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Add Note Step 9

  • Getting to the optical drive takes a bit more work...

  • The rear vent is held in place by both Phillips #00 and T8 Torx screws.

  • The cast aluminum vent plate is painted with a satin white rubberized paint and probably adds a good amount of rigidity to the device.

  • The lack of structural supports like these in previous plastic MacBooks accounts for their flexibility.

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Add Note Step 10

  • The digging continues as we remove the speaker/AirPort/Bluetooth card assembly.

  • After popping off a few connectors, removing a few screws (including one inserted into the side of the optical drive), the optical drive is almost free.

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Add Note Step 11

  • Unlike the earlier plastic MacBooks, AirPort and Bluetooth share the same board.

  • The Bluetooth model number is BCM943224PCIEBT.

  • All three antenna cables appear to route into the display assembly. This may be an improvement for Bluetooth range, since on previous MacBooks the Bluetooth antenna was located above the optical drive and not inside the display assembly.

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Add Note Step 12

  • After removing the final few screws, lift the optical drive out of its comfy plastic unibody home.

  • No surprises here. The optical drive is an 8x SATA SuperDrive. It's a Panasonic model UJ898, made in China September of 2009.

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Add Note Step 13

  • It has a fan.

  • After a few twists of a screwdriver and the flick of a spudger, the fan lifts right out.

  • The fan design appears relatively unchanged from previous plastic MacBooks, except that it mounts to the upper case on this model.

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Add Note Step 14

  • Six T6 screws and several fragile connectors stand between us and logic board freedom.

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Add Note Step 15

  • The logic board removed.

  • Like the MacBook Pro Unibody, Apple nicely designed this machine so the logic board and heat sink come out as a single part. This way, you'll only need to get your hands dirty with thermal paste if you're replacing the logic board.

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Add Note Step 16

  • The MacBook sports a NVidia 9400M GPU and an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz CPU.

  • This is exactly the same GPU and CPU in the base model 13" Unibody MacBook Pro. This CPU offers a whopping 130 MHz increase over the 2.13 GHz chip that powered the old plastic MacBook.

Add NoteNotes: Step 12

wefixit's avatar
Flag Reply by wefixit Oct 21 2009 @ 3:32 PM

Is this UJ898 standard 12.7mm height?

Apple must of got first dibs on this new drive, I only see UJ-875A and UJ-880A on the Panasonic Industrial website.

spicyj's avatar
Flag Reply by spicyj Oct 21 2009 @ 4:02 PM

How much does the optical drive weigh?

Add NoteNotes: Step 15

wefixit's avatar
Flag Reply by wefixit Oct 21 2009 @ 3:40 PM

That's an extremely efficient design to have the heat sink and logic board come out in one piece so you don't have to reapply thermal paste every time. Speaking of, looks like apple really cleaned up their act and applied a correct amount of thermal paste this time around. If it were in old 2,2 MacBook Pro you would be seeing the over applied thermal paste spilling over. Do you have photos of the CPU and GPU before you cleaned the paste off?

Add NoteNotes: Step 16

Chris Green's avatar
Flag Reply by Chris Green Nov 5 2009 @ 10:47 PM

It Didn't have any thermal paste on it? or did you guys remove it?