Repasting a MacBook

https://christianselig.com/2025/07/repaste-macbook/

by speckx • 1 year ago

273 145 1 year ago

zdw2• 1 year ago

If you have any of the Air models which lack fans, there's a common hack of putting thermal pads between the CPU heatspreader and case, effectively turning the bottom case into a large heatsink, and giving your system a longer maximum performance before throttling.

The downsides is that this makes the bottom of the case quite hot on a place you can touch, but putting a plastic hardshell over the entire laptop deals with that, and also gives protection.

evanjrowley• 1 year ago

Thanks for that info. I've been interested in this hack and use plastic hard shells, but have been concerned that the plastic covering might prevent proper heat dissipation. It sounds like the tradeoff is worth it.

ianferrel2• 1 year ago

Making the bottom case a heatsink and then putting a plastic insulator around it seems to defeat the purpose of the whole attempt?

delusional• 1 year ago

I take him saying:

a longer maximum performance before throttling.

As implying that the purpose is to increase the thermal mass, not necessarily the dissipation. It should still be able to reach maximum performance for longer, it will then just also take longer to settle back down again.

manaskarekar2• 1 year ago

It's pulling the heat away from a concentrated region into a larger region.

Performance numbers reflect the optimization. I personally haven't done it for fear of affecting the battery lifespan (and possibly other components' lifespans.)

Really hard to resist due to its simplicity and noticeable improvements.

exe34• 1 year ago

Reminds me of the advice given for outdoor electronics: make sure your enclosure is absolutely watertight, and then drill a hole in the bottom to drain any residual buildup from humidity.

fph• 1 year ago

Not to mention paying premium for an extra-thin computer and then making it thicker with a plastic hardshell.

phoronixrly• 1 year ago

I hope apple engineers see this and cringe as hard as I do each time people have to come to such hacks to work around their infamous thermal design...

Take the product expected to have top-notch design with best in its class UX and discover you need to open it up and make a hardware modification and then cover its metal body with a cheap-looking plastic case...

If you run Asahi on it as well, at this point why even bother with Apple...

Retric• 1 year ago

Price discrimination, MacBooks aren’t their top of the line product so it’s intentionally less powerful than it could be.

zozbot234• 1 year ago

There's nothing nefarious about this. The whole point is to not make the bottom too hot when you rest your super thin laptop on top of your lap.

j45• 1 year ago

When resting on a fixed position on a desk,

You can also put cabinet fans under the macbook to draw air away.

AC Infinity ones are nice for that. Had to do that with an old i9 macbook pro that was completely incapable of cooling itself due to being too thin.

gruez2• 1 year ago

The author should benchmark a few months afterwards. A common problem with using "PC" thermal pastes (for lack of a better word) is that they experience more pump out than whatever they use for laptops, so a few months later the performance might end up worse than before he changed the paste.

LorenDB2• 1 year ago

Maybe thermal pads then? I use PTM7950 in my desktop.

arresin• 1 year ago

That’s pcm. A thermal pad is a thicker thing.

I use the same one in my pc and it’s awesome.

dsego• 1 year ago

I recently paid 60 euros to get my 14" m1 macbook cleaned, it was extremely dusty inside, so much so that the left fan started making strange squealing noises and then a pinging sonar-type sound every few seconds. Luckily with the combination of the fan control app and the built in apple diagnostic tool I managed to determine it was probably the fan and brought it to the local service shop to disassemble and clean. Now the only things left are to replace the original battery which is at 75% and replace the rustling speaker which was damaged by ants getting inside through the vents and chewing on it.

gdbsjjdn• 1 year ago

I love "the process was quite friendly" coupled with "two of the connectors broke when I looked at them and one costs hundreds of dollars to replace".

diggan2• 1 year ago

To be fair, compared to the typical Apple experience of modifying stuff, that is quite friendly.

Although author seems to have broken the TouchID sensor and button in the process, which is less neat and maybe not so friendly even for Apple.

pier252• 1 year ago

that is quite friendly

Maybe if you're referring to iPhones and iPads.

