Interested in trying this on my MacBook however can anyone share what program that is showing the temperature of the cpu in the top status bar? I want to see my current temps vs after the upgrade.
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Some photos of my thermal mod of a 2015 retina MacBook
- Thread starter Ganoninc
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I use TG Pro, which is on sale for $10: https://www.tunabellysoftware.com/tgpro/
There are also open source alternatives. This one seems good: https://github.com/exelban/stats
There are also open source alternatives. This one seems good: https://github.com/exelban/stats
Yes, using TG Pro also. Worth every penny. Also using Intel Power Gadget. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/tool/power-gadget.html
Today I installed Stable Diffusion and ran a bunch of prompts for hours. So fun. This is about as full throttle as you can get. CPU temps never got above 70c and the i7 pegged at 1.9ghz per core sustained at 96-98% utilization. I feel like maybe the Macbooks confused a bit by this thermal mod as I feel like I should get another 20c outta the deal and maybe like 2.2-2.3ghz, but nope... just wouldn't go higher.
Today I installed Stable Diffusion and ran a bunch of prompts for hours. So fun. This is about as full throttle as you can get. CPU temps never got above 70c and the i7 pegged at 1.9ghz per core sustained at 96-98% utilization. I feel like maybe the Macbooks confused a bit by this thermal mod as I feel like I should get another 20c outta the deal and maybe like 2.2-2.3ghz, but nope... just wouldn't go higher.
Thanks everyone for the info, much appreciated. I will check out TG Pro on my Mac when I get home this evening.
For 2016/2017 model I ordered 20x20mm same thickness copper shims. Will cut it to fit. Two 15x15 (one cut) don't want to stay in place and move with the flow of thermal paste while the heatsink is tightened.
Do You guys remove black thermal sticker from the bottom of the logicboard compartment so blue thermal pads touch bare aluminum or leave it in place?
Do You guys remove black thermal sticker from the bottom of the logicboard compartment so blue thermal pads touch bare aluminum or leave it in place?
Hello guys! Today i did the job and all goes perfect.
The problem is that now, my trackpad (which is working perfectly fine in a software manner) is no clicking. The is no clicking in any ways, any of the options in Trackpad options looks that works to fix the problem.
The weird here is that force touch function is working without problem but again, no click sound.
Any of you have a solution? Again, the trackpad is working perfectly but with no clicking sound and feel.
The problem is that now, my trackpad (which is working perfectly fine in a software manner) is no clicking. The is no clicking in any ways, any of the options in Trackpad options looks that works to fix the problem.
The weird here is that force touch function is working without problem but again, no click sound.
Any of you have a solution? Again, the trackpad is working perfectly but with no clicking sound and feel.
Saw this post here in November, I ordered all the parts and decided what the heck. Fast forward to today and I just completed the mod on my 2017rMB and I am shocked. As someone who also saw linus's video that involved the macbook air mod I thought to myself there must be something for this machine, low and behold
Cinebench results are a big change from pre mod, I don't surpass 80c
4k video used to slap this machine but now my cpu sits at around 50c far from the 80-90c it used to
I recorded majority of the process too and will eventually post to youtube in hopes of bringing in a bigger audience and keeping these machines running for longer. of course with full accreditation to OP
Big thank you for the step by step process, I'm no stranger to the insides of macs but having a well detailed guide to follow is a must.
Thank you for prolonging the life of my machine, it's a ticking time bomb but i've definitely added time to that
Cinebench results are a big change from pre mod, I don't surpass 80c
4k video used to slap this machine but now my cpu sits at around 50c far from the 80-90c it used to
I recorded majority of the process too and will eventually post to youtube in hopes of bringing in a bigger audience and keeping these machines running for longer. of course with full accreditation to OP
Big thank you for the step by step process, I'm no stranger to the insides of macs but having a well detailed guide to follow is a must.
