Repaste Your MacBook

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

58•speckx•4h ago

Comments

zdw•1h 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•1h 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.

ianferrel•1h 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•1h 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.

zdw•32m ago

This is the correct interpretation - you get a bit longer max clockspeed due to the thermal mass (and thus more heat overall).

Is the added plastic shell case a "bandaid on a bandaid" sort of solution to deal with that heat? Absolutely. But you might want that case anyway - I've had several laptops that would have had broken screens or were yanked off a desk by an attached cable and survived by the sacrificial plastic shell taking the impact.

Like all things, it's a tradeoff to consider.

ianferrel•22m ago

Makes sense.

manaskarekar•1h 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•47m 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•13m ago

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

phoronixrly•1h 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•44m ago

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

gruez•1h 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.

LorenDB•58m ago

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

dsego•1h 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•45m 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".

diggan•27m 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.

pier25•21m 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.

diggan•18m ago

> Maybe if you're referring to iPhones and iPads.

Or the new laptops ;) They're no longer Intel Macbooks, and compared to laptops from other brands, the new Apple hardware seems way harder (although I'd confess to not having the experience of picking any of the M* models apart personally). https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/laptop-repairability-sc...

Didn't the latest iPhones have some sort of "repairability" push or something? Don't remember exactly, but seems to have given me the idea that Apple is moving towards making it easier to repair the iPhones specifically.

volkl48•14m 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.

jeron•34m 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•32m ago

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

rglullis•34m ago

"Once you ignore that it lost Touch ID and will have to pay hundreds of dollars to Apple for the privilege of repairing it, the process was quite smooth".

The Stockholm syndrome is strong with this one.

kstrauser•20m ago

Also, the sarcasm.

t1234s•11m ago

Apple ownership is more like battered wife syndrome

maz1b•30m 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?

pram•30m 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•29m 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•28m 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

thewebguyd•24m 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•13m 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 trivial 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

reddalo•22m 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.

thimabi•27m 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.

reddalo•23m ago

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

t1234s•13m 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.

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