Tried the smcFanControl and it actually works! From 160 degrees F to 130 within 10 minutes.
Fan is not too noisy at 4000rpm but a bit loud at 6000rpm.
Still a bit warmer than my IBM ThinkPad but at least I do not have burn my lap.

I wonder if a software fix is even possible with the earlier MBPs, or if it’s strictly a hardware issue.

At any rate, this article reminded me of the iStat pro widget, for which I am grateful! (woot)

Best of luck to all of those who venture into fixing the heat themselves.

The newer MBP have the heat issue resolved, a friend of mine has one and the difference is amazing. The thing barely gets hot.

I’ve NEVER had issues with the typing surface becoming uncomfortable. The bottom only becomes hot when I have the laptop sitting on a surface that insulates the heat (basically any sort of fabric), instead of a smooth, flat surface.

There are either some anomalies in MBP manufacturing quality out there, or people are being unreasonable with their expectations.

All my problems were solved by installing smcfancontrol. I just keep an eye on the temps, and whenever it gets too warm, I just bump the fans up to 6000 rpm. Within 5 minutes, it’s cooled down to the 120-130 range and I shut the fans back off until it spikes again.

Hot case isn’t that big of a deal to me, I’ve never had a temp-related processor crash and I figure it’s just the price I pay for having a fast computer. Seems like a small price to me.

Far more irritating is the fact that it rarely if ever is willing to wake up after sleep. When I open the lid, the sleep light goes off but it never wakes up. Power button, nothing. Space bar, nothing. Mouse clicks, nothing. Close the lid, and the light comes ON and stays steady instead of breathing. Open it, light goes out. Close it, light comes back on solid. Have to hold the power button for 5 seconds to kill it and reboot. All system updates performed. Wish Apple would fix this instead of worrying about the temps.

I have 2 MBP. One is a “MBP 2,2″ with the Radeon x1600M and the other is a “MBP 3,1″ (Santa Rosa) with the Nvidia 8600M GT… Using a widget called iStat I see that the “2,2″ laptop runs, on average, 15C cooler at the GPU and 5C at the CPU. (The difference between the processor speeds is only .84MHZ) The temperatures labeled “memory” and “enclosure” read the same temperatures for both machines.

I found this post to be most interesting because I most certainly do not enjoy the higher temperatures of the new Santa Rosa notebooks. They run so hot that I cannot touch the metal between the first row of function keys and the screen without feeling burnt. I did open up the “3,1″, clear the gunk, and conservatively reapply arctic silver 5. I took my time and it wasn’t really a big deal. Anyone with computer building or repair experience shouldn’t be afraid to open up the MBP, they are a lot of fun to take apart and if you are careful they are not easy to break.

Anyway, who cares about that…

What happened after the reapplication is disappointing for me, but interesting under the context of this continuing thread…

All temperatures remained the same at the CPU, GPU, and Memory while the temperature reading at the two Heatsink locations increased by 2 degrees Celsius. The only drop in temperature was observed at the Enclosure (case) reading which dropped by 1 degree C.

So, I guess that the reapplication of the thermal compound did nothing at all. Everything is just as hot to touch as it ever was.

I thought it would be interesting to see how the different views of Peter and Kevin explain my results.

*I worked on a clean glass table and wore nitrile gloves. I used isopropyl alcohol and Qtips to remove the thermal compound.

The most disturbing part of the whole procedure is that I observed that in my “3,1″ MBP, the heatsink for the GPU was actually cracked!

It wasn’t broken apart, but there is a long gouge down the middle of it so that if you were to take a fingernail and run it past the heatsink you’d feel the irregular surface.

Also, the GPU chip itself is larger than the GPU heatsink, and the heatpipes are entirely black, no copper except for at the 3 heatsinks. I have plenty of pictures and just don’t know what to do about this computer. It can safely say that it is TOO HOT!
I’d be much happier if apple had figured out a way to increase performance without increasing the idle temp of the GPU by 20C!
Yes, the new 8600M runs at 65C on average while the older x1600M runs at 45C, at least that is what I observe in my two computers.

One other thing I should mention is that the ambient temperature where I currently am is between 26 and 30C (The Caribbean.) I haven’t opened anything other than the dashboard, safari, and iTunes on the “3,1″ MBP because at idle it is hotter than the “2,1″ MBP has ever been.