The Intel Macbooks were always super easy to open for cleanup or replacing parts. I did it for years and never broke anything.

volkl48• 1 year ago

Kind of a thing that isn't uniquely difficult if you've ever worked in a laptop before, hard if you've never done it.

-----

The ZIF connectors for those fans aren't different or much more fragile than the ones in most other laptops.

The adhesives on certain cables tend to trip people up a bit with causing them to pull more than they should and damage things.

Gently working under and releasing the adhesives on those fan cables with the spudger (or a fingernail) before you even start trying to move/unplug them will work a lot better for not tearing things than grabbing them with tweezers will.

The TouchID cable is fragile. Still shouldn't be any serious risk of breaking if you know to treat it with caution, but that would always be the one to take the most care with and watch the most closely while you're working around it.

-----

The secondary challenge is pretty much just making sure you have all the cables out of the way when you're putting the board back in, because you've got a dozen or more that you need to watch the positioning of and/or tape out of the way.

jchw2• 1 year ago

Honestly I think this is overstating things, most connectors on most laptops and phones are surprisingly robust. I've opened god knows how many laptops and phones, including some iPhones, and really those tiny ribbon cables have surprised me. Funny enough the one time I did break a ribbon cable it was actually the right joycon rail on a Nintendo Switch and it was quite an unreasonable amount of force I applied (by accident, of course...) I always smile a little seeing people on YouTube with super fine pliars carefully and tenderly taking off connectors, I usually use a butter knife or something like that to get them off and then replace them just using my finger. I actually worry more about carelessly creasing them too much rather than ripping them. Some of those things feel like they would require quite a lot of force to actually outright rip.

The actual issue I have with phones isn't that the connectors/cables break apart if you look at them funny, it's actually the god damn screens are insane to deal with and replace, with all of that adhesive crap.

This all to say, I think Apple is doing poorly here, their ribbon cables should probably be more robust on these often quite expensive devices. I know they can do it because I've experienced Apple devices with pretty robust internals... (and also similarly, have seen and heard of Apple devices where they've mysteriously cheaped out on components like voltage regulators and made their devices totally unnecessarily worse and more failure prone.)

microtonal• 1 year ago

I changed/replaced a bunch of things in my ThinkPad T14 without any issues, it's very easy, it is clearly made to open up and update. I wouldn't dare to do that with my MacBook Pro.

esperent• 1 year ago

I've opened up my MSI laptop a bunch of times - upgrading RAM, SSD, repasting, cleaning the fans. Maybe six or seven times over four years. Repasting in particular involves removing a lot of cables and screws, then lifting of the large heatsink.

I've never had any feeling that anything is going to break. Certainly not any of the cables or connectors.

I had worked on desktop computers before, but never done anything more complex than changing RAM on a laptop.

axoltl• 1 year ago

I'm actually very surprised this happened. I've dis- and reassembled dozens of iPhones (from the iPhone 4 all the way up to the iPhone 16) and I've never torn a single flex cable.

You just have to be careful not to pull on the flex, but the connector instead. This logic applies as much to pulling a plug out of a wall socket as it does a thin flex with a board-to-board connector.

That said, would I characterize disassembling any Apple product as "quite friendly"? No. Do not attempt unless you're either familiar with how things go together or you're willing to spend the money to replace the parts you broke. If those aren't options, find a local repair shop.

diffuse_l• 1 year ago

I tried to repair a macbook air, and did manage to tear the microphone cable, because I didn't notice the connector :|

Like you said, you need to be careful, but you better be prepared to pay dearly (or manage without) for your mistakes...

jeron• 1 year ago

this read more like "Do Not Repaste Your MacBook". There's no way this was worth 5 degrees and 100 points in cinbench (sic)

saurik• 1 year ago

I mean, even the title very clearly says "(but don't)".

meatmanek• 1 year ago

For some reason, the HN title has had that part removed. I think it used to contain it, so I guess the mods edited the title after the fact? Or maybe I'm misremembering.

