Overheating kills motherboard 'issues'

I've got the new macbook air 11 inch (2014)
https://support.apple.com/kb/SP699?locale=en_US
Using this for gaming [Bootcamp];
- League Of Legends
- Guild Wars 2
- Starcraft 2

and macbook 12 inch (2015).
https://support.apple.com/kb/SP712?locale=en_US
Using this for work [Parallels];
- Open Office
- eMails
- Web Surfing

My question is, will these 2 laptops have overheating issues that will kill the motherboard with the way I'm using them? (Specially the macbook air 11 inch ones)

A bit of background on issues like this;
Previously I owned macbook air 13 inch (2010)
https://support.apple.com/kb/SP618?locale=en_US

as well as Sony Vaio Z3 (Forgot the year of it, but it has a core i7, inter-switch IntelHD and Nvidia graphics card, 8gb Ram, 256GB SSD HDD as well as an integrated optical drive on it)

In any case, on these 2 laptops I've played games such as Assassins Creed, Mass Effect and Diablo 3 (Sometimes up to 6hrs per day) and after about 8-12months (can't remember exactly) they both died out and their motherboard apparently was fried due to the heat generated by the laptop when I play the game. For the Sony Vaio Z3, I think the case was that the fan stopped working which eventually causes the heat to build up and melt some of the components in the motherboard. The price to fix the motherboard of course; is the same as buying a new laptop.

 

I'm more curious as to why you have both of those notebooks when a single 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina would be able to do all of the above.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Macbook 12 inch was acquired from office (company)
Macbook 11 inch was personally bought
[Hello again saturn ]

 

Clean the vents and heatsinks every few months so that the laptops can keep themselves cool.

 

I've been deathly afraid of opening my Macbook Pro Retina and re-applying thermal paste.. Could anyone let me know what their thoughts are on this and if it's necessary?

Thanks.

 

If your temperatures are abnormally high, it would be a good idea to replace your thermal paste with high quality stuff like ICD or GC extreme

 

as in remove the back chasis and clean it?
(I don't really want to dismantle my mac but....... even if I do, any reliable guide?)

 

Remove screws on back cover, remove back cover, blow compressed air into fans, replace back cover, replace screws.

Modern CPUs will not burn out from overheating as they did in the past due to their built-in thermal control that dials down the clock speed when certain temperatures are reached. The actual danger, at least as it relates to Macs, is their use of lead-free solder, which can break down due to repeated heating and cooling cycles, leading to eventually logic board failure.

Now, this almost certainly won't be an issue on the MacBook Air because it doesn't have a full-voltage CPU or a discreet GPU, but it was a widespread problem on 15-17-inch MacBook Pros. After years of complaints, Apple finally instituted an extended repair program for these notebooks.

 

Thank you saturn, that fact is somewhat relieving.
So, does that mean that I can just continue playing gw2 on my mac without having to remove the back chasis and clean it?

btw, i youtubed and got this;

(Is this guide ok? though its for a macbook air 2010. Mine is 11 inch 2014)

 

It's good practice to keep your computer's cooling system clean. You don't need to do it every day or week, but every so often you should perform this maintenance. It's doubly important if you live in a dusty environment or have pets.

 

This is true of every computer out there too. Some laptops have better headroom when it comes to heat than others. Honestly, even if you don't remove the back cover, just blowing air through the vent is going to be helpful.

IIRC, the macbook uses passive cooling for the core M CPU in it, so that shouldn't be an issue.

 

darkloki, its actually a good idea if your comfprtable doing a teardown on an off warranty unit. the thermal paste tends to be pretty crappy and I redo mine with ICD7

Stalvros I have killed so many motherboards with overheating its not even funny anymore, your issues can be compounded as the bootcamp drivers tend to NOT throttle the system as much as the OSX drivers do. but if you run them hard enough over time, it wont matter the cooling is not designed for long bouts of maximum CPU/GPU usage. I do say try to make sure vents are clear and dust free.

Saturn.... UL/ULV based units will fry themselves just as bad, the CPU itself lives but the thermal stress on the rest of the motherboard kills it. I currently have 5 dead Airs on a shelf from that

now I will ALSO admit I am a pretty heavy user on my systems and run them very hard.

Tijo the new MacBook doesn't seem to heat too bad, but on the flip side it throttles ultra quickly back to 800 mhz. to keep everything cool.

 

It's definitely a good thing to do, at least once, maybe not when you first get it unless there is an issue, but after the first year mark, and heavy usage and patterns of heating start to emerge, i suggest a professional approach to repasting.
There are plenty of guides out there for different thermal pastes, as they have different viscosities and behaviours and optimal ways to apply them. Do a small amount of research first, and your golden !

