My MacBook Pro and I had a wild weekend: I reflowed the solder on its logic board three times in one day, then drilled 60 holes in its bottom case. Why?
I first started noticing heat issues about a year ago. My model of MacBook Pro is notorious for running too hot. And I run mine pretty hard: I’m a programmer for iFixit, and in my spare time, I game and make electronic music. On an average day, my laptop hovered between 80º and 90º C. One time I saw it climb as high as 102º C—hot enough to boil water.
So I tried some simple fixes. I blew out the inside of my laptop with compressed air. I bought a laptop stand and stopped using it on my lap. I enabled smcFanControl, a program that lets me run my fans at the max speed of 6200 rpm all the time.
But it still ran hot. And one day in March, it died. I was working on it when the screen suddenly went black. When I powered it off and on again, the power light lit, but I got no boot chime and the screen alternated between glitchy and black—it all screamed that something on the logic board was busted. Probably the water-boiling temperatures had caused the board to flex, knocking solder loose from its ball grid arrays. The likely fix? Reflow it: Heat it up until the balls of solder melt back into their assigned spots.
I’d never reflowed something before (though I’d read about people doing it to fix the Xbox Red Ring of Death). I thought about sending my laptop off to a professional reflow outfit, but I would’ve had to go a couple weeks without it. Fuhgeddaboudit.
Instead, I cracked open the back of my laptop, disconnected all eleven connectors and three heat sinks from the logic board, and turned the oven up to 340º F. I put my $900 part on a cookie sheet and baked it for seven nerveracking minutes.
After it cooled, I reapplied thermal paste, put it all back together, and cheered when it booted. It ran great for the next eight months. Temperatures averaged in the 60s and 70s C—although recently, they began creeping up again.
Then, two weeks ago, it died again. Same story: It was working one minute, then the next minute it went completely black. Again, no boot chime. No video.
I had a hunch that the problem was related to the thermal paste: When I disassembled it the first time, I had to scrape some thermal pads from under the Thunderbolt controller and the system hub. This left a large gap between the heat spreader and the chip. I’d tried to fill the gap with an extra big gob of thermal paste, but I suspected that the paste hadn’t gotten a good seal. So after putting my logic board through another oven treatment, I bought a couple of thin copper sheets, cut them down to size, and thermal pasted them into the spaces under the chips.
It booted and ran again—until Friday.
So Saturday, a friend and I played laptop doctor all day. We started by trying to locally apply heat to the logic board with a heat gun. Since we didn’t have an infrared thermometer, we had to eyeball it, waiting for the solder to look a little gooey and the board to smell like it was cooking (the smell is somewhere between baking cookies and burning plastic). We tried to aim the gun at the chips where I thought there was a problem, and we shielded more sensitive parts with little strips of aluminum foil. After that first reflow, the computer booted and ran, but just for an hour.
The second attempt, we tried using the heat gun again, but this time it wouldn’t boot.
Finally, we sent it back into the oven—for seven and a half minutes, in case getting it a little hotter made a difference. And while it baked, we decided it was time to break out the bigger guns. That is, we pulled out a drill. With a 1/16” bit, we drilled holes in the bottom case, under the fans (we figured out where the blades of the fan were exposed based on the dust pattern stuck to the inside of the bottom case). The speed holes worked: The boot chime rang. The screen glowed. The fans blew.
These are speed holes. They make the computer go faster.
There’s noticeably increased airflow—when I put a piece of paper on the bottom of the computer, it sticks to the case. Its average temperature is down in the 40s and 50s, lower than it’s been since before March.
It’s a little early for a final verdict, but the computer has now been running without incident for fifteen days. Unconventional electronics repair tools they may be, but that’s how I saved my MacBook Pro with a drill and an oven.
Sterling Hirsh is a programmer for iFixit. He's used Macs most of his life, but he's also built a couple PCs. He goes to quake con every year. And that's a fun thing to do, too.
Comments are closed.
Repair is noble.

Great job! I almost want to do the holes to my mid-2009 MB Pro even though it doesn’t overheat. Cooler operation is better regardless.
nice article
looks like you should also clean those two fans, eh?
Didn’t you try to replace the fans in the first place?
Buy a good looking windows laptop
Install a Hackintosh
Problem solved ;)
I use this as a Laptop stand, never had issues with my 2009 MB Pro over-heating again.
http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/46088/how-does-a-miracle-thaw-work
Pick the most powerful parts and build a beast of a computer.
Install OSX Yosemite on it.
Problem solved.
Check mine on YouTube: “Red Pro hackintosh”
What version is this macbook pro? Mine is a 2012 and never had a problem w/ overheating.
Remind me never to send my computer to iFIXIT.
good idea, except the holes look terrible. I would have actually made a full size hole (Considering how hard it must be to make holes in the aluminum case and have them perfectly align) and then glued a screen mesh in it such as this one http://www.amazon.com/120mm-Black-Steel-Computer-Filter/dp/B00DBW6H8S/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1419894239&sr=8-2&keywords=computer+fan+mesh. this way you can blow and vacuum the fans in the future.
interesting / fun…
but you definitely had two things going on since it wasn’t prevented from booting because it was overheating. you did 2 things at once. the last reflow must have fixed the booting issue and the holes may or may not be related to anything (since you didn’t isolate variables, you can’t say for sure that the reflow helped the temps).
