MacBook Cooling Mods

Logsi

Logsi

Logsi

Soldato
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I know this isn't the sort of thing people do to their Macs but has anyone considered modding their Macs cooling?

I was considering fabricating my own laptop cooler but now I'm thinking i may buy a replacement bottom plate for my macbook pro and drill 2 large holes directly over the two fans as a inlet through the bottom of the MacBook. The standard MacBook Pro doesn't have any proper cold air inlet and just wanted to experiment and it looks as though replacement bottom plates off eBay can be had for not much at all.

Am i mad for considering this to do this?

If I'm doing some gaming on it i want to maximise airflow and obviously want to extend the life of the components by keeping them cool. Getting a replacement bottom plate avoids voiding my warranty also.
 
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Quite shocked to see the cooling system on 'normal' MBP lacks any vents.

Rather than trying to drill holes, I'd suggest you contact a some local metal work places about having the holes/grills pressed in.

Do it right, and there may be a market for these modified panels?
 
Yeah, would want to do it right.

When i say drill, i mean get a large circular cutter and take my time to do it or as you say go to a metal work place and do it properly. There is vents but the exhuast vent is also the intake vent so want to create a dedicated intake vent.

I thought there may be a company that would do it for you as it's such a obvious thing to lower temps. Even taking the bottom panel off the bottom and running a laptop cooler into the bare mobos shaves a lot of high temps. I also thought that a company may do this and sell bottom plates.
 
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uniQ said:
Two people (nut jobs :p) that have done mods:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1250910

http://my2011macbookpro.com/modding-the-case-bottom-panel-to-reduce-temps/
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No ones really done it properly and taken the time and effort to make it look OEM.

All i'd do is have inlets directly below/above the intake of the fans. I'd use a, at most, an inch wide circular cutter to cut the holes, sand down rough edges and then put a dust gauze in place. Seems like the most logical way to make an intake but no one has done it...

EDIT - The guy who did the second one must not be all there in the head...He's not thought about air flow through the machine at all...
 
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Logsi said:
EDIT - The guy who did the second one must not be all there in the head...He's not thought about air flow through the machine at all...
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Don't write that off so quickly, you don't need a gaping hole in the base to get cool air in. What he's done is convert the rear to be extract only and then open small spaces on the chassis for air to be drawn in. This is similar to the way the that the MBP Retina is cooled.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/12
 
GeX said:
Don't write that off so quickly, you don't need a gaping hole in the base to get cool air in. What he's done is convert the rear to be extract only and then open small spaces on the chassis for air to be drawn in. This is similar to the way the that the MBP Retina is cooled.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/12
Click to expand...

I understand that but he's put holes at the front and by the superdrive which is totally useless in my opinion. There is only a hard drive, battery and DVD drive which don't really need much airflow at all.

I won't be doing this to my bottom plate. It would be purely done to a replacement from eBay.
 
The purpose of the vents isn't to pull air over any particular components, it's to supply cooler air to the fans to blow through the heatsink.

If you look at where the vents are on the MBP Retina;

wTBSV.jpg


You can see that they're mostly over the batteries.
 
I understand that. The retina MacBook Pro does have some ducting in between the battery and what looks like the speakers on that diagram that directs air flow.

Is that a big enough gap to let much air between the battery and case or is it quite a snug fit thus forcing air through the ducting towards the fan intake? I suspect being Apple that it's very snug.

What i want to do is to minimise hot air going through the heatsink at the back and have a colf air hole directly above/below the fan intake.
 
PardonTheWait said:
Without wishing to be offensive, the person who designed the cooling in the Mac knows better than you do - leave it alone :p
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Yeah, but the same person also introduced ducting a intakes on the latest generations MacBooks with a higher clocked 650m. We all know Apple take their aesthetics seriously first and foremost so having any form of apparent intakes would much rather be avoided.

There is no proper cold intake on the uMBP. A lot of people think the intake is through the keyboard but this isn't true due to the keyboard being sealed to the top case. If you take the bottom case off you shave a lot of off the top temps when gaming so surely having a 2 air intakes for the fans would greatly reduce temps and thus extend the life of the components.

At the end of the day I just want to scratch a modding itch. I'm on a overclocking forum afterall!
 
Logsi said:
Yeah, but the same person also introduced ducting a intakes on the latest generations MacBooks with a higher clocked 650m. We all know Apple take their aesthetics seriously first and foremost so having any form of apparent intakes would much rather be avoided.

There is no proper cold intake on the uMBP. A lot of people think the intake is through the keyboard but this isn't true due to the keyboard being sealed to the top case. If you take the bottom case off you shave a lot of off the top temps when gaming so surely having a 2 air intakes for the fans would greatly reduce temps and thus extend the life of the components.

At the end of the day I just want to scratch a modding itch. I'm on a overclocking forum afterall!
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Big difference between modding a desktop case and modding a laptop.

The Apple engineers try and reach a compromise between temperatures and noise levels. While the machines do run hot, they run within spec, meaning that you shouldn't have any issues.

By doing a mod, yes, it'll run cooler. However, it's running within spec anyway, so there's little reason to bother (aside from wanting to risk causing more harm than good).
 
lamboman said:
By doing a mod, yes, it'll run cooler. However, it's running within spec anyway, so there's little reason to bother (aside from wanting to risk causing more harm than good).
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If you look at the review link I posted, it shows that over time the FPS during a test drops from ~100 to ~85 as it throttles back

I’ve adjusted the y-axis on the chart to exaggerate the impact here a bit, but you get a clear idea of just how much heat both of these chips were putting out in the 2011 MBP. Either the CPU or GPU (or both) have to be throttled back over time in order to stay within their thermal and power budgets. As a result, in the 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro, performance drops by over 20% over the course of 20 minutes of this test.
Click to expand...

So the temps are in spec, but if it's throttle to maintain that then extra cooling wouldn't go amiss!
 
GeX said:
So the temps are in spec, but if it's throttle to maintain that then extra cooling wouldn't go amiss!
Click to expand...

I'd like to avoid any throttling if possible.

It doesn't seem like it's throttling while gaming under windows when i was doing some tests mind.
 
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