Since both computers live in the tropics I can’t find any reason to not blame Apple for this terrible temperature problem. Their previous generation MBP runs just fine here (at a cool 45C, lol) and while I appreciate the idea of a more powerful GPU, I’m almost positive the new temperature problems are entirely the fault of the new GPU (or the crappy GPU heatsink), since the CPU temps are rarely more than 5C away from each other and all the other temps are almost the same (Obviously the heatsink readings are higher since the GPU is 20C hotter in one computer vs. the other, but all the other temps are very close using iStat Pro widget.)
The new MBP is truly too hot to be of any use to me here.

What ever happened Mark?

Did you ever get a cool Santa Rosa MBP?

Thanks for this info. i got my mac book pro today and turn on 5 minutes and it was so hot and scaring me. damn……

Thence to the Apple Store. Opening “Activity Monitor” revealed that a freak process was running in the background using 100% of my CPU power - a printjob application. The Apple Genius (who did know his stuff - I was impressed) said that Hewlett Packard drivers in particular are problematic, and can sometime just hang in the background. Good news is, you can just kill them in the Activity Monitor.

Following the killed process, the computer temperature has dropped to an average of 117, and the fans are just ticking over at 2900 rpm.

Worth a look if you are having a “constant overheat” problem.

Tested and sworn for. smcFanControl is freeware.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23183

As for closing the lid, your MBP can sleep with the lid open. The energy saver utility is pretty good, I let my disks sleep overnight if I’m not downloading anything but they turn off automatically if there is no activity. Personally I like having the MBP to wake me up in the morning with some music playing, can’t do that with the lid closed

Yes. My friend recently bought a MBP; it gets hot enough *when charging* that I almost recoil when I touch it - but not quite. Otherwise it seems more or less cool.

On a side note, his seems to heat up mainly towards the front/left, on the bottom. He says it’s fine though, and has no plans to ‘mod’ the paste.

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what do you all think?

I described my displeasure with excessive heat, as well as the annoying high-pitched sound coming from below the F1 key area. The noise is a common problem, which I had already accepted as punishment for being an early adopter. After quietly listing to my issues he service specialist requested my machine serial number. I was put on hold for a couple of minutes. Upon his return, his next comment was “you need to bring your computer to a service center for a logic board replacement.” From what I have read in other posts, the US based Apple folks are a bit more secretive about what the issue may be. There is obviously a known issue related to heat or noise with the early machines.

The machine arrived at the service center yesterday and the engineer was scheduled to check it out in the afternoon. Hopefully, later today I will hear the status of the machine and potential repairs.

Two major data points should come from this experience. The first is what happens to the warranty if you take the machine apart yourself. I was extremely careful when removing and reassembling components, including the yellow 3M tape positions. However upon close inspection they should be able to see that I had a slight problem with engagement of the 2 screws located inside of the battery compartment. During the re-assembly process the screwdriver slipped a couple of times leaving minor evidence of my work. They may also notice 90% of the original thermal paste mess is missing.

The second piece of valuable information will be if the repair fixes the heat issue. I really don’t care about the noise issue but I’ll update everyone on that too. Again, I do not have empirical data to compare before and after results. The machine was too hot to keep on your lap PERIOD! Were talking about pain not about slight discomfort. It is going to be obvious if the problem is fixed. The first time my wife used the laptop she called me at work because she thought it was going to start a fire. It is likely she was overreacting but that should give everyone an idea of how hot my machine gets. She would defiantly not accept this product as long as I had held out.

I understand the questioning of my earlier post results. These were the facts as I observed them. For everyone’s reference, I do have a clear understanding of heat transfer, and have plenty of experience building computers. No, I do not design heat dissipation systems for computers but I do have a master degree in mechanical engineering. In the past I have completed experiments with processor cooling related to over clocking (sometimes overcooking) of processors. Fortunately recent hardware now meets my speed requirements without having to modify.

Kevin has done a good job in explaining the technical situation of heat paths and equilibrium of the system. I was afraid to this may turn into a “who knows more technical jargon.” Let’s face it, the heat is going to be generated and needs to escape the case. The options are limited and well described in previous posts.

Sorry I do not have a laboratory environment for testing… If at home in the US I would be more process and variable specific. In China it was difficult enough just finding a MacBook Pro to purchase.

I rarely post to this kind of site for the reason of the argument, which is taking place between Larry and Peter. Hopefully the description of my experience proves helpful to those in the same situation.

Hopefully the next post is related to Apple fixing the machine.

