Introduction
Follow this guide to get a better handle on your MacBook's cooling problem.
"For your safety, discharge your MacBook Pro's battery below 25%" before you begin. A charged lithium-ion battery, if accidentally damaged, can start a dangerous and uncontrollable fire.
After the repair, my MacBook Pro's (2.2GHz 6-core i7 & Radeon Pro 555X 4GB) performance under full load improved from a falling 3.1GHz-2.6GHz at 100°C to a continuous 3.2GHz at 95°C.
What you need
-
-
Power on your Mac and launch Terminal.
-
Copy and paste the following command (or type it exactly) into Terminal:
-
sudo nvram AutoBoot=%00
-
Press [return]. If prompted, enter your administrator password and press [return] again. Note: Your return key may also be labeled ⏎ or "enter."
-
sudo nvram AutoBoot=%03
-
-
-
Use a P5 Pentalobe driver to remove six screws securing the lower case, of the following lengths:
-
Four 4.7 mm screws
-
Two 6.6 mm screws
I miss a printable template to leave the screws and removed parts on it for future identification when reassembly, linked maybe with the location in the Macbook, or with the number of the step.
-
-
-
Press a suction handle into place near the front edge of the lower case, between the screw holes.
-
Pull up on the suction handle just enough to open a small gap under the lower case.
Throw away this suction cup and get another. It just doesn't work! Luckily I had one that does work in my tool kit.
-
-
-
-
Pull firmly to slide the lower case towards the front edge of the MacBook (away from the hinge area) to separate the last of the clips securing the lower case.
-
Pull first at one corner, then the other.
this step must require a lot of force. I tried to pull it with the plastic hookie thing from the ifixit set by hooking it in one of the screw holes — the tip of the hookie thing broke.
The amount of force required for removing the bottom cover is absolutely ridiculous. Almost feels like i'm about to push my MacBook towards the wall the second it comes off.
Be careful, I ended up breaking 2 grounding pins on the motherboard last time I tried opening my computer up.
PLEASE DON'T PULL!!!
Instead just gently push with plastic pick from the other side (where vents outputs are) towards the center... Cover will very easily open that way.
I hope iFixit will correct this step.
Came here to share exactly this.
Robert -
That's definitely how this step should be done. Thanks!
VovS -
If someone has a photo to share regarding this comment, it might be very useful. Thanks.
I used a screwdriver at 45 degrees angle and pushed the cover from the hinges, it worked really smooth. I had it close to the corners.
Yeah, definitely don't pull; if you do, wear protective gloves. Mine was stuck so strongly that I just cut my palm quite deep.
You would think ifixit would investigate why the last step required them to pull with great force to remove the bottom case lid as the solution.
It's counter-intuitive to use an excessive method to remove a part.
There's always an easier way. It's frustrating because you can't see inside.
Using the iFixit opening Tool in the hinge opening required close to no force to open.
Ah... after attempting to 'pull' this rear cover off, to no avail, I tried to coax the cover off with a nylon pry tool. MUCH better! iFixIt will do well to amend it's recommendation to 'pull' this cover in any way. All I wanted to do was a little house cleaning and exorcize the dust bunnies that took up residence in my MBP's fans. Today is much quieter. Thank you all for pointing out the obvious.
-
-
-
Remove the lower case.
-
Set it in place and align the sliding clips near the display hinge. Press down and slide the cover toward the hinge. It should stop sliding as the clips engage.
-
When the sliding clips are fully engaged and the lower case looks correctly aligned, press down firmly on the lower case to engage the four hidden clips underneath. You should feel and hear them snap into place.
If I had it all to do over, again, I would blow out the dust with compressed air at this point. During the disassembly, I kept encountering little dust bunnies, and I was very worried that one would get caught in one of the connectors when I plugged everything back up (which wouldn’t get discovered until I put it all back together and tried out all of the components).
-
-
-
Cut the thermal pad to fit the CPU and GPU.
-
Dimensions: 50 mm x 50m x 0.8 - 1 mm
-
Remove the first protective film from the pad and carefully place it on the two visible areas (CPU and GPU) and press it down lightly.
-
After the pad is pressed down and fits snugly, remove the second side of the protective film.
Hier sollte das Pad mit mindestens 1,5mm Dicke verwendet werden, damit es auch optimalen Kontakt mit dem Aludeckel macht und somit auch die optimale Kühlwirkung erzielt.
Das Pad habe ich zusätzlich zu neuer Wärmeleitpaste installiert und habe eine noch höhere Kühlwirkung erzielen können.
What steps did you take & where did you install the thermal paste?
-
Work through the steps in reverse order to reassemble your device.
Work through the steps in reverse order to reassemble your device.
Cancel: I did not complete this guide.
21 other people completed this guide.