I personally recommend TX-4 or Gelid extreme, I would have you boil some water, put it in a coffee mug, them place the unopened tube of either TIM in the mug for like 20 seconds, but not more. Then apply the paste 1-2 minutes later, just to make sure its not too hot and watery, but spreadable and hardens once it's applied smoothly and evenly.
There is more to it than that too, you also require close inspection of making sure your heatsinks are levelled, and not screwed on too tight. You only need a few Oz of pressure to keep those heatsinks on. They sometimes have numbers near the screws, showing you an odd pattern on how to apply the pressure evenly when applying the TIM. It is VERY important not to put extra pressure EVER on one side or corner of a GPU die or CPU die because the silicon/ceramic shiny surface you see has been known to crack and develop micro fractures when not taken into consideration how fragile it is without those metal top/cap protectors that you would normally see on Desktop CPU's. (google if you want images to know what I mean.) Also - thermal paste has a required amount of time to set/cure before it runs optimally. For instance, it is known very well, that if your careful and knowledgeable enough to use ICD7 from Innovation labs to paste your CPU, you should then proceed to heat your CPU up with some stress testing, to help the TIM settles into the micro fractured air gaps and spread (since its soo thick, right?) it's temps improve maybe upwards 10C within the first week, most of that being the first 20 minutes of heavy usage if you stress test the cpu right away. If you do not do this, the thermal pastes can become less efficient and cure when they didn't heatup properly and spread, and then develop WORSE temps then if you use butter instead, LOL. So, heatsink up the TIM a tiny tiny bit helps it in some cases, enough to make the initial curing process happen as soon as your applying it.


Another EXPERT advice it, use coffee filters to wipe your CPu and GPU's, they are designed and specifically made to not have residue. NEVER EVER EVER use kleenex or tissue paper - or swabs or hand sanitizer napkins or alcohol swabs that people try and sell off as a gimmick to clean GPU's and CPU'. let me explain this - those all leave residue, some of which you can only find with a magnifying glass, some more obvious. Those residue fibers cause air gaps and can actually cause 3-4C difference in temps. No joke ! Ideally what you want is to get the thermal paste as thin as possible, because you want it to thermally conduct as if it did not exist. Once your great at applying thermal paste, you can apply it so evenning and thin, it's translucent and thats when your temps are like 5-10-15C better then other people. I do NOT recommend trying to do that right off to bat, not without having done this 100+ times on various machines, but i explain this here, only to demonstrate the ideal situation. The reason you do NOT want to do this as a novice, is your more likely to not center the heatsink or cooling device and then not cool it efficiently at all, or in trying to make perfect contact, you put too much pressure on the DIE area. There is also the consideration, that any cooling device I use, from habit, always gets cleaned and lapped before going back on. I always remove the curved surface on heatsinks and coolers, because I am careful enough when apply heatsinks to get them on levelled.

So - while your spreading the paste thin as can be, when you are using unfamiliar heatsinks or its the first time , do a test run, before starting the laptop, try and twist and turn the heatsink slightly without putting extra pressure on it, let the fact its pressed against the DIA area by screws and maybe some springs be enough without your extra force, but try and squish the Thermal paste thinner and spread it out, while its screwed it. then, remove the heatsink and examine the area. You will noticed its thin in one area more then the other and maybe translucent here or perhaps its so thick, you can not see past the thermal paste on the heatsink NOR the CPU die itself - if that is the case after having done this novice twist test - then you sir, have used too much thermal paste to begin with. Try using 25% less at a max and see if you can do it again, and see if in some area it starts to show as transucent or so thin, its as if the thermal paste was spread so thin its gone. because thats perfect. The heatsinks are not perfect, and are made deliberately with some fault, they're made to put a little bit of extra pressure/area in the center, to make better contact. the thermal pastes are supposed to be thick enough that the vicosity can act like its gluing the two together. When you see it think like that in the center, but still evening spread out across the rest of the DIA area and heatsink that makes contact with the surface - then your golden ! Thats the perfect balance and where you want to be !

You should even need to repaste, you can just stick it back, so long as it didn't get dirt or dust or your place is not too humid etc.. and squish it into position and carefully screw it back into place and way to go test it and burn/cure the thermal paste and watch the temps. i recommend using HWInfo or something similar. If temps are more then they were before, but not more then 5C more... give it some time to cure when you bench it. If they're really high, like 10C higher then they were before, you should restart from scratch, if your like me, and the temps are 10-15C cooler your golden ! keep it up and show others how you did it.