The rMBP vents let in a lot of stuff...

This is both a PSA and a critique, I guess. I want you to understand, I baby the **** of my electronics. This has always been on a desk or solid surface like a book on my lap, not left to vacuum up a carpet or bed sheet. I've opened laptops with years on them that had cleaner fans and insides than this let in! Really should have a dust filter by the vents.

When they first showed the Retina Pro design, I was worried about this but it was dismissed. Since this is already running 99C at load and the processors tJunction Max is 100C, I worry about what would happen to users of these that never clean these out and own them for longer than the year this has been alive.





In related news, part of why i wanted to open it was the ever present squeak this has had since new, just picking it up would let out an annoying squeal. I rescrewed it in the proper screw order, went away from a day, now it's back. Grumble grumble. I'm surprised the flimsy bottom panel on these never comes up in discussions on the build quality.

 

Maybe it's just the photo but to me it looks like some sort of white powder got sucked into your rMBP... I've opened quite a few rMBP over the years and have not seen anything like this, even a unit used on movie sets for years was cleaner on the inside.

 

Did they just hotglue one of the capacitor to the motherboard?

 

Yes, Yes they did Mobius, some times its cheap epoxy.

As for the mess in there, I have a bunch that look like that after a week or two. with it drawing air in through the keyboard you can fill it up with dead skin fast if you have very dry hands .... or a cat that likes to lay on your keyboard

 

I was wondering about the glued on capacitor as well. I see the "official" bottom pictures didn't look like that. So that's normal?

And to the first comment, yeah, maybe the pictures don't do it justice, but in person it just looked like fine dust, not any sort of powder.


Also I can't help but notice that one of my battery support strips are off at an angle...All the minor build quality issues get to me with this, it was over 2500 dollars. The bottom also still squeaks terribly, the trackpad sometimes develops a slight second click, the black display clutch creaks when touched, and part of my AR screen coating came off (though I hear they replace this now).

 

ggwp 2.5k machine use hotglue

what's next? elmer's glue? double tape?

 

double sided tape has been used for years in the screen assemblies, under batteries and to keep some parts from vibrating. cant see Elmers used though

 

I can understand screens, but motherboard components? Jesus christ.

 

It's actually an inductor (coil) and this solution is perfectly normal.

It's really soldered to the board, whereas the epoxy is more like silicone and is there to prevent resonance under load from causing an annoying buzz or hiss. After all, the coil creates a magnetic field and under certain frequencies it can levitate/vibrate to and away from the pcb (gently touch with finger and you can feel that happening). This is both normal and fairly harmless, even if a side-effect of that is audible noise. It's also quite hard to take into account under every situation the ic may be subjected to, so it's easier to minimise the effect rather than prevent the cause (and over-dimension the component).

Not sure why the official photos didn't show the putty, but that may have been a pre-production sample and they may have preferred the 'clean' looks. Also possible they hadn't considered it necessary and only later on opted for noise-prevention (after complaints rolled in).

 

coil whine I presume? discharge is higher than what the vrm can supply?

 

Yes, but the noise can be 'normal' as such. It's more of a side-effect of its function, not a true defect or overload. We just don't like our (non-audio) electronics to make an audible sound, hence the silicone. Admittedly, from the picture it looks more like a bug-fix than premeditated design ... but even so; as long as it's silent, then it's doing its job.

 

A lot of my own findings with these machines at work. Why I tend to be no fan of them. I dislike issues like these on a machine which costs this much money. And I love OSX like crazy. Build issues like this do not earn Apple friends. And costs users of them confidence.