tiagod• 1 year ago

5 degrees with much lower RPM.

raihansaputra• 1 year ago

i think it's worth it to know for MacBook Air users instead (like me). I think mine is wearing out and what's annoying is it throttles on some web pages because the temp would spike to 106c. But not on (admittedly light) gaming or Lightroom editinf.

rglullis3• 1 year ago

[flagged]

kstrauser• 1 year ago

Also, the sarcasm.

speedgoose2• 1 year ago

By the way, the Stockholm syndrome isn’t scientifically a thing.

xandrius2• 1 year ago

Still drive across a point.

carlosjobim2• 1 year ago

It is a particular and well documented event, which happened in physical reality on this planet. You can easily find all the evidence you could ever ask for.

bowsamic2• 1 year ago

What makes something “scientifically” a thing?

agloe_dreams• 1 year ago

It was a joke...also the Author is a bit of a software legend - he is the dev behind Apollo for Reddit, the app that reddit killed that caused the whole revolt. A one man show that made an app so much better than a multi-billion dollar company that people literally would prefer to quit the site than switch.

bigyabai• 1 year ago

"Software legend" might be stretching it. His app was popular, and when Reddit pulled the plug there was discontent, but nothing was really ever resolved. It's more of a software parable against being overly reliant on a single centralized company that can kick your revenue out from underneath you at the drop of a hat. *glares at Tim Cook*

They say you either learn history or are doomed to repeat it.

rglullis3• 1 year ago

Yeah, I am familiar with Chris. He is the one that developed a popular application for someone else's platform (Reddit) and was rewarded by it by getting the CEO accusing him of extortion attempts.

Then, after realizing that Reddit's management was just using him as a scapegoat and to justify the API closing off, what does he do? He could've used his influence to get people out of Reddit and porting Apollo to some other alternative, he went on to spend a good part of an year working on, you guessed it, an YouTube client for Apple's Vision Pro.

Sorry, but a sibling comment has it right: Chris does not suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. It's full-on Battered Wife Syndrome.

attentive• 1 year ago

how does he turn it on without a power button?

runamok• 1 year ago

That was my question too! This? https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Turn+on+a+MacBook+Air+Wi...

Just never let it get too low?

hackmiester• 1 year ago

M-series Macs just turn on when you open them.

maz1b2• 1 year ago

While I can appreciate the intent of this blog post.. I don't see how the title should be "repaste your Macbook" when touch ID breaks and the button stops working.

Doesn't Apple offer this service if you have AppleCare+? or even if you dont? that way its on them?

jillesvangurp• 1 year ago

I think if you use your laptop beyond three years, you might want to worry about shit like that. But you really should consider getting something decent instead.

I use leased laptops for work and I generally replace them after three years with whatever is new and shiny. I recently upgraded from the M1 macbook pro to a shiny new M4 Max. And damn this thing is fast. My build speeds massively improved. This is cutting hours of time in a week. Which is an unbelievable upgrade of my quality of life. And it also means I run tests more often and pro-actively instead of going "I could do it but it's going to take five minutes". My build speeds are now routinely below 1 minute. Ram throughput and having more CPUs are making the difference here. I was expecting my builds to be faster with a new laptop. But not by 4-5x. So, I don't think I'll ever be faffing about with thermal paste. Because that would mean I'm penny pinching instead of getting a massively faster laptop.

It's a judgment call of course and a bit personal. Not everyone needs a fast laptop. But I gladly spend a bit extra for this stuff. On the current contract, my new laptop is costing 100 euro per month. That include apple care coverage. And it's a 48GB M4 Max. Worth every penny. I'm not going to worry about thermal paste because I'll upgrade before that becomes an issue.

spaqin• 1 year ago

I don't think creating more e-waste is the answer, especially for things that still work properly with marginal improvement over time. Neither it is the option for most of the population. Use it as long as you can and squeeze the most of the things you already have.

maz1b2• 1 year ago

You're right, but the ultra-overwhelming-majority of people are not like us who can maximize off each new silicon generation.

pram• 1 year ago

A nice and unexpected thing about the current MBPs is they usually have their fan completely turned off. There was barely any dust in my M1 Max MBP when I looked.

moribvndvs• 1 year ago

The fan was incredibly easy to swap out (hats off there, Apple!)

