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Repasting a MacBook

(christianselig.com)
258 points speckx | 3 comments | 11 Jul 25 12:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.431s | source
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zdw ◴[11 Jul 25 15:31 UTC] No.44533320[source]▶
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.

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1. phoronixrly ◴[11 Jul 25 16:06 UTC] No.44533809[source]▶
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...

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2. Retric ◴[11 Jul 25 16:43 UTC] No.44534263[source]▶
Price discrimination, MacBooks aren’t their top of the line product so it’s intentionally less powerful than it could be.
3. zozbot234 ◴[12 Jul 25 08:46 UTC] No.44540414[source]▶
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.