Just a dust - why so serious?

I got call from service point telling me that I could now pick up my computer. They've cleaned the interior from dust. Normally this type of service would cost me but they forgot to tell me this so this one is free of charge.

Why was I not convinced that this is the solution? Even though they said that they tested and saw no more than 70°C on CPU temperature.

I brought the computer home and fired up two "yes > /dev/null" and soon saw temperatures above 100°C. Why did not they test my computer properly? Was they on a hurry?

I soon visited service point again... this time without any hopes of facing expertise at the other side of the service counter.

Week... or two later I return to pick up my computer. New motherboard (Logic board) installed and this time they tested it 24 hours with Apple hardware test and it did not overheat.

I was not surprised to see that nothing have changed... Still every game is unplayable because of massive FPS drops due to CPU's temperature throttling. I have a nice 2,8GHz CPU which is usable only on light usage. When I try to push it to the limits it just regresses back to 2005 when I last had this slow CPU.

The era of Unibody

I don't know whether last blog entry ended dramatically enough.
There are no words to describe how my thrill turned to disappointment.

I did not like the Glossy screen. I definitely did not like the loose hinges, but most of all...
I did not like my new MacBook Pro's CPU overheating to 110°C and therefore CPU dropping to 1,6GHz

15 minutes after hearing the "wall-e chime" i typed "yes > /dev/null" in two separate terminal windows just to check how quiet this new Unibody computer was. Indeed it was quiet... it was really quiet... a bit too quiet?

Soon after installing temperature and fan speed monitor software if found out why this Unibody seemed so quiet compared to my 1st MacBook Pro which fans were at 4500 - 5000rpm and cpu temperature was at 85°C at full load. This Unibody MacBook Pro's fans never speed up above 2000rpm. When I had enough courage I launched again two yes -processes and this time I did not quit them... I watched CPU squirming at 110°C for ~5 minutes and eventually fans started slowly speeding up untill CPU temperature was dropped to 95°C.

I even installed the supplied OS X Leopard twice to make sure that it is not software related problem. I also installed Windows XP to check and yes. Same overheating problem (actually I should call this lazy fan problem) occurred there too. I tried gaming but first 15 minutes was like a watching dia presentation as the CPU was constantly switching between 2800MHz and 1600MHz.

I was angry, not again a faulty computer. Well this time the flaw is so obvious so I have nothing to worry about. Maybe one week without computer and then I could finally have a computer whereto I can trust in every situation.

Did I mention before "boy how wrong I was" ?
I made one big mistake. I Google'd "Unibody overheat" and found several other Unibody owners struggling with this fan issue.
I made my assumptions that this is a flaw that concerns all Unibody laptops. Therefore i thought that Apple would make a Firmware update to make fans wake up earlier. And because an fix is already on its way it is pointless to take my new machine to a repair.

I prolonged the inevitable too long. Finally I had to visit the same service point and I asked whether they know what to do with this type overheating. And sure they did have an solution...