After reading this, an Apple middle manager is gathering an emergency meeting to figure out who fucked up

smallpipe• 1 year ago

I remember doing it on a thinkpad. I didn't break any cables, I didn't need a guide, and it got significantly quieter afterwards. Macbooks are pretty, they've got a great CPU, but the repairability is just rubbish

thewebguyd2• 1 year ago

Same with most dell laptops I've owned. Pop off the back panel and everything is there, easily accessible, standard screws. Just did this on an Inspiron I have, just about 8 screws, pop the heat sync off, repaste, reassemble and done. Took like 15 minutes. Plus the RAM and SSD are also easily accessible and replaceable, as is the battery in a matter of minutes.

sethhochberg• 1 year ago

The part I have a hard time with as a corporate purchaser is that the failure/repair/replacement rate on our small number of Dell machines is upwards of 50%. We've only got about a dozen in use, and less then half of them have just worked reliably. At a certain point I don't really care how repairable the Macbooks we buy for almost everyone else are/aren't because the failure rate on those is so low by comparison.

I'm glad the Dell repair guy who gets sent out has a pleasant experience when he replaces the guts of a machine but my team still has to spend time and money shipping around replacements and dealing with warranty repair at a rate we just don't see with the Apple gear.

Once upon a time our entire corporate fleet was all Macbooks but the only thing we had worse luck with than these Dells was training nontechnical users on how to get to their Excel or specialized actuarial/compliance software through virtualization

reddalo3• 1 year ago

repairability is just rubbish

I wonder if something will change for the better in the future, given that the EU will force (from 18th February 2027) every computer sold in the EU to have removable and replaceable batteries.

xandrius2• 1 year ago

Waiting for that day to come before even considering buying my own macbook. Let's see.

flexagoon• 1 year ago

Don't MacBooks already have replaceable batteries though?

thimabi• 1 year ago

I wonder if Apple itself offers repasting services via AppleCare. For someone like me, with little experience in handling electronics, it might be better than trying to fiddle with the MacBook’s internals.

reddalo3• 1 year ago

Offering such a service would be an admission by Apple that their products are not God-tier.

leakycap4• 1 year ago

I don't know if it is different with Apple silicon, but I had a 2018 MBP that overheated and the Apple Store replaced the logic board and upper case assembly rather than try any sort of repair of the existing board with heat issues.

notpushkin2• 1 year ago

Go for an independent repair shop instead.

t1234s• 1 year ago

I had to do this to my 2012 MBP (along with fixing the gpu solder problem) and I found it wasn't that hard to disassemble / reassemble. Also replacing the battery, upgrading the ram/storage was very easy to do. Contrast this to my 2017 MBP which has to score on the top 10 list of worst apple products of all time as far as quality and ease of repair go.

Have these new M3/4 MPBs gone back at all to being easy to dismantle or change the battery in? The OP with their M1 mentioned tearing overly thin ribbon cables.

jpalomaki• 1 year ago

I replaced battery and did repaste on Intel MacBook Pro (with Touch Bar). Quite tedious process. So many extremely tiny screws with different sizes and all those small connectors. Having been mostly opening ThinkPads before I wasn't really prepared for it. Also did the mistake of not reading the full instructions before starting. The process took way longer than I expected and with zillion teeny tiny half millimeter screws on table I was afraid to take a break.

hengheng• 1 year ago

I was tempted to do that with my first-gen Intel MacBook because it just wouldn't run quiet when idle, that is until I discovered by how much I could undervolt that chip with a random tool that I could just download. I believe I went from 1.26V to 1.03V, or at least these are the numbers still etched into my brain.