Mark

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>>
Right here on this page, Mark described the problems he’s had since messing with his machine. How much more evidence does anyone need that this rework is a bad idea?
—————-
The rational thing to do is compensate for them by discounting results that are impossible or contrary to reasonable expectations, such as Mark’s claim that his CPU temperature had dropped to below 25 degrees C. That’s impossible, so it didn’t happen. I can’t explain it, but that hardly matters.
>>
It’s this kind of circle-running that kills your credibility. You simply cannot present Mark’s results as definitive proof of your point, and in the same breath, reject them as the product of ‘rationalization’ and discount them because they are impossible.
Besides which, when Mark re-measured later, his results were far more reasonable, although still improved.

And, of course, you simply cannot call a sensor reading the product of rationalization.

In my opinion, _you_ are the one rationalizing at this point.

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>>Lower peak case temperatures is proof of damage.
This is not justified. As has been discussed ad nauseum, we don’t know the extent of leakage between the heatpipes and case. If it is less significant than the effect caused by heat buildup around the CPU area, then cooling is proof of precisely the opposite.

Even then, there is no evidence that the temperatures measured were peak temperatures.

>>I have no evidence that there is increased fan activity. I’ve never seen anyone describe a controlled experiment with conscientious data collection. It’s always just someone’s feeling, and that isn’t science. So I just don’t believe that people are consistently seeing any improvement.

Reading through the SomethingAwful thread, the majority of those who reworked their machines report increased fan activity, usually from zero. In my opinion, the sudden appearance of fan activity is significant enough a change that it is unlikely to be the product of rationalization or placebo.

>>Right here on this page, Mark described the problems he’s had since messing with his machine. How much more evidence does anyone need that this rework is a bad idea?

Mark’s results indicate no change in case temperature, and a decrease in reported CPU temperature. How does this support your argument?

>>sometimes they report evidence that proves they made things worse after all, like the original writer did on Something Awful.

For obvious reasons, I object to this statement.

You ask if the increased fan activity isn’t proof that the rework helps. I have no evidence that there is increased fan activity. I’ve never seen anyone describe a controlled experiment with conscientious data collection. It’s always just someone’s feeling, and that isn’t science. So I just don’t believe that people are consistently seeing any improvement. If anything, the evidence suggests most people who make this change have screwed up their machines.

Since the facts clearly show that replacing a five-mil film of one brand of thermal paste with a two-mil film of some other random brand– the best outcome one might rationally hope for– isn’t going to make a meaningful difference, I can’t see how anyone can support this modification. Sure, there might be individual cases where someone had a machine that was screwed up by the factory, and futzing with it helped somehow, but I doubt it.

It’s far more likely that people are inventing rationalizations after the fact. That behavior is pretty much universal in this kind of situation. Talk to ten people who have modified an imported compact sports car and nine of them will report improved performance. Put them on a dynamometer or race track, and the odds are that only one or two will actually be better. Most will see no change and some will be worse– because those cars are professionally engineered to begin with, and amateur modifications are more likely to hurt than help.

This is what I’m talking about:

http://autorepair.about.com/cs/productreviews/fr/aafpr052002.htm

Heatsink goop has become the Tornado of the MacBook Pro market. The modification usually can’t help, and it certainly can do harm, but whenever you see people speaking up about it they’re convinced they did the right thing. They will invent evidence as needed to support their positions.

In this case, since people don’t always understand the evidence, sometimes they report evidence that proves they made things worse after all, like the original writer did on Something Awful. Lower peak case temperatures is proof of damage. Right here on this page, Mark described the problems he’s had since messing with his machine. How much more evidence does anyone need that this rework is a bad idea?

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>I’ve never implied the primary purpose of the heat pipes was to transfer the heat to the case.

In support of my previous statement, your first post seemed to clearly imply this I understand what you mean now.

>I’m saying that this recommended rework generally interferes with this preferred situation, and certainly can’t help.

Can you clarify? From what I’ve read, the fans *do* come on more often, which implies to me that the rework gives the desired results (i.e. more heat leaving the case through the proper pathway). Are the fans not indicative that the heatpipes are getting hotter? To me, this is the strongest argument for the procedure.

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I’m not going to pick nits with you line by line, but a few points are worth addressing.

If you want to be technical, there are no heat sinks in any ordinary computer. Everything just transfers heat. A block of aluminum acts as a heat sink only while it’s warming up, and that’s not an important point. The thing between the CPU and the heat pipe is most properly called a “heat exchanger,” as is the thing between the other end of the heat pipe and the air. When I’m having technical discussions with engineers and product managers at companies that make thermal-management hardware– as I’ve done within the last month as part of my job– I use the proper terms. But here, I’m talking to people who use the term “heat sink” broadly to cover all these things, so in the interest of more effective communication, I use that term too. I also used the term “radiator” in an earlier comment here because that seemed to help.

