Mac Geekery

6.5C is a big difference on it’s own, but over time it will be even more – Arctic Silver says you need about 200 hours of burn-in period and the temperature will drop for additional 2-5C. This means you should load your cores to maximum and let them work like this for some time and then turn the computer off or put it asleep for few hours so cores would cool down to room temperature. Then repeat few times.

Also – I reapplied the paste in my 17”. I did this just because I couldn’t use my laptop on my laps and you may say whatever you want, but I want to use it this way. Right after the procedure I could use it on my laps even when it was at full load and core temperature was about 90C! This looked like a pure magic! After the recent SMC firmware update things got even better – it’s just worm, nice and quiet as it should be, core temperature at idle is between 46C and 51C (depends if it’s plugged or unplugged and type of surface you use it on). It was 60-65C before all those moddings.

The final note – the procedure indeed is very difficult and dangerous! I’m an IT pro with a lot of experience in similar areas and it took me over 3 hours! Now I would do this a lot faster of course, but still would be very careful. Don’t even think about this modding if you never did something like this before and you don’t have the apple’s service manual and all the tools they list for the procedure!