I recently repaired an Early 2011 MacBook Pro like this one. They do run hot, and have almost no air intakes – the rear vent itself is the largest intake on the machine. The keyboard is covered by a plastic sheet underneath, so the belief that the keyboard serves as an intake is an unfounded one. I have a Late 2011 MacBook Pro with a damaged Logic Board that is occasionally used for 3D work, and since it never leaves my desk, I removed the bottom case and stood the machine up so the rear vent is facing upward since I’m sure the machine would already be dead now if I hadn’t taken such drastic measures. I also have a MacBook Air (Mid 2012 13″) that has seen temperates as high as 107C – above Intel’s recommended Tjunction Max temperature – without a thermal shutdown. As a former Apple technician (ACMT) and owner of more than 30 Apple machines both new and old, I can say with confidence that the machines look great and structurally are quite sound, but their cooling systems leave a lot to be desired.
There are so many things wrong with this. Between the complete lack of correct vocabulary in describing parts and components and lack of proper troubleshooting and understanding the described symptoms (as someone already pointed out) this clown has no clue. PLEASE NO ONE EVER TRY AND REPEAT THIS. Not everything on a main logic board is designed for oven baking-i.e. extreme heat. If step one had been actually understanding what the symptoms were pointing to and then performing proper component isolation like a true technician then maybe these conclusions could have been proven unfounded. I guarantee baking it in the oven that many times broke another IC and related busses, etc. as much as you want to pretend that “reflowing” actually worked. I also guarantee you didn’t do any of this in a properly grounded and static protected environment. Apple’s Engineerig teams have oodles of applied thermal dynamics experience and I disagree completely with the previous comment that their designs are lacking. First, the case being closed forces the airflow out the back horizontally pulling it away from the heatsink. The feet lift the panel to allow natural air to flow under the laptop on a flat surface. Drilling holes like those shown stop air from being pulled across and away the heatsink as designed and instead just up through the holes and out-less effective.
WTF! I can’t imagine that anyone can do that in a Macbook Pro. Well, you should have tried out some online tips to solve the problem! Shit! No one will ever to that mad thing.
Came here to say exactly what “U R Kidding, right?” said so I won’t repeat it again, he already hit the nail on the head. Would seriously advise against anyone attempting this
I have TWO MacBook Pro’s of different year models that have BOTH died from thermal overload issues.
Apple thermal design on the MBP line is pathetic.
The first was repaired under an extended warranty that they finally owned up to.
The second is currently a brick.
There are two pending class action suits facing Apple regarding the model year for the dead MBP I own.
Apple seem to be ignoring it in the hope that we’ll lose interest as the machines age.
I will _never_ buy another MBP again. They’re atrociously bad for overheat death.
I may try an oven reflow just for the sake of it. I have nothing to lose except a brick.
I am extremely skeptical that Apple will open an extended warranty fix for a 3.5 year old laptop.
My iMac on the other hand is designed with real thermal capacity.
It has a real set of vents, a lovely vertical air path and a huge single silent fan that I _never hear_.
The MBP fans put a vacumm cleaner to shame.
If you _must_ buy a MBP, don’t run it hot and hard. It’ll die.
The holes are placed badly, and idea execution is ugly!
You could do some precision drilling, instead you got this, congrats!
Apple’s engineers are such “geniuses” yet they failed to provide an adequate air intake for the fans. Good job.
Nice :) Most importantly it works and will.
Best regards!
Regardless to the bashers up this comment. I like the idea of breaking open the “specially designed airflow concept” of Apple. Why? Because my MBP late 2011 is my heather in the winter!
I love apple for the looks en the feel, and the OS is very enjoyable. Still I would trade my MBP anytime for an Air, just for it’s heat and sound problems!
Thanks for post, I I admire your guts.
Apple’s design is very specific, and as mentioned previously driving heat away from the heatsink is the best way to cool it down and the most effective. Dust and dirt is the biggest culprit and the operating temperature stated on the website is (50° to 95° F). This is EXTERNAL temp, so the inside may be higher but external should not exceed this. Using third party temp checkers is a terrible idea. they will not give accurate results and running those sorts of apps on a computer will increase cpu usage so they will contribute to cpu core temp.
The bottom case is also meant to get warm, it radiates heat away from the internals of the computer.
Third, they should not be compared to iMacs. It is evident that some in the above threads seem to think that the iMac is better with heat, That is because it has 3 fans. 3 LARGE fans.
One for the cpu, one for the hard drive and one for the optical drive. The logic board has an enormous heatsink and the graphics card has one too.
People are ready to sue Apple etc when they have no idea how the internal components work or why they are assembled the way they are.