Special thanks to these translators:
100%
These translators are helping us fix the world! Want to contribute?
Start translating ›
10 Comments
It would be useful to mention the thermal pad and thermal paste at the beginning.
Please provide specifications for the thermal pad and thermal paste, or suggestions for each.
This guide was also useful when just wanting to take everything apart to clean the fans.
Amazing! Thank you for this safe 'n easy guide. I mean that is a difference... Twitter post
definitely does make a difference. Maybe the performance benefits depends on the pads used. I got mine from a brand called fujipoly, 1mm. Also, I used a total of 50mmx50mm, cut in half in total for the cpu/gpu
Thermal paste and this mod. done today, it works very well but the bottom cover of the mac can get very hot attention!
I made a few changes to what the guide recommends (total cost $67):
- Got this 1.5mm premium performance thermal pad instead (instead of the economic pad that's linked) ($22)
- In addition to cutting pads for the GPU & CPU, I cut two 6cm by 1.5cm strips & added them to the heat sink portion that are next to the fans
- I also applied a 200mm by 100mm pad outside of the cover, in between an additional aluminum sheet to help dissipate the heat more easily ($25)
- Am also using a fan-based cooling pad below the aluminum sheet to bring more airflow through it ($20)
Results:
- Single core performance increase: 1.8%
- Multi-core performance increase: 11.3%
- GPU performance increase: 9.5%
- CPU temperature decreased from almost running at 95 degrees celsius all the time, to staying steady at 55-60, & sometimes spiking to 75
Thanks for telling your story about your mod, would you have the same result if you don’t use the cooling pad below the laptop and just the mods with the thermal pads? Thanks
Is this step necessary? I can’t perform this step as I am attempting to repair water damage and need to remove logic board & most likely replace the battery.
Macrepair SF - Reply
@mac_medic You definitely don’t want the power coming on while the board is wet. In your case, I think powering on the machine to disable Auto Boot would do more damage than it prevents. I agree, skip this step and be prepared to disconnect the battery quickly if the laptop automatically powers on. Good luck!
Jeff Suovanen -
Thats right! You don't want power running while working on your logic board.
Dan -
This did not work when running High Sierra.
Kyle B - Reply
Tried this on a 2018 MBP 13” Touchbar (there’s no iFixit guide for this model yet). Need to replace a broken screen.
Luckily I managed to connect to an external screen (Cmd-Down Brightness to switch displays) and enter above command. Seems to work, but there’s another problem with this model - it powers up as soon as any key is pressed……. ffs <gnashes teeth>
Cool_Breeze - Reply
I unscrew the battery first and wrap electrical tape over the logic board battery connector before attempting any repairs to the board. Haven’t had any problems yet and I’ve worked on about 10 of these models already. Also when you open the bottom case use a suction cup at the bottom and pull up then run a plastic spudger along the edges to disconnect the clips. Also only use a plastic spudger on the board. Saw a youtube video from a repair shop and he did not disconnect the power and used all metal tools during the entire process of removing the board. His last step was to disconnect the battery terminal.
Brian - Reply
Is this step necessary if my mac can turn on? Battery fully dead(
Nursat b - Reply
BEFORE YOU START: The included torx head stripped off before I was done (and you might need an additional T4) so stop now and go buy a good one. Also they fail to warn you above to get some blue threadlocker ahead of time.
Jason Sherron - Reply
This command did not work for me and I read that sometime in later 2020 Apple stopped this command from working…any ideas on a work around?
Patrick Machacek - Reply
Not able to do that with damaged screen
richardjgreen - Reply
If you have a damaged screen you can still use a converter from thunderbolt (USB 3) to HDMI and plug your Macbook Pro to your TV as monitor display. Just make sure to chose the right Source (HDMI IN) in your TV. I did it and to make it work I unplug and plug again in my Macbook and so I could disable the Auto boot
Roberto Sanchez Bustos -
Hi. This does not work on 2018 13” MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. I did exactly this to disable auto boot. But when I check by using nvram -p it says: auto-boot true. Am I doing something incorrectly? I did everything step by step. Copied and pasted the sudo command, pressed enter and then entered my password. I have Big Sur 11.1 installed. Is there any other way since I need to replace the screen. Thank you. Adrian
Adrian Vizik - Reply
Hi everyone. This is also a little pointless if you can’t see anything on the screen, and you don’t have a display adapter to USB C to display it. I agree with Brian about removing the back and disconnecting the battery cable before you even think about opening the lid of the MacBook. Applying the insulation tape is also a handy little tip that just makes sure there is no way to discharge from either the board or battery.