Ratio of the squares of those numbers is 2/3, and so the laptop was certainly quiet without having to open it up. But I was surprised at Intel's product back then.

lisnake• 1 year ago

I fixed the eGPU disconnecting issue on my 2012 MacBook Pro by placing the entire motherboard inside an oven for 10 minutes (a rather unconventional solution for reballing). So, yes, MacBooks from that era were not as fragile as they are now. By the way, that laptop still works.

RattlesnakeJake• 1 year ago

I cut my Apple-repairing teeth on an iBook G3 that would lose its BGA-soldered GPU if it overheated. The "fix" was to use a heat gun, propane torch (my choice), or even burning alcohol to gently reflow the solder:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/repairing-ibook-g3-grap...

I did it at least three times before that laptop died. Fun times.

masklinn• 1 year ago

Have these new M3/4 MPBs gone back at all to being easy to dismantle or change the battery in?

No.

They're not as bad as the touchbar era (which was truly awful) but they're still a lot worse than the unibodies: ifixit scored the unibodies at 7/10, the apple silicon generation get 4/10 (although the criteria have changed a bit so the comparison is not quite 1:1 this matches my impression: while I've not yet had to dive into my M1P's guts what I've seen of it don't seem easy, while I was able to easily dive in and out of my 2010 and replaced the ram, the battery, the drive (twice), the superdrive (by an HDD tray, then put the superdrive back a few years later), the fans, ...

And the Unibody was a step down from my previous polycarbonate macbook in terms of accessibility (the battery could just be popped out, and let you access the RAM and HDD without even having to unscrew the case).

mhuffman• 1 year ago

I had to replace the fans on a 2013 MBP that I use as a linux laptop and the experience was one of the most nerve-wracking in my whole life! It really is put together to dissuade people from tweaking anything inside of it.

haiku20772• 1 year ago

Don't use regular thermal paste or pads in a Mac. They're not suitable for non-pressure mounted applications.

You can buy TCRS Carbon Black if you really need to repaste a Mac part instead of swapping a new part that was pasted at the factory.

Lalabadie• 1 year ago

This. Its not a case of Carbon Black being better over other acceptable options.

The thermal paste applied in this article needs pressure on the two surfaces making contact to function at all, and to remain functional. The laptop isn't built like a desktop cooler setup.

dmsnell2• 1 year ago

Several years ago I replaced the thermal paste in my MacBook Pro and I did it in two steps: first to high-end paste; and second to liquid metal.

The results were impressive, and I think it’s a bit veiled how paste degradation over time impacts perceived laptop speeds. I’ve been tempted to replace the paste on new devices but haven’t taken that plunge.

https://fluffyandflakey.blog/2019/04/13/increasing-thermal-h...

alliao• 1 year ago

have you tried PTM7950? I'm not even sure what is it just saw many swear by it

dmsnell2• 1 year ago

No but I think I saw that it’s a thermal pad, one with comparable thermal transfer characteristics to the high end (non-conductive) pastes.

Havoc2• 1 year ago

Need to repaste and replace pads on my 3090 (appears to be overheating) and dreading the process, especially the pads.

[After] Max CPU temperature: 96°C

What? Is that normal for macs?

Vaguely unrelated I'm only buying thermal grizzly paste in future...that factory tour they did was super impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsIk_mMrt2w

dwood_dev• 1 year ago

GPUs are quite easy to repaste. Just order the correct replacement thermal pads in advance and the whole thing is easy.

Havoc2• 1 year ago

Yeah I'm optimistic. Just anxious cause paying for a new 24gb nvidia card is something I could do without in this GPU market

Found a yt that for my precise card being repadded though so should be ok

dontlaugh• 1 year ago

It’s normal for any CPU under load with correctly sized cooling to be just under its maximum temperature, which is often 100.

Dylan16807• 1 year ago

Electromigration is a real problem. "Barely enough" is not a synonym for "correctly sized".

I might not hit problems within the lifetime of the device, but it's a pretty tight margin of error. If I can roughly roughly cut aging in half by dropping 10C, then I want to do that 2-4 times.

