What's underneath the AirPort card?
I've been having heating problems for some time and have decided to finally roll up sleeves and have a good clean out; now in the process of preparing for the job, which in the first instance will involve swapping the dead optical drive for a PATA/IDE HDD caddy with current (320GB) HDD and installing new (60GB) SSD. But that's just the background, not the question.
The question is, what is underneath the AirPort card, because it's always getting warm to hot on that side of the machine faster than it is where the CPU, heatsink and fan are. Now, I intend to take the fan and heatsink out for a !@#$ good clean while I'm there swopping out the optical drive, but the heat isn't coming from that side of the machine; it's coming from (underneath?) the AirPort card. So, what is that chip under the card and what can I do about it getting too warm too often. I had even thought of simply removing the AirPort card to enable increased airflow to that side of the machine, but that is actually a significant impairment to functionality, which I'd rather avoid. Any suggestions?
I will, by the way, be removing the thermal paste and applying fresh when I clean up the heatsink and fan. Perhaps that will be sufficient and I'm just overthinking this?
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Please give us the last three figures of your serial number.
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Z67 - Merom on Santa Rosa
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Apple MacBook "Core 2 Duo" 2.2 13" (Black-SR) Specs
Identifiers: Late 2007 - MB063LL/B - MacBook3,1 - A1181 - 2200
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Thanks, Dan, that's an interesting point. The original HDD had been failing for at least a year, and I suspect it was never 100% right. I wouldn't say the machine has ever really overheated, although it will run at 90+C for a couple of hours doing intensive tasks, but the fans started kicking in more often a couple of years ago. Yes, I did the replace the original 160GB 5400rpm with a 320 5400 at Christmas, because I'd read the 7200's can get hotter. Since then, I've decided to put the 320 into the PATA optical drive bay and put a 64GB SSD onto the SATA interface. The CPU usually idles at 40-50C with fan at about 1800rpm, and heats up to 70-80C regularly with fans spinning up to 4-5000. More than anything, I think, it needs a good clean. Thanks for the heads up about the relationship between the I/O chip and SATA interface; I didn't know that. Wonder how the SSD will affect it? The drive itself may run cooler, but presumably the increased speed may put the I/O chip under greater stress? Would more RAM help?
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