Thank you for prolonging the life of my machine, it's a ticking time bomb but i've definitely added time to that
I would go back inside the machine and make sure everything is plugged in, take extra care with the long cable you unplug first as thats responsible for the trackpad and keyboard function
Yeah, I opened again, removed the thermal pad and closed again and nothing.. And well, at least the trackpad worked fine except for the clicking feel so lets put the thermal pads again, close again and that's all.
The first time after that the trackpad didn't work so I closed the laptop and let it there doing nothing. After a while I opened the laptop again and magically the trackpad began to work perfectly, clicking feeling came back.
Was a weird momento but well, the operation finished with a happy end.
For anyone that is interested, I finally got around to editing and uploading the video.
Link:
Link:
Hey guys just thought i'd add my experience doing this mod.
Always loved the 12inch Macbook and had a 2017 i5/8gb/512 back at release. sold it in anticipation of an Amber Lake that never came so went back to other models. Managed to get a used i5/16gb/512 recently for cheap enough that I was willing to take a risk upgrading it. I'm pretty familiar with the pre butterfly macs internally so thought shouldn't be too hard.
Well I managed to complete the mod but not without tearing the display ribbon upon opening so had to get a replacement. So for n00bies like me opening the 12 inch be careful with that. After replacing the cable I managed to get everything going but now can't seem to get my speakers to work. Think either the audio cable is buggered or I just can't get the cable to sit in the connecter well enough. Have ordered a new one so hopefully will fix
Otherwise, can't recommend this mod enough. i use the Macbook 12 as a travel computer (I have an M1 Pro/32gb 14 inch as my main machine) and for my non intensive workloads which involves a lot of simple productivity stuff; ~30 chrome tabs, teams, slack, notion, etc the changes are very noticeable.
temps used to hit 100C when multitasking and jumping around a lot on the desktop. Now I never get above 70/75C. Things are also just that little bit smoother. Let's say 5-10% better, as I used to average about 2.5Ghz in intel gadget in normal workflow, now I seem to get about 2.6. It also seems to be a bit smoother on the UI, potentially because it's just boosting more freely. Let's just say I don't find myself so irritated waiting sometimes and now feel comfortable daily driving this thing and keeping my 14 inch for the heavy duty stuff.
Lastly, I've seen a few mentions of the laptop getting much hotter on the bottom which is true, it does and I was concerned about it. But only when costantly working cpu intensively I find. Otherwise, it's definitely not something to be concerned about in terms of discomfort. Very manageble.
Overall, be careful (don't be like me), and give it a go if you're thinking about it. Highly recommended and thanks to OP
Always loved the 12inch Macbook and had a 2017 i5/8gb/512 back at release. sold it in anticipation of an Amber Lake that never came so went back to other models. Managed to get a used i5/16gb/512 recently for cheap enough that I was willing to take a risk upgrading it. I'm pretty familiar with the pre butterfly macs internally so thought shouldn't be too hard.
Well I managed to complete the mod but not without tearing the display ribbon upon opening so had to get a replacement. So for n00bies like me opening the 12 inch be careful with that. After replacing the cable I managed to get everything going but now can't seem to get my speakers to work. Think either the audio cable is buggered or I just can't get the cable to sit in the connecter well enough. Have ordered a new one so hopefully will fix
Otherwise, can't recommend this mod enough. i use the Macbook 12 as a travel computer (I have an M1 Pro/32gb 14 inch as my main machine) and for my non intensive workloads which involves a lot of simple productivity stuff; ~30 chrome tabs, teams, slack, notion, etc the changes are very noticeable.
temps used to hit 100C when multitasking and jumping around a lot on the desktop. Now I never get above 70/75C. Things are also just that little bit smoother. Let's say 5-10% better, as I used to average about 2.5Ghz in intel gadget in normal workflow, now I seem to get about 2.6. It also seems to be a bit smoother on the UI, potentially because it's just boosting more freely. Let's just say I don't find myself so irritated waiting sometimes and now feel comfortable daily driving this thing and keeping my 14 inch for the heavy duty stuff.
Lastly, I've seen a few mentions of the laptop getting much hotter on the bottom which is true, it does and I was concerned about it. But only when costantly working cpu intensively I find. Otherwise, it's definitely not something to be concerned about in terms of discomfort. Very manageble.
