From personal experience, I am aware that heat issues on laptops are often caused by a poor application of the stock thermal paste (also known as “thermal interface material” or TIM), provided that the cooling system is functioning. The reason is simple: the thermal paste – as the name suggests – is supposed to facilitate the transfer of the heat from the CPU/GPU to the heatsink. This only works efficiently, though, if a very thin layer of thermal paste is applied between CPU and heatsink in such a way that minimises the chance of creating “air bubbles” (air has a bad thermal conductivity). So the problem is that very often, the stock thermal paste is applied in factories in ridiculously large amounts, that often spread out of the die of the CPU and that most certainly achieve the opposite effect by slowing down, instead of facilitating, the transfer of heat from CPU to heatsink. Sadly, Apple doesn’t seem to be any different from other manufacturers from this point of view, despite the higher prices and the generally wonderful design and construction quality. Plus, often the stock thermal paste used by some manufacturers is quite cheap, and not based on some very efficient thermally conductive material.
This is a very common problem, and one that is actually fairly easily rectified if you have even a modicum of understanding of how a screwdriver works. I’m planning on replacing the stick thermal paste on my XPS 13 9370 just to see if it will make a difference. I run Linux on it – KDE Neon – and Linux is slightly less efficient at decoding video than Windows, causing more fan spin-up. There’s a very real chance replacing the thermal paste will give me just enough thermal headroom to address this issue.
Macs are not designed to be opened.
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….generally wonderful design and construction quality.
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Maybe 10 years ago 😉
Anyone have a tipp for a PC manufacturer that makes nicer laptops than Apple? And don’t have CABC :’-)
Almost all of them make nicer laptops than Apple. Almost all of them also make cheap/crappy laptops. Laptops aren’t good or bad based on the manufacturer, they are good or bad based on the target-market and sales-price.
The reason that many people think that Apple laptops are nice is because Apple doesn’t make budget laptops for the entry market. Apple limits itself to nice, expensive laptops. Most other manufacturers don’t limit themselves like that and make something for everybody
At home I’ve got an Acer Aspire V Nitro, which has been pretty decent. The model I’ve got was able to accept a 2.5″ drive in addition to m.2, and it’s relatively easy to get into to upgrade RAM or storage. I did have to replace the screen though after about 3 years, but it was easily available on aliexpress.com and way, way cheaper than repairing a MacBook Pro butterfly keyboard. 😉
At work we’ve been experimenting with System76, Dell, and Lenovo ThinkPad laptops. Dell’s lost me as a customer due to their extreme incompetence around ordering and shipping (you’d think these would be something they could get right by now).
All of these laptop have SIGNIFICANTLY better keyboards than Apple. Unfortunately, they all have significantly worse trackpads, too. I use a wireless mouse with mine.
If I were to buy a Windows laptop, I’d probably get a Lenovo Carbon X1.
Some years ago I did the same to fix what seems to be a slight engineering error on my 2010 Sony Vaio Z (VPCZ12), replacing thermal paste and adding a copper shim to make for the gap between the GPU chip and the heatsink. It seemed to work for a while, then it went back to overheating and shutting down itself. 🙁 Now my 2015 MBP also overheats and often throttles to an unusable 0.8 GHz, especially with an external monitor connected, but apart from opening it and cleaning it from dust, I still don’t feel like doing heavier work…
winter skies,
Yep, it’s a thermal problem. I think dust is a very likely culprit based on what you say. Both laptops and desktops can accumulate tons of it. Do you have a high PSI air compressor (or a compressed air can)? It’s hard to get all the dust off without physically wiping it off, but with any luck you can blow the large blockages out without opening it. It’s always surprising how much there is. Just make sure to do it outside, you don’t want that dust going back into the air. You should take care of it soon though, all the computers I’ve had run hot eventually failed from it.
Unfortunately the high end MBPs don’t have any thermal headroom, they will thermal throttle under normal operations. I don’t have access to a MBP to try this at the moment, but I’ve read that apple’s fan profile favor’s lower fan speeds to reduce noise over higher performance. Have you tried installing another controller and turning up the fan? Is the fan even working correctly for that matter?