Keep your machine clean, don’t run 30 third party monitoring apps for your battery and cpu etc and try not to have mackeeper installed.
Bad software is a bigger contributor than most people think
haha nice :)
Congrats on your repair!
I’m excited for the iFixit Easy-Bake Reflow Oven to be released.
Fyi – thermal grease is only minimally heat conductive. Use too thick of a layer and you will reduce the heat transmitted through the heat sink. I have had to remove excess paste and reapply in some cases to get CPU temperatures down to reasonable levels. Don’t overapply the paste!
Awesome post! Always fun to see a little ingenuity!
Engineering teams or Design Teams? These MBP have a very serious air intake problem (under load) and I am glad that it has been mentioned here.
Re: oven method — if it works, why not?
We live in a world of manufacturing where If you get 3 years out of a product, you should be really happy. Trying to hold on to it longer than that is an act of futility. The fact that you spent so much time trying to resurrect your clearly destroyed MBP rather than just buy a new one, since it appears that you can afford it, is slightly ridiculous. Sure, it worked. For now. Until you write another article explaining what you oven-fried in the process a few weeks from now. I wouldn’t let a small child use this machine, because who knows what kind of dangers you have exposed it to. Also, you have failed to realized that any laptop, and certainly MBP’s, are not designed as a do-it-all product 100% all-the-time. Power users need to understand that you can’t run your machine 24/7 and expect it to live to see it’s 3rd birthday. If you kept your flat-screen television on all-day everyday playing blu-rays, do you really thing it would last 3 years?
I am also a Programmer, so what I do on my MBP, is simply code, check email, browse the net, listen to music, etc.. Oh and I also have an Air which I do most of the same things, except for maybe the music bit. I also have a decent Linux desktop that I use for more power computing if need be. I have had all these machines for well over 4 years (except the Air, as it replaced my other 2007 MBP, just last year, which still runs, but you can no longer update the OS). So, why is that I have all these machines that have gone far beyond their extended life expectancy, yet you seem to have bricked yours so quickly? Simply care dude. I took care of my stuff and it has survived well longer than Apple expected it to. Instead of blaming the product, blame yourself for your inability to use and take care of things the way you should. You work for a site that is supposed to help you repair things, not slander the company that makes them. Leave your judgmental comments at the door next time you post an article about how to “fix” something. If that’s what we’re calling this.
I have an early 2011 13.3 macbook pro, and i´ll have to reapply thermal paste in order to get lower on-load temperatures ((it will reach 90 celsius degrees under high load (virtualization), and VLC is running wild too)).
That was very commented in apple forums; early 2011 machines have bad thermal paste and 15.4″ models maybe had bad gpu dies (like 8600m gt ones).
I have the same computer and same problems. I did replace the thermal paste but it didn’t help. I think I will also make some extra holes there.
nerve wracking
Ten minutes’ research into MBP2011s would have told you the source of your problem and also the most consistently successful repair for it (reballing with lead solder, $140 on average).
You’re welcome to do with your property as you wish, but please don’t suggest a potentially board-destroying approach as a useful solution when others far less radical exist. I was fortunate enough to work for an organization that bought a 3 year warranty on my MPB2011 and had first dibs on replacement mobos, but many weren’t.
Stick a motherboard in a cooking oven?
Most times in geeky activities, i solve such problem by dismantling the whole machine, blow it out,,unscrew the chips heat sinks remove the old heat sink compound and tighten well minding the ventilation paths.Do not forget to clean the cooling fans of dust then oiling. The machine should be able to run fine
Super awesome. I have a tricked out 2011 MacBook Pro that performs as well as my newest MacBook (16GB ram + 1TB SSD), but it kept failing in the same way and I’ve replaced / repaired the logic board twice!
It’s now just my ‘backup’ computer, but I’m soooo gonna drill some wholes in the base after your brave/desperate experiment.
And at this point, unless you’re doing something super special, laptops of this year are as good as laptops of a couple years ago, if a little heavier.
It sucks that you had go through all this. I’ve had my 2010 15′ MBP for 4.5 years now and i run it pretty hard. Its almost always connected to an external display and im always doing something fairly intensive whether its 1080p video playback or encoding video files. Apple does make mistakes, but that goes pretty much for every computer brand out there.
All the comments about the modification being ugly are amusing. It’s the bottom of the computer. It’s functional. Who cares!
Several years back I read an analysis of computer failure produced by HP. They found that overheating was the most common cause of failure – and that overheating caused problems inside the chips – causing thermal runaway. But the problem was “cascading”. The first overheating would find the weakest chip (most susceptible to overheating) and cause it to overheat and then put stress on other parts of the same chip. And the resulting failure would also put stress on other chips in the system. The result was more chips more prone to overheating. The solution was two-fold – prevent the first overheating (eg clean the “dust blanket”) and produce better chips (since HP was making many of their own chips at the time.)
At this point, I would guess that you have a very fragile machine which will need to be kept very cool if you want it to keep working. (And, in my experience, the reflow trick worked mostly because of a poor initial job with the soldering — allowing relatively minor movement to break the solder.)