Roberto Enrieu - Reply
running `nvram -p | grep 'AutoBoot'` in terminal verifies that it was accepted
result: `AutoBoot %00`
Marek Polák - Reply
Running Big Sur 11.6.7 on a 2019 16" MBP, it's "auto-boot". So it's:
nvram -p | grep 'auto-boot'to display the current state, the default istrue- and then to change it,sudo nvram auto-boot=falsewhich turns it off.Ed Mechem -
This step is completely unnecessary if you follow the guide to disconnect the battery properly. Just put some tape between the battery and logic board connection to prevent it from accidentally touching and therefore powering on the laptop.
Grant Ormsby - Reply
It took me a few tries to make this command work, as I was able to copy and paste the command into Terminal, but could not type in my laptop’s password. I finally typed my password into a text document, copied it (command C), and then pasted it into Terminal and it worked.
tommy404 - Reply
I didn’t do this. Mine never auto-booted before I replaced the battery. Now it does.
hatuxka - Reply
BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING - CHECK THE BATTERY!
I-fixit sent me a bad battery, which I didn’t realize until it was already install. They sent me a new one, but I wasted hours uninstalling and reinstalled.
Get a volt meter and measure the voltage on the output of the battery pack. If it reads 0 V, SEND IT BACK. It should read over 2 V.
bcardanha - Reply
I've just received my replacement battery and it reads 0,042V between the two main connectors. Do you think it's dead?
peter sussex -
When I did this from Terminal.app within Recovery Mode, the “sudo” was not recognized but I could invoke it without the sudo part. It seems to have been accepted when looking at “nvram -p”
johann beda - Reply
When in Recovery Mode, you already have superuser powers. So you don't need to prefix commands with the sudo command to invoke them with root privileges; you already have them. Do a
pwd(print working directory) after opening Terminal in Recovery Mode, and you'll see that you're in the root user's directory.Ed Mechem -
I received the battery kit for my 2018 MacBook Pro and as per the above comment from bcardanha - Oct 12, 2021, I checked the voltage on the pads marked + and - . It was zero volts so I panicked a bit.
I sent a message on the iFixiT Facebook page and I got no reply. I finally found the customer service email for Ifixit Europe and sent them an email voicing my concern as I was not keen to work for couple of hours just to discover that the battery is faulty. I had an almost instant reply on the email (kudos to them) and they adviced me to go ahead and install the new battery as the voltage measured when battery is not connected is not relevant.
I took a leap of faith and after two hours… the new battery showed 50% charge and everything seems to be working just fine. I am happy it worked.
Mircea Comanici - Reply
After removing the old battery and installing the new battery I powered up the MBP before screwing the bottom on. I discovered the my keyboard would not function. It took a few hours of investigation and frustration that I discovered the track pad power ribbon had become partially dislodged from the trackpad. I was able to see that this through the little machined slot where the battery sat. I had to remove the trackpad to reinsert the power ribbon back into the connector in the trackpad. after reassembling and reinstalling the battery etc the keyboard worked. Just food for thought if your run into the keyboard issue.
Ed Mease - Reply
This should be the default. IMO I tell you to power on - not the lid.
G Sena - Reply
Est ce que cela fonctionne sur un macbook pro 2017 sans touchbar ?
maël muzelet - Reply
Bonjour Maël, oui, ce tutoriel concerne "les MacBook Pro 2016 (et plus récents) et les MacBook Retina 12" 2017 (et plus récents)"
Claire Miesch -
Excellent instructions. I was able to follow and install the new screen. I recommend that you get a good set of tools before you begin. I started with an inexpensive repair kit bought online. The Penta and torx bits failed. I bought an IFIXIT kit with quality bits and I was able to do everything I needed.
Tom Markham - Reply
If you're not running an admin account the sudo command won't work (which honestly, you should not be running admin). Rather than logging in to your admin amount via the OS, in the terminal type "login [admin username]," then the password and you'll be able to do the sudo command as described above. Once you're complete, type "logout [admin username]" and you'll be good to go. Obviously replace [admin username] with whatever the account name for your admin user is.
arichard2401 - Reply
For those unable to complete this step because the screen is too damaged I recommend leaving your macbook on until the battery dies.
Nicholas R Licato - Reply
Just replaced my 2018 15" MBP battery. Running Sonoma.
I found no way to disable AutoBoot (The status can be checked in the Power section of system report).
Anyway, i left my battery completely drain before opening the MBP, and had no issues during the process.
Cédric Bontems - Reply
After sending this command in terminal when I checked what happens if I now open the lid, instead the screen lit slightly up (still black) then a battery symbol showing the charging state showed up.
Now, after replacement of the battery, this is all I get to see.
No reset of NVRAM nor PRAM helped.
Currently the new battery charges (58% atm) and it feels like it‘s mocking me.
webrockers - Reply
I suspected the keyboard or TouchID sensor wouldn’t work, so I went on and checked every connector.
I missed connecting the left TouchID sensor from step 31.
webrockers -