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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

#381

Post by dang »

gnarbarian wrote: post #210
Kurtz79 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want flame wars and care about upvotes/downvotes, there are plenty of other websites that will oblige. Here posts are supposed to add something to the discussion, not to "tease" or provoke a response.

When someone is blatantly exhibiting cognitive dissonance and reasoning has failed to sway them why not tease them a bit? They deserve it.

Even if that's true, it degrades the discourse, and the harm that does to the community trumps whatever "teasing" a given user may or may not deserve.

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

#382

Post by Dylan16807 »

sjwright wrote: post #65
pedalpete wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always hoped we'd move to a 0-100 scale where the scale is the temperatures people can relate to. 0 is cold, 100 is hot. How hot is 100? Same as 100 farenheit. We know that's hot. How cold is cold? Same as 0 celsius, we know that's cold. Of course, for science and cooking we need more dynamic range, which F and C work well for, but just for our daily experience, we need something new.

> I've always hoped we'd move to a 0-100 scale where the scale is the temperatures people can relate to. That's exactly what Celsius is, except it pegs 0 and 100 at non-arbitrary temperatures that are both scientifically precise and exceptionally relevant to everyday use.

100C is not important to everyday use. The fact that water boils when heated is important, but that could go anywhere from 70 to 200 and the change would barely get noticed.

Only 0C is relatable.

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

#383

Post by Omniusaspirer »

Nitramp wrote: post #348
Omniusaspirer wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except healthcare! You're required to buy it in the US now, but regardless...the hospitals would negotiate with insurance companies to 90% reduction)- you can't do that as an individual and will generally be stuck with the full price.

Health cost can very easily ruin you, even if you are quite well off. Even the possibly better prices negotiated by insurances for a serious illness are ruinous, and keep in mind you most likely won't have an income while you're seriously ill. Reduced cost in the US is just icing on top. So everyone definitely needs insurance for healthcare.

Ah, I think you misunderstood my point. I was specifically saying that getting health insurance was important- even if you have enough money to cover the cost generally. I mentioned insurance negotiation to emphasis that there were outside factors contributing to making it must-have.

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

#384

Post by gpvos »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #382
sjwright wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always hoped we'd move to a 0-100 scale where the scale is the temperatures people can relate to. That's exactly what Celsius is, except it pegs 0 and 100 at non-arbitrary temperatures that are both scientifically precise and exceptionally relevant to everyday use.

100C is not important to everyday use. The fact that water boils when heated is important, but that could go anywhere from 70 to 200 and the change would barely get noticed. Only 0C is relatable.

I don't know about you, but I boil water several times every day. I don't go outside to freezing temperatures every day. So this is all relative.

In fact, the heater I have at work has a nice digital temperature display, and it works nicely as an indication how long to wait, a bit like a charging/loading indication...

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

#385

Post by caycep »

puckmunch wrote: post #221
forrestthewoods wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the beef against discrete GPUs? Shouldn't the complaint be against cases not properly designed to house them? MacBooks also use, quite frustratingly so, damn near the slowest Nvidia mobile GPU you can buy! A newer model might actually run faster and cooler.

Discrete GPUs are soldered to boards using ball-gate arrays, a technique which was invented with lead solder balls in mind. The patent holder died before the EU mandated non-lead solders. The reason this matters is because the process by which those solder balls are made does not check for the presence of voids in them. At least 10% of these balls (regardless of composition) x-ray as having voids. GPUs go through the…

Yes, happened to my iMac. The good folks at the Genius Bar ended up replacing my entire computer w/ a Haswell one.

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

#386

Post by caycep »

puckmunch wrote: post #240
caycep wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tbh if this is the GPU, then this is prob an AMD and nVidia problem with using cheap solder on their daughterboards. I remember a rash of manufacturers, sony, asus, etc having this sort of issue. I'm kind of leery of discrete gpu's in laptops these days, esp when the Haswell on-board one is good enough for most of what I do.

The issue isn't that EU-mandated tin-alloy solders are cheap, it's that the solder balls aren't solid and non-lead solders are brittle. For components that don't undergo constant radical thermal shifts, this is a nonissue. For the only ball grid array-mounted component on the board (the GPU), this is a recipe for eventual failure. If the balls were factory tested for solidity this would become far less of an issue. I…

ah thanks. hard to me to find laymen articles on this (interest prompted on an ATI daughter card failure on an '09 iMac), so always interesting to find out more.

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

#387

Post by Dylan16807 »

gpvos wrote: post #384
Dylan16807 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100C is not important to everyday use. The fact that water boils when heated is important, but that could go anywhere from 70 to 200 and the change would barely get noticed. Only 0C is relatable.

I don't know about you, but I boil water several times every day. I don't go outside to freezing temperatures every day. So this is all relative. In fact, the heater I have at work has a nice digital temperature display, and it works nicely as an indication how long to wait, a bit like a charging/loading indication...

You boil water but you don't directly experience the temperature. All you see is a number that starts near zero and counts to 100. If water boiled at twice the temperature and had half the specific heat you wouldn't notice it.

Ice temperature, room temperature, body temperature, these are things you can directly experience and use as a high quality reference point. For the average person the boiling point of water is just 'hot', with a rough idea of how long it takes their particular heater to get there.

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

#388

Post by nikisweeting »

xenophonf wrote: post #342
pm wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh. I caught in the rain with my MacBook Air, and it worked fine for a day, but then wouldn't boot up at all and wouldn't hold charge. Three weeks later and rice and all that jazz and nothing. A couple months later, the charger showed a light, but it wouldn't boot and never lit up green. Six months from the first incident, and I randomly plugged it in and it booted instantly - I was ecstatic. It lasted two weeks bef…

One weird trick I remember from alt.hackers was using WD-40 to remove the water from soaked electronics, and then using high-purity isopropyl(?) alcohol to clean off the WD-40. (You'd want to remove the WD-40 since it would attract dust.)

Butane works well too, as long as you don't spray too much and cause condensation.

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

#389

Post by JeremyMorgan »

tonyjackson wrote: post #215
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not always possible. I can't speak to gaming, but I use a laptop for "real work" almost exclusively. My reason is because I not only write code at home, but often have meetings or go to a coffee shop to do a demo, etc. There's no way I'm carrying a box and monitor to all those places. What I trade for portability is performance and I replace the machine more. I just keep everything important stored online and when my…

real work = putting a load on the CPU, as in making the CPU do work. Your text editor does not count. In almost every instance of someone using a laptop for heavy CPU work, there is certainly a better, more practical reason to use a desktop. There is no need to sit at a coffee shop and make music, unless you do not have access to a studio or even your parent's garage. Video editing will not be done out in the field.…

I wouldn't downvote you, but real work for me is not my text editor, it's more like:

Compiling Importing and Exporting from a database Photoshop load tests.

Also, I run a web server and database on my machine. It's just a personal preference for me. I do have a mac mini at home that I use also for stuff like video editing.

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

#390

Post by ethbro »

pwnna wrote: post #241
ethbro wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

One thing is that the T420 is not sold as a consumer laptop. Under Windows, running AutoCAD/SolidWorks will drive temperature of 90+ degrees. This laptop is suppose to be for those kind of work. Furthermore, I'm not even running heavy games. I'm running things like FTL, or older 3D games like RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, or even sometimes just watching YouTube videos at 1080p. Regardless, thermal performance under heavy l…

I always thought it was odd no one made an external heatsink for laptops.

Apparently at one point (1983) someone thought it was possible: http://papers.sae.org/831101/

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