Your liquid cool unit leaked out most likely – what you’ve done is a temporary fix (making the processor air cooled instead of liquid cooled). The cooling units fail when people hold their laptop (closed) like a book and squeeze a bit too hard against the sides near the hinge. It has a tendency to flex the cooling unit and the tubes fail and leak out. This I know because the same thing happened to me and all it took was a new cooling unit to replace the old – however, I waited too long and it fried my motherboard.
Actually one of our guys does this regularly on fax machines because people are too cheap to go out and buy new ones or the new ones don’t do what they want (actually most new ones are multi-function printers and people just want a fax machine which no one really sells here anymore).
He just sets it on the lowest setting and does it for about 10 minutes and it seems to work.
Also, I have this model as well and I’ve had ZERO problems with it overheating.
I’ve cleaned it out about twice over its lifetime but it mostly sits on a desk where it has proper airflow.
It’s users who have this bad idea to run it on a bed where the airflow is minimal at best that cause these issues.
The product would’ve looked a lot better if you drilled the holes using a CNC milling machine, but I guess you’re sticking the rest of the laptop in an oven anyway.
It’s amazing how Apple thinks they magically don’t need ventilation in their computers, and people keep wondering why Macbooks constantly have overheat issues like this – I can’t wait til they start doing fanless systems with no ventilation, maybe then people will realize how stupid this is, just to make the BOTTOM look prettier.
I’ve got an early 2011 15″ with a 6750, and my GPU started to develop problems three years and one day after I purchased it. The integrated graphics still work, but the AMD GPU is NF. I am currently running Linux on it because I can control which GPU is used at boot but I miss having an external monitor ( which Apple disabled on the integrated GPU to get the graphics switching working, I guess). I am sorely tempted to try this – I thought about buying a replacement logic board but I don’t want to go through this BS again. If I could find a reputable facility to do the re-ball I’d consider that too but so far the ones I’ve seen seem to be kids with spudgers and heat guns. Regardless it’s BS that a $2500 laptop dies after three years in huge numbers and Apple is ignoring the issue.
The “fact” of the matter is that the temperatures were falling well into a catagory that is completely and utterly unreasonable. He didn’t really need to diagnose that, perhaps he could have tried another solution first but using that as an excuse to denounce him is well, whiney and self righteous. There’s clearly been an overwhelming amount of overheating issues with this model which some commentors seem to blindly ignore. Simply asserting “well apple knows best” is stupid at best. As for drawing the heat away, no. Most people who build PC hardware know that pushing from the outside is better. I’d also argue that he’s merely increased airflow by doing as such, his choice and would seem to be backed up with evidence; ie his temps dropped a further 20~ degrees after his resetting attempts. Pointing out a lack of terminology is just plain unhelpful. I suggest you go back to your Apple School of Misinformation and kindly shut the fuck up. Any reasonably intelligent person understands this mod is extreme and wouldn’t need to be told otherwise.
Ps. Anyone who thinks it’s reasonable to expect that you cannot run a laptop 24/7 is an idiot. Making comparisons to screens and mechanical components is similarly stupid.
I run tablets, phones, pcs, fridges; all 24/7. You turn screens off to save the brightness and mechanical components generally turn themselves off if not in use. I’ve also had hard drives last 5 years, and whilst this is anecdotal of course I don’t think it unreasonable to expect this kind of hardware to run likewise over 24/7 usage (remember, mechanical devices spin down even if the computer is on). Certainly they shouldn’t be failing from 102 degree heat!
If Apple didn’t intend this device to run sustainably over extended usage then (although laughable), they should damn well say. Instead of, you know, interpretting it as such?
Once again thankyou to the article writer I will be sure to show my friend who will have great amusement!
Heatguns are only $10 or $20 at the hardware store (don’t bother with expensive ones). MBP early 2008 model, with the usual graphics/Nvidia chip issue. Failed/wouldn’t boot 4 years after purchase, and just one month after warranty extension end date we got for the Nvida settlement.
Take out logic board, clean thermal paste off CPU/GPU chip, wrap board in foil and cut opening for the chip. On a flat heat resistant surface outside, blow over chip with heatgun slowly get closer, one or two minutes max. Leave alone for at least an hour, then reapply thermal paste (a small drop in the middle), reassemble the bastard and you should be good for 3 months to 1 year. Repeat again when fails. Do not onsell your MBP, no one wants your problems. Give it to your family or friend so you can fix it again later.
Doing it in an oven will create a chemical stink and may cause other components to fail prematurely.
Haters gonna hate. It’s so hilarious to see people get their knickers in a twist over this post. If this solution works for you, go for it. If you don’t feel comfortable doing it, so be it.
Could it be the battery? Did you noticed it’s charge was lasting less at the same time you had all those issues?
Haha great article. This reminds me of the time I had reflowed two 3870 Crossfired cards and a 9500gt card for a friend. One worked fine for another 3-4 months and it was great. When summer came along one card died. The other 3870 would last me until the winter before dying as well.
