Apple's thermal paste strikes again!!

[mchank]

This is an interesting Japanese article where engineers critique the design and construction of the Macbook Air.

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080215/147484/
They have various pics and as you can see from this one:

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080215/147525/L_Image9.jpg

Apple stills insists on slathering it on like A1 on a cheap steak.

 

[iHerzeleid]

Yet the MBA runs cool.

 

[anarchron]

That could explain my occasional differential spike of 15C between the CPU and Heatsink.

 

[ayeying]

no spikes, pretty constant temps here even running VMware

 

[hotsauce]

Wirelessly posted (Apple Communication Device: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

Show me proof.

 

[nagromme]

I don't read Japanese, but I thought thermal paste was a solution used by lots of companies, not an Apple thing. What problems will the paste cause MacBook Air owners?

 

[Jiddick ExRex]

I don't read Japanese, but I thought thermal paste was a solution used by lots of companies, not an Apple thing. What problems will the paste cause MacBook Air owners?

It's not the thermal paste it's the way it's applied. The paste need a very thin layer in order to conduct the heat to the heatsinks, a concept apparantly unfamiliar to Apple who instructs their engineers to smear half a gallon on each chip.

 

[Zwhaler]

It's not the thermal paste it's the way it's applied. The paste need a very thin layer in order to conduct the heat to the heatsinks, a concept apparantly unfamiliar to Apple who instructs their engineers to smear half a gallon on each chip.

And unevenly, might I add.

 

[ddd269]

Hmm... If my MBA looks like that and worked fine, should I care?

Not!

If you have heat problems and your machine is doing all kinds of crazy stuff like the fan going max 24/7, then take it back to Apple and complain about their pasty mess. If not, don't worry about the small stuff. Just enjoy!

 

[parapup]

Hmm... If my MBA looks like that and worked fine, should I care?

FWIW a first hand experience - I recently replaced the dual core E4500 CPU on my desktop with a Quad core Q6600 and I had a chance at looking how the factory applied paste looked like - it wasn't nearly as messy as in the MBA picture.

But more importantly, for the replacement CPU I first applied a large quantity by mistake (extra pressure) and had to use that CPU for a day or two with the large amount of Arctic Silver paste until I got a new Arctic Silver tube.

After cleaning the old messy paste the idle CPU temperature went down by 5C right away. Per the strict instructions in the Arctic Silver manual - I had to apply a very thin line at the center of the CPU.

So yes it matters how much paste is applied and how it is applied but if it's working ok for you (i.e. you don't have a problem with the heat it generates) why bother?

 

[NC MacGuy]

What happens is; the thermal paste instead of transferring max. heat from source to heat sink acts as an insulator and traps some the heat around the heat source and non heat sink parts in-fact raising the temperature of the heat source (CPU in this case.)

The paste is used as a non-conductive method of drawing heat away from CPU and on to heatsink for dissipation via fan, chassis or natural convection.

 

[hansano]

bad heat transfer?

I have got a MBA last week. Mine tends to get very hot for about 5 minutes, the fan going up to 6200 RPM, while just surfing the web. It's not running hot constantly, but the following iStat reading makes me wonder, whether there is bad heat transfer from the CPU to the heatsink, maybe because the thermal paste was applied in a bad way? As you can see, the temperature for the CPU is very high (80 C, 176 F), though the temperature of the heatsink is 20 degrees lower (61 C, 142 F). Is this normal behaviour? Wasn't able to find other users temp-readings under load on the forums.
I tried resetting the SMC, but I dont think it worked out, because the system clock wasn't reset. Is it supposed to reset when performing SMC reset?
I really like the machine a lot, and dont like the idea of returning it already. As a matter of fact, I think also the battery isn't working as supposed. As you can see on the second screenshot, it says 1:30 remaining at 52 % charge, which IMHO is not much!
Regards, Jakob

 

[applemagic123]

It's called planned obsolescence!

Yep, the reason apple puts too much thermal paste on their chips is so that the system runs hotter than it should, causing logic board problems, and then they silence the entire issue.

Machines that are properly cooled last longer than ones that are running max hot all the time. There's no reason why apple's engineers don't know this. Apple basically designs their machines to last a couple years so you have to buy a new one.

There's 2 things you can do: 1.) use a program called SMCfancontrol which allows you to manually change the speed of the fan(s). And/or 2.) open up your system and reapply the thermal paste.

This is my only guess as to why apple doesn't seem to care about the issue at hand.

 

[JoeG4]

lol, japanese dude complaining about macboks, he should go check out them vaios

 

[iPhysicist]

Oh look how late it has become. Its 2010. I have to go now.

 

[mangrove]

It's not the thermal paste it's the way it's applied. The paste need a very thin layer in order to conduct the heat to the heatsinks, a concept apparantly unfamiliar to Apple who instructs their engineers to smear half a gallon on each chip.

Engineers, hell-they're Chinese workers paid like $30/day if they are lucky.

 

[L0s7man]

I think there is always beneficial to replace the thermal paste your laptop comes with. Arctic silver 5 anyone? Doesn't cost much and you can only benefit from it.

 

[peapody]

Oh look how late it has become. Its 2010. I have to go now.

At least he did a search.

I wonder if it is beneficial to replace the paste on the MBA. I have some laying around...

 

[gnasher729]

At least he did a search.

I wonder if it is beneficial to replace the paste on the MBA. I have some laying around...

Since this read was resurrected from 2008... If you still have some pasta lying around from 2008, you should really cook some fresh one. Whether you own an MBA or not.