Overall, be careful (don't be like me), and give it a go if you're thinking about it. Highly recommended and thanks to OP
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For information, I was in Uluru, Australia, a couple of weeks ago, and I installed an update of macOS Sierra. The MacBook was super hot, and ran very slow, but it completed the update.
I think that mod really makes the motherboard last longer.
Regarding the keys, I do have issues sometimes, but I learnt how to remove them, so now I just clean them when needed. This keyboard is not as complicated as everybody was saying. No need for a complete keyboard replacement.
Eventually, now, my only unsolved issue is the trackpad. The click is really too weak compared to what it used to be. I don't know how to fix it, and I won't buy a new one because it's still working.
Could the heat be bad for the trackpad?
I think that mod really makes the motherboard last longer.
Regarding the keys, I do have issues sometimes, but I learnt how to remove them, so now I just clean them when needed. This keyboard is not as complicated as everybody was saying. No need for a complete keyboard replacement.
Eventually, now, my only unsolved issue is the trackpad. The click is really too weak compared to what it used to be. I don't know how to fix it, and I won't buy a new one because it's still working.
Could the heat be bad for the trackpad?
Maybe my experience can help you but sincerily, i don't know how it was fixed
Maybe I need to unplug the battery for while to "reset" the trackpad. I'll try that.
Alright, the MacBook stayed unpowered for a couple of hours, and the trackpad is still weak, so it was not about that.
It's funny to think that one of the purposes of this non-mechanical trackpad was to be more reliable than the old ones.
It's funny to think that one of the purposes of this non-mechanical trackpad was to be more reliable than the old ones.
Hey guys, I just completed this mod.
I had a 2017 i5/16GB/256GB 12-inch Macbook.
I use Honeywell 7950 between CPU core, copper shim, and heat sink. As far as I know, this thermal pad is almost as good as liquid metal and it is not conduct electricity. The best part is this thermal pad is design for industry, so it will last for a very long time, 10 years I will say. Meanwhile, it does not have pump out issue.
You guys can get it from ebay, ebuy7, or Aliexpress.
Now, the good part is CPU temperature drop from 70-80 ℃ to 50-60 ℃ during the peak load. I am no longer worry about CPU. The bad part is battery temperature went up to 40 ℃ which may degrade the battery life much faster.
In the end, I am happy about this mod, I give 5/5 to this mod. I will recommend to every one who has a 12-inch Macbook.
I had a 2017 i5/16GB/256GB 12-inch Macbook.
I use Honeywell 7950 between CPU core, copper shim, and heat sink. As far as I know, this thermal pad is almost as good as liquid metal and it is not conduct electricity. The best part is this thermal pad is design for industry, so it will last for a very long time, 10 years I will say. Meanwhile, it does not have pump out issue.
You guys can get it from ebay, ebuy7, or Aliexpress.
Now, the good part is CPU temperature drop from 70-80 ℃ to 50-60 ℃ during the peak load. I am no longer worry about CPU. The bad part is battery temperature went up to 40 ℃ which may degrade the battery life much faster.
In the end, I am happy about this mod, I give 5/5 to this mod. I will recommend to every one who has a 12-inch Macbook.
Really cool mod. Remember these models were tricky to get flawless through post-repair diagnosis due to the high chance of another disassembly. The trackpad and grounding tape were the main issues. But also one of the Macs with the greatest benefit from less CPU throttling. Take your time during the work.
I've got myself some PTM7950 as well (they have it on amazon!) and I'm excited to try this out. I should be able to source copper sheet of the right thickness locally so as not to wait 1 month+ for shipping from china.
I still gotta figure out how thick the 7950 will be once applied, I guess it's 0.2mm per spec, assuming that paste ends up around 0.1mm thick and it's going to go on both sides, then we would only need a 0.1mm copper shim there... might be able to get away with an 0.2mm shim.