I wonder if it ever occurred to that guy that maybe the fans weren’t designed to be going full chat 24/7 and that installing overriding software might have made the problem worse. I mean what kind of programming for iFixIt would make it run that hot? It’s not like he’s probably making something that’s super CPU heavy unless he has a really crappy IDE and also is mining bitcoins in the background or something equally retarded.
I don’t recall any MacBook Pro running cool enough to be an actual laptop for many years, I’m assuming this dude just installed random temperature monitoring software and took it as gospel. Most computers I’ve seen die because of “heat” were actually just filthy inside because of pets/smoking/general slobbiness.
If he’s really using it for work and this was an actual problem, just buy a new one. It’s 2014 so that model is 5 years old. Unless he’s doing something graphically intensive (lol no) then just get a MacBook Air.
This article makes me question the competence of iFixIt.
It felt like I was reading some nerve wrecking, full of suspense thriller!!
Keep us posted about how is it going now..
First of all the root cause of this is the faulty AMD graphics chip, not the thermal design of the macbook pro. The AMD graphics chip goes above it’s specified heat generation quota for a given load. This doesn’t happen for all night coding sessions, this only happens when you play 3D games for hours on end, and not doing “work.”
Running the fans at full blast all the time does NOT help. In fact, you may have been heating other parts of the board up due to the increase in the heat transfer coefficient. Those fans are only designed to be at full speed for short periods of time. Again, the GPU should not be generating as much heat as it does, because it’s a faulty design, and this is exacerbated by excessive 3D gaming, instead of doing work on your macbook PRO.
So we can take away from this, that iFixit’s programmers are too busy playing 3D games and blogging about problems with their macbook pro as a result of them playing too many 3D games, instead of programming and doing work. As a result, instead of applying scientific principles to determine the root cause, said programmer just ends up cooking his laptop in an oven based on a hunch, taking a hand drill and drilling holes in the case (with no reason other than that they are right by the fan, thereby all the cool air that comes in completely bypasses the entire pc board and just exists out the exhaust vents) and then spends more time NOT working by making a blog post about it. What an incredible display of how to avoid critical thinking skills by demonstrating multiple fallacies in a single blog post!
I had a stack of 4 dead MBPs in my office for a while. One was mine, the rest belonged to friends. All of then died due to overheating. I had the logic board replaced on my one, then when it died after 6 months I switched back to PCs. If I had read this piece then I would certainly have tried this. What would I have to lose? Sadly all 4 machines went to the great recycle bin in the sky a couple of years ago. I am no longer interested in buying Apple hardware.
Have been using a laptop fan like this for years: http://amzn.to/1x4LPLG
Every teeny girl should be warned to stop using their laptops on their beds …
In reply to “U R Kidding, right?” comment
> I also guarantee you didn’t do any of this in a properly grounded
> and static protected environment.
This is obvious trolling on a site dedicated to people who DIY repairs and can take advice good or bad… I would imagine more than a few ifixit readers own the “I void warranties” t-shirt.
> Apple’s Engineering teams have oodles of applied thermal dynamics experience
> and I disagree completely with the previous comment that their designs
> are lacking.
I completely lost faith in Apple thermal designs after diving into the problems of the 1st gen Time Capsule. The orginal Time Capsule is an absolute mess. I have done the Eutechnics mods on a 1st gen time capsule and can attest that it is a very ingenious fix and quite similar to drilling a Mac Pro for airflow.
http://www.fackrell.me.uk/page8/page2/page2.html
My 2011 MacBook Pro suffers from overheating and will likely open up the bottom for airflow if it gets any worse.
Still rocking a first gen. MBP. It’ll get hot enough to fry eggs and then some. Looks like I’ll be taking out the hole saw and drilling some holes ! Jobs never liked the look of cooling vents so engineering was handicapped in that regard.
Sorry – but baking it at 340F did not reflow the BGA balls. Tin/lead eutectic solder (the solder with the lowest melting point available) reflows at 361F. The alloy used by Apple is probably RoHS compliant, so that means it has no lead…and subsequently a much higher liquidus temperature. Most likely over 400F.
You probably removed some moisture from the part during the bake, and improved airflow by adding the holes. Redoing some thermal grease helped move the heat off the die too. One thing you don’t know, or at least address, is the difference in thermal conductivity of the paste used by Apple and the paste you used.
Nice work. A rather gutsy repair and a very informative and interesting story. The reflow part is great and is a nice illustration of how to do reflow on the cheap (and with some risk). I’d love to know what the reflow conditions are like at the factory where these machines are built.
It’s also interesting how your story brought out a number of pontificating experts regarding the horrors of what you did, hectoring you from pretty shaky positions. I am not sure if thats funny or sad.
Sorry, you did not reflow anything. Tin-Lead eutectic solder reflows at 183C. SAC solder, the more likely choice on your modern board (nobody uses lead solder in the commercial industry any longer) reflows above 200C, most common ones around 220C. Your 340 F oven only reaches 171.1 C.