ErrorNoBrain• 1 year ago

someone made a youtube video not too long ago (i think was that guy who made the 3rd party ssd upgrade kits?) he said that apple uses a special type of thermal paste... not that its some super awesome unique product, it's just that its not a paste in the typical sense, like you'd use on a GPU or CPU. It's more like a "putty".

drewolbrich• 1 year ago

I have a 2021 M1 Pro MacBook Pro that I use every day, and I don't hear the fans...at least not yet.

I wonder how my situation differs from Christian's.

mdasen• 1 year ago

Same. One difference might be how much stress we put on the machine. I believe thermal paste does degrade faster with more heat and Christian says that he throws a lot at it: video editing, code compiling, CAD models.

It might make a difference how much usage is being put on the machine leading to degradation of the original thermal paste faster or slower.

wyclif• 1 year ago

Is it possible to clean the dust out of the M1+ models without cracking them open?

hhh• 1 year ago

I use my M1 Max every day and still have only heard the fans once when it kernel panicked.

mrexroad• 1 year ago

I remember having to do this with the 2006 MBP, the first Intel books, when they were new.

amatecha• 1 year ago

I got the first intel Mac Mini (Core Solo), and it only survived a year or two before something on the logic board literally burned up. Not a good first impression on the switchover to the new architecture :(

dclowd9901• 1 year ago

But where I also really notice it is in idling: just writing this blog post my CPU was right at 46°C the whole time, where previously my computer idled right aroud 60°C. The whole computer just feels a bit healthier.

I get this same feeling whenever I change the fluids on my cars. I know from a practical perspective, it's very little changed, but I can't help feeling like the car just feels like it's in a better place. Which I guess it is? But I know it's entirely mental.

leakycap4• 1 year ago

I don't think it is entirely mental - I had thought the same, but I recently had a very cheap rental car for months, so long they called it back to the shop for an oil change and then gave it back to me... that car drove SO much better after the oil change, the engine was quieter and smoother and the difference was obvious because the car had no vibration or sound insulation.

dominick-cc• 1 year ago

All I can think is maybe they changed a clogged air filter at the same time. Otherwise it has to be placebo.

mxfh• 1 year ago

Weirdest disconnect of content to headline. In short: If your M1 is still working fine, don't do what I did.

Eric_WVGG2• 1 year ago

I wouldn’t trade a modern Macbook for an old one by any stretch, but man, you could really have some fun with those older models.

I gave my modded 17" 2009 "cafeteria tray" Macbook Pro to my father, and after using it for many more years, he brought it in for… something. I had replaced the internal optical drive with an SSD and reformatted it as a “Fusion Drive” (a kind of smart multi-drive partition that would put commonly-accessed things on an SSD and large rarely-used storage on an HD, identified as a single drive), apparently every Genius Bar employee crammed around the table because they had never seen any Apple computer like it :D

ravetcofx• 1 year ago

Fusion was so terrible and unreliable in my experience. they were still selling fusion iMacs till 2020, and it honestly seemed faster to just disable the fusion and let it be HDD only. I saw so many failures and data loss with that.

leakycap4• 1 year ago

It is wild to me how much money Apple used to spend on ANYTYHING but a fast internal hard drive. The SSD-only days have at least got us out of the slooooww 5k rpm drive nightmare that was every consumer Apple device for decades.

Eric_WVGG2• 1 year ago

I never had any issues with it, even my hacked together frankenfusion

socalgal2• 1 year ago

My favorite memory of my M1 Pro MacBook Pro was the whole sensation of “holy crap, you never hear the fans in this thing”, which was very novel in 2021.

I had that same "wow, no fan" when I got my M1 Mac (still have my 2014 Intel MBP and the fans come on almost immediately)

this dang thing still seems to just shrug at basically anything I throw at it.

