Geek Fixes MacBook By Drilling Holes In It And Cooking It In The Oven

One of the programmers over at iFixit was having heat issues with his MacBook pro and as people from that site are wont to do, he decided to fix it himself. The fix involved some tricks that will make many a Mac fan cringe, he drilled into the sexy aluminum case and baked the machine in the oven.

He says that heat issues first started about a year ago and that the machine would get up to 102 Celsius at times. Simple fixes didn't remedy the issue so he hobbled along until the machine died from heat stroke. He reckoned that the heat had caused the solder to come loose from the ball grid arrays inside and devised a plan to reflow the solder.

He opened the back of the laptop, disconnected all the connectors and heatsink from the logic board, and cranked the oven to 340 degrees F. He then put the board on a cookie sheet and baked it for seven minutes.

Once out of the oven and cool, thermal paste was applied and the machine worked again. He says that lasted for about eight months and then it began getting hot again. He baked it again and this time added thin copper sheets to help heat extraction under certain chips, it worked for a while. The final fix was to drill holes on the bottom where the fan blades live and so far, the machine is working. It could fail again at any minute though. Still if the option is buying a new MacBook or trying this fix first, there is no harm in trying.

SOURCE: ifixit