More likely it was the thermal paste reapplication that improved cooling and finally putting better ventilation in the unit with the holes that solved your issue. Likely lucky it works after baking.
NOT recommended
Hey, super cool idea, I just did the same in my early 2011 17″ and it run cooler now. Check this out :
http://cl.ly/image/172c1z2E3O2k
http://cl.ly/image/283h0k461j1v
http://cl.ly/image/1f3I2k1o2s0i
Now I just need to buy some small grills to keep the dust out!
For some extra zing I add squeezed lemon, garlic and oregano…
You guys know I love iFixit, but let’s talk.
Holes–fine. creative.
Thermal paste monkey business–fine. standard.
Cooking your motherboard? Um, No. This is a bad idea.
Can we call a spade a spade on this reballing/reflowing of chips? It is not a good repair.
My Dad primarily fixes things with superglue and duct tape. (Including his teeth. Yes, that’s right. I said teeth.) THIS IS NOT FIXING. Reflowing bad chips is exactly the same…but worse, since you’re gonna break other stuff.
Commenter David is right–you are NOT reflowing anything–physically impossible at 340F. This is one of those things like putting a phone in rice. It “seems” like it would make sense–cracked solder balls, just heat it up and reflow it, yeah! I’m not an expert on laptop repair, but there seems to be a lot of pushback in the repair community on this idea. I can say for sure that unless you hit 217C you’re not melting the type of solder used in modern devices. I’ve seen it on the iPhone 4s WiFi chip, same deal—it is a chip problem. Mildly heating the chip brings back function–but it will fail again.
Why should I care what you do with your laptop? Here’s why:–there IS a repair out there for this. Replacement of the GPU with a new one. Bad chip out, good chip in. Good as new. The motherboard itself is not a black box. You can learn to fix it, or consider sending it out to someone who can fix it as a tool for your repair. When we spread the word about duct tape and superglue “fixes” that can cause someone to ruin what WAS a PERFECTLY REPAIRABLE board—–that is not iFixit, that’s uBROKEIT, no?
that’ll be two cents.
jessa
Firstly, the problem is not in the balls, it is in the chip. Lead free solder is used in Thinkpad T520 laptops which have discrete GPUs that can mine litecoin using CUDA for months on end with no problem. Every laptop for the past seven or so years has used lead free solder balls, and so many of them work JUST FINE!
It.
is.
not.
the.
balls.
STOP SPREADING THIS!!
It is the CHIP! The CHIP is dead.
So let’s go over this again. The following can be said for your laptop.
1) No ventilation holes.
2) Video memory boils with no cooling.
3) Video memory is right under GPU.
4) GPU shares heatsink with CPU.
5) CPU is a QUAD CORE SANDY BRIDGE.
I couldn’t destroy your GPU faster with a blowtorch than you could with just watching youtube. This is the worst thermal design short of the DV9000.
Now, let’s go over the ball related mess.
1) 340f is 171c.
2) 171c won’t melt leaded solder balls(180f melting point), much less the lead free balls that melt around 217c.
They actually melt higher on initial melt. You can solder a thermocouple to a GPU as you solder it and watch with a camera zoomed in on the balls under the chip, you don’t really get melting until 220s.
3) The temperature of the balls is going to be lower than the temperature of the air in the oven. For example with a professional hot air station, to get a temperature of 225 under the balls, I ramp it to 245.
So your solder balls are probably getting to 150c, 160c maybe. This is not a reflow.
What you are doing is messing with the actual die of the chip itself. This is where the failure has occurred. This is a zombie chip, and will be dead in very short time. You can see for yourself by simply heating the chip to 120c for a few minutes that you can fix it temporarily, even though this is 100c too low to melt lead free solder. Google a bit on flip chip design for more detail on how these chips are made and why they are more prone to failure than other types of BGA packages/.
This is not repair. This is jerry rigging, which is TOTALLY COOL AND AWESOME AND AMAZING so long as it is not touted as repair. It gives the wrong idea. If you call something jerry rigged, jerry rigged, and it fails in 30 days, hey, who cares right? But if you call it repaired and it fails again in 30 days, it lowers consumer confidence in repair.
And that’s a crap thing to do. :(
funny story, but recommending SMC fancontrol that only fcks with your system and places yahoo in every browser you should get punished hard
I also recommend a copper shim on both cpu and gpu, with thermal paste on each side ofcourse.
You can get copper shims on ebay for a couple bucks, well worth it.
The points about the oven being too cool seem valid. I wonder if the fix was actually flexing the board to reestablish connections? Or perhaps removing moisture?
Anyway, worth knowing about. Kudos.
You oly need a SMC reset :)
Not more, that’s all!
Louis Rossmann is 100% Right.
Reflowing is not repairing!
Advice to everybody: read the comment of Louis before putting your logic board in the oven or using a heat gun!!!
Louis Rossmann is 100% Right.
Reflowing is not repairing!
Advice to everybody: read the comment of Louis before putting your logic board in the oven or using a heat gun!