I don’t actually know to what extent the heat pipes are coupled to the case, although obviously they are to some extent, through the air if nothing else. I think you’re maybe reading too quickly or something; I’ve never implied the primary purpose of the heat pipes was to transfer the heat to the case. But because they run close to the case– at least, closer than the CPU itself– if they’re hotter, the case nearby will likely be hotter.

You’re entirely correct to point out that if more heat gets into the heat pipes, and the fans come on, more heat leaves through the preferred path and therefore less leaves through other paths such as the case. But I’m not arguing against that. I’m saying that this recommended rework generally interferes with this preferred situation, and certainly can’t help.

But even so, unless the heat gets out of the CPU into the hot end of the heat pipe, it’s going to have a more difficult time getting into the case in that area. That essential truth undermines the rest of your argument, so I won’t spend much more time on it.

You’re correct to say that if the CPU is not well connected to its heat exchanger, the heat still has to go somewhere. With a good connection, the heat is directed to the relatively small areas around the hot chips, heat exchangers, and heat pipes. Without a good connection, it just goes everywhere. The heat pipes don’t get as hot, and the hot spots on the case don’t get as hot. So this creates the appearance of reduced case temperatures. The CPU, unfortunately, gets hotter.

This is why you’re wrong to say “the case temperature cannot be lower if heat is not dissipated through the fans.” The total heat leaving through the case is the same (barring thermal throttling, which must be happening in the most severe cases of user-induced damage), but it’s more diffuse, so the peak temperatures are lower. The difference between total flux and flux density is also one of those things they teach us in college, remember?

On the question of where the thermal sensors are located– well, there are several sensors. People are reporting all kinds of temperature readings, and some of them just don’t make sense– not according to my analysis or yours either. So honestly I don’t know what to make of these reports.

The MacBook Pro case certainly is meant to help dissipate heat, at least in the sense that Apple’s thermal engineers know perfectly well it provides a path to ambient. But yeah, they probably regard it as the undesirable path too.

You repeat the old canard about how “thick layers of thermal compound act as insulation.” We’re not talking about thick layers. It’s obvious from the photos of disassembled MacBook Pro systems that the excess goop Apple’s manufacturing technicians are squirting in there is almost entirely squeezed out when the heat sinks are mated to the chips; what’s left is a few thousandths of an inch thick. It’s certainly much thinner than an index card, which is around 0.007″ thick.

According to Wikipedia, “The typical silicon and zinc oxide thermal compound has thermal conductivity between 0.7 and 0.9 W/(m·K).” Now do the math– assume the CPU power is 31W, and tell me how much higher the CPU temperature will be for each additional 0.001″ of thermal compound. It works out to less than 0.001 degree C, literally unmeasurable.

In poking around on the net, I ran into this long article about some guy who tested many different kinds of thermal paste. Plus water, toothpaste, and Vegemite. The variance in his results across most of these substances, even with deliberate thickness variations, is just a few hundredths of a degree C per watt of power, or around one to two degrees of potential variance in CPU temperature. That’s less than the likely error margin for his measurements.

http://www.dansdata.com/goop.htm

Now– is this a blistering reply? Do I sound like a troll? I’m trying to sound like a guy with a lot of relevant professional experience designing and building microprocessor-based hardware. I’ve designed heat sinks for a living, with good results. I’m helping to design a microprocessor right now, and thermal management is one of the things I’m in charge of. So if you don’t mind, instead of f*cking myself, I’ll just get back to work.

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Our fundamental difference here is that *you* believe that the heatpipes (NOTE: Heat *pipes*, not heatsink! The heatpipes transfer heat to the heatsink near the fans.) are thermally coupled to the case. While this is unavoidable to some extent (simply due to the physical contact), thus causing a small temperature increase when the heatpipe temperature increases, this is *by far* negligible compared to the thermal buildup that occurs when heat is *not* transferred to the heatpipes. When heat is improperly transferred to the heatpipes, more heat must instead be dissipated through the case. You’ll also note that with the fans off (as is observed prior to modifications), any heat that *is* transferred to the heatsink is not even dissipated properly, meaning ALL thermal energy generated by the CPU must be dissipated through the case. This is certainly the cause of any significant case temperature increase.

