wait a day or two for thermal readings to be meaningful.
- miles 4y ago
  Apple admitted the service manual was theirs: https://gizmodo.com/thermal-greasy-apple-sics-lawyers-on-something-awful-171394 https://gizmodo.com/thermal-greasy-apple-sics-lawyers-on-som... "After a Something Awful denizen took apart his MacBook Pro and discovered that Apple had slathered on far too much thermal grease, he found that using a more modest amount dropped his MacBook Pro's temperatures by several degrees. Now the forum has recieved a threatening letter from Apple's legal staff, requesting a link to this image [pictured above] be removed because 'The Service Source manual for the MacBook Pro is Apple's intellectual property and is protected by U.S. copyright law.'" Like many others [1,2,3,4,5], I saw a lot of these MacBook Pro overheating issues resolved by removing the profusion of thermal paste and replacing it with a sane amount of Arctic Silver. [1] https://www.teamfortress.tv/8399/macbook-pros-and-overheating-fix-success https://www.teamfortress.tv/8399/macbook-pros-and-overheatin... "But what really fixed everything, was replacing the factory thermal paste with my own application of Arctic mx-4. My core temps are now 15-20 degrees celsius cooler. No joke [TL;DR]Apple did a really bad job of applying the thermal paste on my 2011 Macbook Pro. So bad that the excess of paste around the diodes were causing overheating. I cleaned up their shitty job and put on Arctic Mx-4 and now my fps is higher than it ever was. Here are pictures of what I found. This is embarrassing because it makes Apple look pretty bad." [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2xfzzi/if_you_havent_already_changed_your_thermal_paste/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2xfzzi/if_you_havent... "I own a Late 2008 Macbook unibody, and lately the temps of the macbook were insane, until today. I was reading up on how Apple applies way to much thermal paste from the factory and boy were they right. I got around to opening the case and pulled the logic board earlier today. Looked at the thermal paste and it just seemed like they put it there. No real care for it working or not. Here: http://imgur.com/9z0cZwU http://imgur.com/9z0cZwU Anyways, I cleaned up the thermal paste, and reapplied Arctic Silver 5. It made a huge difference! Temp at Idle before were roughly 55-60 degrees celsius. Temp at Idle after are at 40 degrees celsius." [3] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/its-official-macbooks-have-bad-thermal-paste-applied.202247/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/its-official-macbooks-h... "It's official: Macbooks have bad thermal paste applied" [4] https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=95&t=496198 https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=95&t=496... "Early Macbook Pro - Overheating, too much thermal paste!" [5] https://free-info-pages.com/my2011macbookpro/replacing-thermal-paste-on-the-cpu-and-gpu.html https://free-info-pages.com/my2011macbookpro/replacing-therm... "Why reapply thermal paste? Too much paste reduces the rate at which the CPU transfers heat to the heatsink. Subsequently, temperatures (both idle and load) increase. You can see the gobs that were used on my 15″ MacBook Pro here, on both the i7 2.2 Ghz CPU and the AMD 6750m GPU, as well as the heatsink"

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]