The question then becomes, should I *also* do copper shim/7950 for the interface between the heatsink and the outer case... 🤔🤔🤔
I still gotta figure out how thick the 7950 will be once applied, I guess it's 0.2mm per spec, assuming that paste ends up around 0.1mm thick and it's going to go on both sides, then we would only need a 0.1mm copper shim there... might be able to get away with an 0.2mm shim.
The question then becomes, should I *also* do copper shim/7950 for the interface between the heatsink and the outer case... 🤔🤔🤔
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I just did the mod today and am typing from the MacBook here now. It's great, now the CPU won't throttle. I have the i7 in mine and it happily boosts to 3+ghz leading to a fairly responsive experience.
I have some of this copper shim stock in my house, I measured it to be 0.15mm thick, and I figured the PTM7950 thermal pads I got are going to compress a bit, so I put a piece of this thin copper and the PTM7950 phase change thermal pad on both sides, this sandwich going between dies and heatsink. Yes there is about 0.5mm of gap between that heatsink and the case bottom. So in lieu of trying to obtain thermal pads, I just put TG-PP10 thermal putty on the heatsink instead. I also went ahead and scraped off the black film layer on the inside of the aluminum case where the heatsink goes, I figured that would make me feel better about it having good thermal contact.
I did notice that running Cinebench sees it stick to 2.3ghz and stay cool at 60C but when it boosts to 3ghz it readily exceeds this wattage and temperature. Apple has clearly tuned the sustained load behavior in a more hardcoded way, but luckily the burst behavior isn't really capped, so doing this mod actually gives improved behavior. A more responsive computer is what this needs to be, otherwise I would simply be going to pick up my iPad or M1 Max MBP instead. I'll be bringing this little guy on the road with me more often, now that it isn't gonna be slowly frying itself to death.
Yeah I guess since batteries are also glued to what has now become quite a bit more of a heatsink, this may cause greater battery degradation but it's still definitely worth it.
All that said, the disassembly is not for the faint of heart. It's about on par with the more difficult of the iPhone repairs you can do. Basically, it's not bad because you do not have to deal with removing any glue. However there are a lot of ribbon cables and opening the snaps is also nerve wracking as it requires a lot of force and I was very worried about warping the thin aluminum case. I did not remove the grounding tape since I wasn't sure if it was important, and luckily it seemed to have re-adhered okay. Taking it slow is definitely a good idea.
Took me like 2.5 hours to do but probably a good half of that was scraping off the stupid black film layer. I don't think you should bother to do that like I did.
Edit/update:
Trying to bring this up for development work was... about what I expected.
- it was syncing iCloud for about a whole day before I gave up and turned off iCloud Drive. Similar for spotlight.. now spotlight won't find half my apps even though I did not exclude /Applications from scanning. Whatever.
- since it was syncing iCloud it was using CPU incessantly and the bottom of the MacBook gets to be around 55C I estimate. It's just hotter than it should be and my thighs were not enjoying it. Still a worthwhile tradeoff but it's more of an issue than I thought it would be. gotta put it on your lap so the hot spot is between your legs. You can't actually put it on one leg or hold with one hand under there. you won't be able to keep that up if you're running something. Incidentally putting your hand or leg there lets you "measure" CPU load physically which is kind of neat actually.
- it's damn slow compared to my m1 max but also surprisingly snappy. it's really not a bad machine
- had to switch my unifi AP to 40mhz bandwidth channels on 5ghz for the wifi ac to work right. it kept connecting on 802.11n wifi and dropping off every few minutes which was making my ssh sessions impossible to use. Luckily I found this trick otherwise it might have been dead in the water due to this.
Overall not bad for web browsing (iPad is superior for that), really not bad for terminal work over ssh (iPad software has shortcomings there)
I have some of this copper shim stock in my house, I measured it to be 0.15mm thick, and I figured the PTM7950 thermal pads I got are going to compress a bit, so I put a piece of this thin copper and the PTM7950 phase change thermal pad on both sides, this sandwich going between dies and heatsink. Yes there is about 0.5mm of gap between that heatsink and the case bottom. So in lieu of trying to obtain thermal pads, I just put TG-PP10 thermal putty on the heatsink instead. I also went ahead and scraped off the black film layer on the inside of the aluminum case where the heatsink goes, I figured that would make me feel better about it having good thermal contact.