Even if the heatsink temperature increases, by your own reasoning, the net heat efflux must equal the net heat generated. If more heat is dissipated through the hotter fan air, then the net heat dissipated through the case _must_ be smaller than if the total amount of generated heat were dissipated through the case, even if there is some heat “lost” from the heatpipe to the case along the way. The case temperature cannot be lower if heat is not dissipated through the fans, because - by your own reasoning - the thermal energy cannot simply be dissipated “into the internal components” and vanish (albeit causing damage, as was the intent of your words). The thermal energy will build up inside, increasing the temperature of the entire system until the case temperature is high enough that the rate of heat transfer from case to air balances the deficiency of the heatsink/fan. The small amount of leakage you speak of cannot be compared with this greater effect, and in fact is simply a ‘fudge factor’ associated with the fundamental issue: Of the total heat generated, a large portion is transferred to the fans and dissipated, but some doesn’t make it along the way; whereas, in a problematic system, simply none of the heat is dissipated through the fans, and *everything* is dissipated through the case.

In any case - heat is not, and never was, meant to be dissipated through laptop casing. The vast majority of laptop surfaces are plastic, which is *not* a good heat conductor. The sum total of exposed metal surface area in the casing is insignificant compared to that the heatsink, which is then cooled via fans. There should be minimal heat transfer from the heat pipes to the case, and maximal transfer to the heatsink, in order to ensure best efficiency - especially since the fans provide much more air flow through the heatsink than the case receives from the relatively still air. If heat is properly dissipated through the heatsink/fans, i.e. at a large enough rate, the rate of dissipation through the case will decrease since rate of generation is constant.

While it should now be intuitively obvious that the case will measure cooler, I will continue academically: the rate of heat transfer from case to air (or between any two heat reservoirs) is directly related to the temperature difference between the two reservoirs, and therefore we can extrapolate that the lower rate of heat flow through the case is indicative of a lower case temperature.

I’m surprised at your oversight; this knowledge is elementary to any first-year engineering student, and I expect that an ‘editor in chief’ of the Microprocessor Report would know at least as much.

>For a given system, each of these thermal resistances is a given. Increasing one, for example by damaging the thermal connection between the CPU and the heatsink as advised by the original ignorant article on Something Awful, doesn’t reduce the others.

You’re making a *huge* assumption here: The thermal connection is NOT being damaged. In fact, this is quite the opposite; if you know anything about thermal conduction, you must understand that thick layers of thermal compound act as insulation, causing resistance rather than greater conductivity. While we’re talking about circuit analogues, the principle of series resistance gives that a thick layer of *anything* beyond what is required to eliminate air gaps between the two metal surfaces will only increase resistance.

>So whatever you’re measuring, it doesn’t matter. If your case is hot, the CPU is hot.
This is the first valid point you’ve made, although not in the way you meant it. The hot case is indicative of improper heat transfer to the heatpipes, and therefore of intense heat buildup in _all_ internal components of the laptop.

>But it’s always better to get the heat to leave through the heatsink, heat pipes, fan-blown air, and other elements of the purpose-built thermal management system. The fact that the Something Awful recommendations are causing lower temperatures on the heat pipe-attached thermal sensors is proof positive that using too little thermal compound is BAD for the system.

You are misinformed: The thermal sensors used for those measurements are *directly on the CPU*, not on the heatpipes. However, it is mentioned that the fans spin up more, indicating that the sensors that _are_ located on the heatpipes are detecting a *higher* temperature. Thus, as is desired, the heatpipe temperature increases and the CPU temperature decreases, indicating that more heat is transferred from CPU to heatpipe.

The heatpipe then efficiently conducts the heat to the heatsink, where the large surface area allows the fans to efficiently remove heat from the system via an out-of-the-way air outlet. You will note that, because the heatsink temperature is higher, and therefore the temperature difference between the air (cold reservoir) and heatsink (hot reservoir) is greater, the rate of heat flow to the air is greater, in addition to the fact that there is a greater rate of air flow due to the fans actually being _on_.

Of course, since the NET heat flow is constant, this means there is less heat that remains to be dissipated through other means, i.e. through the case, and therefore the case remains stable at a lower equilibrium temperature (i.e. the temperature at which net outward heat flow is equal to heat generated).

Of course, your wounded ego will prompt you to post a blistering reply, picking on perceived logic errors in my later paragraphs based on your own fundamental understanding of the issue. However, I must warn you: As I detailed _very_ clearly in my first paragraph, your entire argument has been flawed from the beginning due to an oversimplification, and I advise you to read my post carefully, and proofread your arguments before posting them lest you have the ground cut out from underneath you. On the other hand, if you are simply trolling here, go f*ck yourself and get a life. There are people here who are genuinely trying to help others.

The bottom of the case is too hot to touch,