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Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

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Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#171

Post by thrownaway2424 »

digitalsushi wrote: post #99

There is an alternate universe where every time he took his computer apart, he skipped the reflow heat stuff and just put it back together... and it worked identically for identical periods of time between failures. I'm not saying it's this universe, I'm just saying there is one out there.

I had the same thought after I reflowed the GPU from my iMac. It didn't work before, and it did work after, but it may simply be that dismounting and remounting the heat sink put enough pressure on the cracked solder ball to make it work again. I will never know, short of xray inspection, but it's been working fine for half a year now.

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#172

Post by ethbro »

pwnna wrote: post #140
mike-cardwell wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A T420 with no heat issues whatsoever. [edit] Not a great image but you can see where the vents are on the back and the left hand side on this image: https://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpIDoMt_OkYzjIF9E6... Doesn't matter how far I fold the screen back, the vents aren't blocked by it.

How did you get your T420 to have no heating issues? What processor/GPU combo do you have? I have a T420 and have major heating issues with it playing games. I've tried everything: thinkpad fan control that turns the fan up to 7000RPM, clearing everything out with compressed air, replacing the thermal paste.. After a few years of observations, I think the problem may lie in software.. It seems like when I'm playing g…

> I have a T420 and have major heating issues with it playing games.

In my experience, almost no consumer laptop is designed with a gaming thermal load in mind (aka heavy cpu + max gpu for extended periods of time). I'm not even sure it's possible in a conventional laptop case.

... I know this is completely useless advice, but don't do heavy gaming on a laptop without expecting problems. There are other form factors much better thermally suited.

tl;dr: mobility/thermal-tolerance/performance, pick two

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#173

Post by ics »

ortusdux wrote: post #162

I always recommend looking into having laptops covered through your insurance company. I have state farm, and my wife and I have our laptops under personal article policies. The coverage is better, broader, and cheaper that anything else I've seen. My wife recently got a surface pro 3 to use during her forest soils PhD, and I was adamant we get nice insurance if she was going to be using it in the field. Two years of…

Surely you mean SquareTrade, right?

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#174

Post by bluedino »

hoffer wrote: post #149

I too had a late 2011 MB Pro with over-heating issues that led to 3 bad GPU's over three years (only paid for one of the repairs). Just last month I parked my ass in my local Apple store and told them I wasn't leaving without a brand new replacement. It did not take very long for the store manager to cave and I walked out with a brand new 2014 MB Pro. They won't formally acknowledge that their is an inherent issue wi…

Isn't it so much the GPU being defective and not the laptop overheating?

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#175

Post by jamesaguilar »

Alupis wrote: post #134
Someone wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wondered that, too. I wonder whether he actually reflowed solder in the oven. Wikipedia gives a sample profile that heats to over 200 degrees Celsius for a minute or so. This uses around 170 degrees Celsius, which is used for preheating in the Wikipedia example. Also, a Google image search gives me reflow heats above 200 degrees for the 5 images I checked. Also "The speed holes worked: The boot chime rang. The scre…

Why do you doubt the temperature did not reflow the board? When I solder electronics, I'm usually somewhere between 500F to 650F, but that's so things get hot enough quickly enough to not burn. I don't doubt a slow bake at 340F would do the same thing... some online googling shows people doing reflows with toaster ovens in the same temperature range (340F-450F). It's likely the solder joints were not completely disco…

Right. And the reason why it keeps breaking? Well, the solder on the board might not have any flux left, so it might have trouble flowing properly. There could be a cold joint, etc.

If it fails again, one possible next step would be to grab a multimeter and test the resistance across each component on the board. If the resistance is infinite, that might be your problem component.

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#176

Post by freehunter »

pwnna wrote: post #140
mike-cardwell wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A T420 with no heat issues whatsoever. [edit] Not a great image but you can see where the vents are on the back and the left hand side on this image: https://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpIDoMt_OkYzjIF9E6... Doesn't matter how far I fold the screen back, the vents aren't blocked by it.

