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Cleaning fans, grille out of MBP

Hi,


To my big surprise I have not found an answer to my question yet. I have not done VERY EXTENSIVE search but I really thought i'd come up with something real quick. I've been running my MBP for about a 20 months now. Lately it was slowing down and running pretty hot. I've been told internal components reduce their frequencies in order to protect from heat, hence slowing down the computer. Which is why someone would want to keep his computer free of dust. Having had desktop PCs for a few years, I was doing this on a 6 month basic. Desktop do suck a lot of air and dust and it tends to slow down with dust buildup.


So I thought I'd do the same thing on my MBP. Reading questions and posts about that situation, all I found out was most MBP owners are too scared to damage/void the warranty to do any simple task themselves and bring their macbook in to the apple store. Last time I went, I was turned out by a genius because I dropped my MBP on it's side and bent the display cover and cracked the screen bezel. All I was looking for was an advice on how to do some things, I wasn'T looking to get a brand new MBP free of charge because I fked up. Anyways, enough with my problems.


So I wanna do this myself. How did you do this ? What did you use ? Compressed air ? Vaccum from outside ?


Thanks !

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Jul 21, 2011 10:15 PM

Reply
4 replies

Jul 21, 2011 10:41 PM in response to slitcher

I've done this procedure before... I simply take the back cover off of the macbook, which DOESN'T VOID YOUR WARRANTY. Your allowed to open the back of your macbook pro up as long as your don't futz around with anything in their beside your ram or HDD or SSD. Now the way I clean it is I just grab a can of compressed air and let it rip.... Since you've done this before on other computers I presume that you know to make sure the computer is off. I hope this helps knowing that someone else out there has done what you want to do and it doesnt void your warranty.... Although I will say I haven't seen much dust in my macbook pro but I'm also simply used to the regular maintenance that I performed on older computers.

Jul 21, 2011 11:40 PM in response to slitcher

Yes, it's very simple. Depending on how new/old your MBP is opening the back pannel will be different (removable vs. non removable batery covers) whichever you have, just follow the direction to open the back pannel. (search directions online if you dont have owner's book)

Compressed air on the fans and other areas of the board that have dust covered on it. On the fans look inside, the MBP fans are very efficent and dont get dirty very often, ive seen fans that have never been cleaned since it was bough late2008 model. What you want to maily look for is if there is dust that got caught between the vents and the casing of the fan. once a larger peice of dust manages to get caught, smaller peices collect up behind it. usually you will be able to jsut simple pull out a long peice of dust and you're good to go. Thats what was wrong with mine.

Alos dont forget to protect yourself/board form static electricity. Grounding strap couldn't hurt 🙂

Cleaning fans, grille out of MBP

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