I’m sorry, but this was stupid. I have had several MacBook Pros over the years. My current one is a late 2013 MacBook Pro 15inch. All of them have ran hot from time to time depending on what I was doing with them at the time. If yours ran hot for no good reason, it’s obvious you had a defect. Why not allow Apple to address it? If you’re out of warranty, and there are no visible signs of accidental damage, then you could have paid their flat rate repair fee to have it send off to a repair depot. I love repairing things on my own, and I’ve done a lot of upgrading, but I would never drill holes into the bottom of my MacBook Pro.
http://new1.fjcdn.com/thumbnails/comments/Those+are+speed+holes+they+make+the+car+go+faster+_194150a9337e65ca65c7801be58bd632.jpg
Nice tuning, but pretty lousy.
To made easy, faster and beautiful air grid:
– Design the holes position with drawing software. (With the correct dimensions)
– Print on paper.
– Apply in place with adhésive tape.
– Drill on the paper positions.
Enjoy.
The MacBook fanboys are out to play!
I would’ve spent a little more time drilling the holes so they don’t look a mess.
Sorry this is such a bad idea. First, clean the dang fans. Dirty fans run slower and move less air. Second and more important, any machine over 2 years old ( unless under Applecare as it will void warranty) should have the crappy thermal paste removed and replaced with something better. ( I use Arctic Silver 5 ) All normal paste dries out after 1-2 years and that means less heat transferred to the heat sink and more heat at the chip. I have worked on thousands of Apple machines and these 2 things solve 99% of heat issues. I also use SMC fan control but I set the minimum speed about 20% higher than stock and only advise wide open when using Handbrake or other CPU intensive programs, and then turn it back down when down. Running the fans above 70% all the time will end their life much sooner than normal. A 20% raise will not affect fan life and it keeps the temps under 110F for every machine I have done this with. Most machines will stay under 100F.
As others have pointed out Apple designs an Air Flow pattern for cooling and the new holes disrupt that. This really is sad for an iFixIt Employee to not even clean the fans first or even think about the thermal paste. All companies use cheap non-conductive paste so it can be slathered on without shorting anything in the area out. Artic Silver 5 is conductive so it must be applied carefully and all that is needed is a very thin layer ( I use a single edge razor blade to apply it ) to fill in the tiny voids in the 2 matting metals. More is not better and will actually hinder heat transfer. I thought iFixIt had some knowledge but this makes me wonder. I have been working on Computers since 1986 and also have a background in Electronics. My 3.6 cents. ( due to inflation )
Nice fix! I had one similar.
MBP 13″ 2009
-removed a . 5″ thick square of dust where the fan buts up to the screen of the computer.
Once I removed that, I achieved 50°c with the single fan (on light web browsing duty)
-Next, I added rubber bumpers to the bottom of my MacBook, lifting it .5″ off my working surfaces.
This allows the metal case to let off heat, which led to a 5-10°c difference (on light web browsing duty)
I’m inspired and interested enough to try a 1″ hole with mesh covering under my mac though. this might increase my cooling while on games or in HD streaming.
I have done this oven reflux many time saving customer from buying expensive new or used logic boards. It works and I am very happy it does, so that apple don’t get our money.
My question is much more mundane: how could the motherboard be put in the oven for several minutes without the plastic connectors melting? Especially at the required temp for proper reflow (around 225 degrees), plastic connectors are far outside their usual safe range of 80-110 degrees (depending on plastic type)
Use the best silver thermal paste and a laptop stand with cooling, anything else may be too extreme and bad for the hardware in the long run.
Also, today may be a cooler season where you live, so take that into account too.
Congrats!
You made yourself a new vacuum cleaner!
Just repaired my 2008 MBP with a heat gun. Tested on a dime with some solder first to get correct timing in melting the flux. After that another test on a scavenged printboard to make sure the heat would not lose SMD components on the other side of the motherboard. Eventually I placed the mainboard on tinfoil to redirect excessive heat from the components on that side, I also covered the top with tinfoil except for the NVIDIA I needed to reflow. I had some Arctic Silver heatpaste left from a XBOX 360 repair and eventually I am now happy to report all is working again. My 2009 MBP will probably need the same treatment someday because these heat problems are indeed severe…
I agree with Louis.
I have been an electronics technician for over 40 years.
The lowest melt solder is 361 deg f. that is 63-37 sn-pb eutectic solder.
Apple products are made using lead free solders and depending on the particular alloy can be anywhere from 50-70 degrees hotter melt. When I reflow solder I use 600 deg for eutectic and 700 for lead free.
I suspect the chip is overheating and opening up, I suspect the reheating stabilized the internals until such time as the thermal cycle again caused a malfunction.
I am not a fan of stacked electronics as the top piece acts as the heat sink for the lower chip and ends up over heating. Buy a well engineered PC.
Glad it worked for you. You have the right idea but the execution could have been better though. Your reflowing of the board was fine (heck, the worst you’ll end up with is a non-functioning logic board, but since it was a doorstop anyways you had nothing to lose), so I can’t see why some people are complaining about that. No, baking it in an oven won’t break the board or any of the components on it. That’s how the thing was soldered in the first place from the factory!
