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Hi, I'm cleaning my macbook air after a coffee spill and have disassembled the logic board. when removing the heatsink I noticed that only onw of the two ICs had thermal paste. when I reassemble should I apply thermal paste to both ICs or only the one that had this one initially
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Yes, you should put thermal paste on both of them.
One is the CPU die. The other is the hub controller die.
crwdns2934105:0crwdne2934105:0
Whoops! Not Correct!
The Haswell series has an intergraded GPU chip (the smaller chip on the carrier). The CPU & PCH are combined on the larger chip.
As for thermal paste Intel recommends not applying thermal paste on the GPU element (Yes I know it sounds a bit odd). I think the issue here is the transference of heat from the CPU/PCH to the GPU.
Here's a bit more on the chip: On-Package PCH, The First Single Chip Haswell
@danj You can go argue with iFixit because I got the information from the teardown.
Step 10.
Take a look at the either of these IFIXIT guides: MacBook Air 11" Mid 2013 Heat Sink Replacement or MacBook Air 11" Mid 2013 Logic Board Replacement note the small chip is bare.
@danj I think it would be a good idea to put thermal paste on the Intel platform controller hub regardless.
Ha, it's a GPU.
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It truly doesn't matter what the IC is. If it's under a heatsink and has its own contact piece, it won't hurt to put thermal paste on it.
crwdns2934105:0crwdne2934105:0
On my MacBook Air (11", 2015, i7) the smaller chip had no thermal paste. Also, the part of the heatsink that is above the smaller chip is slightly higher (towards the bottom cover) than the rest of the heatsink. To my eyes, at least, it seemed that that part of the heatsink would not (even with thermal paste applied) touch the small chip.
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