How did you get your T420 to have no heating issues? What processor/GPU combo do you have? I have a T420 and have major heating issues with it playing games. I've tried everything: thinkpad fan control that turns the fan up to 7000RPM, clearing everything out with compressed air, replacing the thermal paste.. After a few years of observations, I think the problem may lie in software.. It seems like when I'm playing g…

My wife uses my older T420 with a dual core i7 and an nvidia workstation GPU of some sort as a Sims 3/4 machine with Windows 8 and never has heat issues. I'm currently using a W530 with Red Hat 6 for work and it gets hot occasionally but never enough to feel more than mildly uncomfortable to the touch and certainly never enough to cause any short term problems. Granted, I only ever use it for running a few VMs, not for any games.

I wonder how many of these Macbook issues stem from popularity. If you look at any vendor's forums, you will find a bunch of posts about issues that a lot of people are having. They never make news, though, because how many people own an HP 5370-2wt20 laptop? A lot of people own HP laptops, but they don't have one model that makes up a large percentage of the laptop market. Macs, on the other hand, have a single (ish) model that makes up a large percentage of the laptop market. If there is an issue that affects 1% of HP 8209-c50mg buyers versus 1% of Macbook Pro buyers, only the Macbook numbers will be large enough to make news.

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#177

Post by tonyjackson »

I'll never understand those that insist on doing real work, or gaming, with a laptop. When dealing with a GPU, and especially one made by nvidia, you're battling with the laws of physics. Super hot things make other, nearby things, super hot. Even with proper cooling, nvidia chips overheat and die. Anyone that has had nvidia already knows this. They have a lifetime of a year or two, max.

Get a desktop already. At least then, when your fancy GPU has a meltdown, you can salvage things from the wreckage.

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#178

Post by 51Cards »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #36
mike-cardwell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Thinkpad has air vents on the left hand side, and also on the back. Except, the ones on the back aren't blocked like they are on Macbooks, because the Thinkpads design is based on what is sensible rather than on what will make the thinnest possible computer.

I don't know what model you have, but my old T61p with dedicated graphics had the same heating issues as my newer Macbook Pro.

Perhaps your unit? I have a T61p still in regular use here and it's never had a heat issue?

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#179

Post by Nitramp »

ortusdux wrote: post #162

I always recommend looking into having laptops covered through your insurance company. I have state farm, and my wife and I have our laptops under personal article policies. The coverage is better, broader, and cheaper that anything else I've seen. My wife recently got a surface pro 3 to use during her forest soils PhD, and I was adamant we get nice insurance if she was going to be using it in the field. Two years of…

Don't buy insurance for things that won't ruin you.

The insurer will calculate the risk of whatever happening, and obviously charge more than likelihood * cost.

So unless your risk is higher than average, you're losing money. And keep in mind that the average insurance taker probably has higher risk than the overall population.

Re: Why I Drilled Holes in My MacBook Pro and Put It in the Oven

#180

Post by jamesaguilar »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #155
gkop wrote: post #150

I've said it before and I'll say it again: while the "giant aluminum heatsink" idea generally works pretty well for the MacBooks and has for some time, it's not the same as if Apple were to really fix the thermal engineering in their machines: The machines could run downright cool if only Apple were to steal some ideas from Lenovo and Asus. As a side benefit, Apple could begin referring to the machines as "laptops" a…

To your second point, I doubt anyone will call anything a laptop ever again unless it runs at or below room temperature. There is a volume of evidence[0] that hot objects placed on the male genitals for an extended period of time can have a negative impact on fertility (and who knows what else, e.g. birth defects? Since it is likely damaging the semen). The liability issues are just too great. We're talking class act…

> ever again

I don't understand this claim. They are still calling hot devices laptops today. Do you mean that at some point in the future they will stop, and then they will never again call these devices laptops?

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