311–320 of 390 posts
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They did. The retina macbook pro has vents on the sides.
Not in time for the OP it would seem.
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Not in time for the OP it would seem.
I don't think he got the retina MacBook. I got the retina macbook and have never had heat issues or noise issues, the fans are super quiet. That said, I'm on my second battery-upper shell combo, and my third screen-hinge combo, so take it for what it's worth.
even Lenovo hinges suck now.
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Most (all?) component manufacturers use lead-free solder these days. Lead alloy solders are harder to come by since they're generally only used by hobbyists who find them easier to work with.
The board would bother me more.
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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.
Don't you have to isolate components from the circuit to check resistance? Otherwise, you're looking also the other components look like the other arm(s) of a parallel circuit.
They must have applied the heat transfer compound better than before, because with SMCFanControl running a bit higher than normal I haven't seen it go above 65 degrees C much now (admittedly I haven't done much heavy lifting with it yet) and feels cooler to the touch up the top.
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Is that part of the EU wide protection places like the UK, Germany, etc also get or something specific to your country?
Checking the Apple legalese [1] [2] it seems that we can "choose" between Apple One Year Limited Warranty and consumer law [3] which happens to be 6 (England and Wales) or 5 (Scotland) years. Can anyone clarify that for me please? My screen is flickering on certain gradient backgrounds but my 1 year warranty was over before I noticed it. [1] https://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/ [2] https://www.apple.com/legal/warran…
Apple has previously been in trouble for trying to avoid their statutory requirements here, eg http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/apple-f...
Lead free solder melts somewhere in the 200C-300C range. The solder we use melts at 230 degrees, and we reflow our PCBs in a Vapor Phase Soldering oven, which precisely limits the PCB temperature to 230C. Reflowing a PCB multiple times risks solder paste flux exhaustion, and also risks parts on the bottom side of the PCB falling off. Also, some parts are rated only for a very limited time at these temperatures, even when they are not running. Cooking these parts multiple times results in a dramatic reduction in lifespan.
It wouldn't surprise me if Apple did an x-ray inspection of every BGA part on every device they produce. This isn't common practice in the manufacturing lines that I know about, but I know that it's done in some cases. This would help catch cracks or other defects that would result in a reduced lifespan of the device, as well as detect show stopper issues.
There are a lot of other things that can fail on a PCB due to heat long before the solder will melt on a BGA pin. My guess that this was a mechanical failure inside the PCB. Either a through hole failure (such as a via disconnecting from a PCB trace, since the PCB is undoubtedly a very high layer count producing many fragile connections to long copper vias, which would expand vertically and in radius during temperature cycles) or an inner layer connection defect due to PCB or copper expansion. In either case, cycling the temperature by a large amount could temporarily fix the problem by creating a good enough connection for operation.
The bottom line is higher operating temperature always hurts mean time between failure. This is well studied, and many manufacturers will include plots of the operating temperature vs MTBF. Even though the laptop is working now, all of the components have been exposed to additional extreme additional thermal stress. Everything in the laptop is now much closer to failure. I don't expect the laptop will last much longer.
I'm not familiar with the guts of a MacBook Pro, but if there was a larger than normal gap between the chips and their heat sinks, then this would definitely explain the higher than normal system temperature. Even if the heat sink compound was able to bridge the gap with minimal air bubbles, it's still a pretty poor thermal conductor. This may have been a manufacturing defect that Apple could check for in the future. (Although I would hope they already run the devices for some length of time in their final enclosures while monitoring component temperatures)
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You can't guarantee 100% expense coverage during random events. Not everybody has thousands of dollars laying around in emergency fund for 12+ months. Committing to an insurance policy is simply a semi-guaranteed safety net. Have tons of cash? You should still probably look at a cheaper plan with a super high deductible.
I'd buy a cheaper computer before one so expensive it would be a fiscal catastrophe if I lost it. Buying a computer on credit is just as bad, might as well just set fire to money. In fact, my laptop is a $500 one I bought 2 years ago for travel use and didn't want to be too upset if it was lost/broken/stolen. My previous one was 10 years old and was a bit heavy :-)
You are not living in reality. Most of people live on credit and can't afford to pay for things in full.
Especially not $500 laptops "for travel".
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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.
This is awful advice! Losing a smartphone isn't going to ruin me, but it sure would piss me off to have to fork out £500 or whatever because it gets jacked. Similarly, someone could break into my house and clean it out. Not going to ruin me, but I'd rather not have to replace everything. The whole point of insurance is collective risk-spreading. Yes, this means that the majority (by value) of people with insurance wi…