Unfortunately, this year I started playing with stable diffusion stuff, while it might be possible to optimize, what I have (automatic1111 and comfyui), is slow and my fans come on. Slow = 6x to 12x slower than friends with gaming PCs.

gepardi• 1 year ago

Oooorrr…

Next time buy a Framework 13.

daneel_w• 1 year ago

Good advice. Looking forward to your guide on getting an identical experience running modern macOS on it.

nottorp3• 1 year ago

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I use a laptop for real work as little as possible.

Long term high CPU usage goes on a properly silent and easy to repaste (and LARGE ofc) desktop.

As a consequence, the oldest laptop I have around (a 2009 macbook white) is just fine(tm) noise wise.

kzrdude• 1 year ago

Maybe a dumb question then, but is dust buildup just as much a function of work/use as of time? I guess that is reasonable.

nottorp3• 1 year ago

I don't know, because right now I'm replying from my laptop while being on my balcony, which is open to the real world(tm) and thus has a lot more dust than the inside of my home.

I've used all my laptops like that and they're still silent [1].

[1] Silent, but the keyboard is broken on the old emoji keyboard macbook pro, may whoever designed it and stuck to it burn in whatever hell they believe in forever.

unsupp0rted• 1 year ago

You are old fashioned. An M-series MacBook Pro is the most “work” machine almost anybody needs. Almost anybody.

nottorp3• 1 year ago

Yeah I have one. And a mac mini plugged into 2 monitors. And a beige box running linux and windows, depending on what i need at the moment.

throwaway328• 1 year ago

Four years later, this MacBook Pro is still a delight. It’s the longest I’ve ever owned a laptop

Is this normal? Changing laptops every 2 or 3 years seems absolutely bonkers to me

ido• 1 year ago

I keep macbooks longer, but PC laptops I've had would often start breaking in ways that were too expensive to be worth repairing around that time. I had a Dell XPS whose screen had issues and replacing it (some custom touch screen that didn't have many options aside from dell's official replacements) was something like €600 (conveniently this happened shortly after the extended warranty expired), which at that point in the laptop's life was not worth the expense.

swiftcoder2• 1 year ago

I used to keep laptops 5+ years, but recently I've realised that as a software engineer, this may be a bit of a false economy. It's my primary tool - if I can buy a ~20% performance bump sooner than that, it's absolutely worth it (and a deductible business expense into the bargain)

notpushkin2• 1 year ago

On one hand – absolutely.

On the other hand, I suspect this is the main reason we have those Electron abominations and bloated web apps nowadays.

nikanj• 1 year ago

If you hire Wayne Gretzky, don't skimp on skates.

A software engineer costs more than a laptop per month, and it's insane that companies have devs waiting on builds a single second longer than necessary. The faster the edit-compile-test cycle, the more value you get for the massive investment of engineer salary.

noname1202• 1 year ago

@dang Can you remove the editorialization of the title? The original title is “You should repaste your MacBook (but don't)”

tomhow• 1 year ago

That original title is a little on the baity side ("You should ..." is classic title bait), and I've softened it even further now.

noname1202• 1 year ago

It's good now. For reference, the previous editorialized title was “Repaste Your MacBook”[1], which used the imperative mood. That made it even more click-baity than the original title “You should repaste your MacBook (but don't)”.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250711190104/https://news.ycom...

ksec• 1 year ago

I have yet to read a valid reason why PCM isn't used by default on these Laptops other than $10 increase in BOM.

haiku20772• 1 year ago

From a product page for Carbon Black, a similar material to the stuff Apple uses, these look like the advantages over a phase change thermal pad:

- Fortified with glass beads to maintain uniform bond line over the life of the device

- Eliminates die/component hotspots caused by incomplete heatsink contact seen with use of other thermal compounds

Additionally, a thermal pad requires a presssure mount with a narrow gap, while Carbon Black is designed for non-pressure-mounted components.

mproud• 1 year ago

As someone who fixes these things, I rarely damage them. But you should be using nylon probe tools (a.k.a. “black sticks”) and tweezers, and properly practice electrostatic discharge safety. Or just have an Apple Authorized Service Provider handle this for you.

Repasting a MacBook

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