The holes on the bottom of the laptop though.. umm… yeah, we need to talk about that. :D
Without some kind of template it’s really tough to get a good hole pattern and the end result looks amateur-ish. Instead of a drill bit you should have used a 1 1/2″ hole saw to cut a single round hole (remember to put a piece of scrap wood underneath the workpiece when you saw into it too), then used a half-round file to de-burr the hole. Once you had the hole you could cover it from the side that faces the logic board with a piece of “modder’s mesh” and secure it in place with epoxy. The end result would look a lot more professional and would actually require less work than trying to drill individual ventilation holes.
Hi,
this is really sad story. Hole pattern on bottom is terrible, no terrible is that iFixit published it. :)
I have 17″ mid 2010, after installing 10.9 started problems with extensive CPU usage and annoying fan noise.
But I disabled proces “systemstats” and App Nap and problem was resolved.
So a decided that 10.9.5 is last installed OSX on A1297, because in Apple are still trying make best PC at all costs. :)
Besides of the somewhat excentric method of baking a logic board and drill holes in the bottom case of the MBP, I sense a kind of accepance of the fact that a high tech piece like a Macbook turns to a dead brick after three years. In paticular, “Irrelevant’s” comment is disturbing and maybe really irrelevant. Why the heck should I accept an intentionally reduced life span? For Apple it is a means to generate turnover; as being a marketing consultant myself I understand the strategy. But as a consumer I am far away from supporting this concept. We can start a long discussion about planned obsolescence, the only conclusion can be not to accept this and to demonstrate alternative concepts until the manufacturers get the message.
I run a quite succesful Repair Café in Kassel, a mid size City in Germany. And a standard complaint is a deep frustration about almost new household appliances, electronics, computers etc. that die just a couple of days after the end of the warranty. The good news, however, is that replacing a 20 cent capacitor or a heat sensor can put a coffee machine or a vacuum back to life. So, if overheating is a problem for a Mac, we can do two things: Take any appropriate measure to solve the problem – as described here – and send a strong signal to Apple. The Windows/Unix machines probably aren’t any better, so they might not be a real alternative. But a constant stream of complaints and a bad press will help moving the balance from the Marketing Dept. back to the Engineereing Dept.! Engineers are not really happy to be forced to develop products that have a reduced life span, they know that there are better solutions. Let’s support them! iFixit and Repair Cafés are a great platform to send this message – to the companies and to the consumers.
Could it be that dust is a major contributor to overheating? If, like me, you have your computer(s) in an old dusty environment airflow is bound to gradually suffer. Why are easily cleaned air filters not part of the original design? Cars (automobiles) all have air filters which presumably are mainly designed to prevent modern engine sensors from working properly.
I have recently purchased a new Mac Pro and am considering making a filter for it to sit on but am not sure if slightly restricting the air intake would cause more harm than good. In any case the Mac Pro is the only Apple product that is easy to access so probably not worth the effort.
I tried using a pick-axe to make my speed-holes. (Doh!)
I think everyone agrees that heat is the culprit for malfunction in the MBP?
Remember Apple engineers know this is a problem, the fix is tough trying to stay slim & trim.
I guess I don’t understand the oven theory? Heat reduces the life of any machine so why the oven when a good cleaning would do the job? I read no bed? That really is a no no for air circulation and the lap is bad enough-but they are laptops right? What happens when you put any kind of obstruction of air flow on the radiator of your car? Yes it cooks, a dirty Radiator plunged with debre is the same as a computer.
Another thing is the GAMES-I never run those on my computer and it’s BS when they say they won’t hurt the Computer, it takes to much power witch over heats the machine and there you have heat ? Has anyone thought about the battery, I know the MBP has the best in the business but they can be faulty As well.
The Battery will put out termendus heat depending on the draw, just a thought?
Keep it CLEAN guys.
I applaud your idea and attempt. I do hope it works longer for you this time however it is rarely only one solution to solve a problem like this. Also, a re-flow is almost always a temp fix and re-balling is the the way to go. Awesome job though. I commend you for your successes thus far.
It’s great! But…
It would be better if the holes would be drilled neat and little bit bigger…
It’s no good that you did no one hole to let heated air go out.
Hi there, to everyone with the graphic problem I suggest you read this article: https://people.cam.cornell.edu/~zc227/extras/early2011mbp_graphics.html#fixed_prevent
I have a MBP 2010 with the graphic problem, thanks to the GFX card switch: https://gfx.io/ – my mac now work beautifully… Even if the screen is not performing as it used to. If you can’t start your mac at all try restarting it with extensions off (left shift key at startup) and then installing GFX card.
With reference to overheating, I believe it is due to the dust, if you remove the fans, there is no need to remove the motherboard or anything else (so you’ll also avoid the problem of reapplying the paste), You will notice that all the dust collects at the exit of the fans as the air enters the ducts. Get a toothbrush and get it all clean. Resist the temptation of drilling holes and clean the fans instead!!!)