I did notice that running Cinebench sees it stick to 2.3ghz and stay cool at 60C but when it boosts to 3ghz it readily exceeds this wattage and temperature. Apple has clearly tuned the sustained load behavior in a more hardcoded way, but luckily the burst behavior isn't really capped, so doing this mod actually gives improved behavior. A more responsive computer is what this needs to be, otherwise I would simply be going to pick up my iPad or M1 Max MBP instead. I'll be bringing this little guy on the road with me more often, now that it isn't gonna be slowly frying itself to death.
Yeah I guess since batteries are also glued to what has now become quite a bit more of a heatsink, this may cause greater battery degradation but it's still definitely worth it.
All that said, the disassembly is not for the faint of heart. It's about on par with the more difficult of the iPhone repairs you can do. Basically, it's not bad because you do not have to deal with removing any glue. However there are a lot of ribbon cables and opening the snaps is also nerve wracking as it requires a lot of force and I was very worried about warping the thin aluminum case. I did not remove the grounding tape since I wasn't sure if it was important, and luckily it seemed to have re-adhered okay. Taking it slow is definitely a good idea.
Took me like 2.5 hours to do but probably a good half of that was scraping off the stupid black film layer. I don't think you should bother to do that like I did.
Edit/update:
Trying to bring this up for development work was... about what I expected.
- it was syncing iCloud for about a whole day before I gave up and turned off iCloud Drive. Similar for spotlight.. now spotlight won't find half my apps even though I did not exclude /Applications from scanning. Whatever.
- since it was syncing iCloud it was using CPU incessantly and the bottom of the MacBook gets to be around 55C I estimate. It's just hotter than it should be and my thighs were not enjoying it. Still a worthwhile tradeoff but it's more of an issue than I thought it would be. gotta put it on your lap so the hot spot is between your legs. You can't actually put it on one leg or hold with one hand under there. you won't be able to keep that up if you're running something. Incidentally putting your hand or leg there lets you "measure" CPU load physically which is kind of neat actually.
- it's damn slow compared to my m1 max but also surprisingly snappy. it's really not a bad machine
- had to switch my unifi AP to 40mhz bandwidth channels on 5ghz for the wifi ac to work right. it kept connecting on 802.11n wifi and dropping off every few minutes which was making my ssh sessions impossible to use. Luckily I found this trick otherwise it might have been dead in the water due to this.
Overall not bad for web browsing (iPad is superior for that), really not bad for terminal work over ssh (iPad software has shortcomings there)
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I did this mod today, on a 2017 i7 model. Used one and a third of the originally linked 0.3mm copper shims, and thermal paste between all surfaces. Works like a dream.
One surprising finding: the black surface dissolves with isopropyl alcohol. Underneath is a super thin plastic (?) film, with the consistency of a hologram, that can be scraped off with a plastic spudger, but not cleanly. I ended up leaving it.
One surprising finding: the black surface dissolves with isopropyl alcohol. Underneath is a super thin plastic (?) film, with the consistency of a hologram, that can be scraped off with a plastic spudger, but not cleanly. I ended up leaving it.
Hey All, thanks for this great post and the links for all the parts. Just picked up a 2017 MacBook 12" and I love it. It's really small and looks stunning. Hopefully with this mod I can extend the life a bit and push out some more performance. So I ordered from Ali and am now waiting. I do have one question, why are you using copper shims? Why not use new thermal paste and use a very 1.0 mm soft thermal pad without the shim?
I just exactly did that. I have a 2017 m3 MacBook 12", and have just put a 1.5mm thermal pad on the heatsink (it's maybe a tad too thick, 1.0mm would probably be better). Didn't remove the heatsink so no new thermal paste. This is the result: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/4252198 and cpu temp stayed around 70°C, max. 80°C.
Because the thermal conductivity of copper is 385-401 W/(m·K), the thermal conductivity of a thermal pad is 8 W.