Chosen Solution
I’m planning to Reapply the thermal paste And am willing to cut holes in the bottom caseAnd glue on some mesh, And I have no optical drive. Update 5/15/2022:
If you take the optical drive out you need to block the slot! As you don’t want air or dirt to enter though it. I would frankly leave the optical drive in place unless you replaced it with the special drive carrier to mount a second drive. Airflow is rocket science! Have you ever looked at how car makers use smoke to see how the air flows over the car within a wind tunnel or see the super computer modeling they do?
If you start altering the air flows you are more likely make more of a mess if you don’t do the needed modeling first! At least use a FLIR camera to see what the system is doing. When I visited Apple many, many years ago they showed us how they view systems using a clear case and a FLIR camera setup, it was a large machine. Today you can get a FLIR adapter for your iPhone!
But without a clear cover you only see the heat of the surface not what is inside and if you don’t have a cover in place you lose the airflows within the system. If you are quick you could pop it off and take a picture without the cover but it doesn’t take long for the heat to dissipate. You still need to know what you are seeing and depending on what you are running some chips maybe running hotter or not hot at all! Bottomline I don’t recommend altering the case or the internals as you could make things worse! Just look at SpaceX as they develop the Starship look at all of the versions of rockets they have made as they fine-tune the rockets airflows! Even they have a hard time with much simpler surface dynamics than what you have internally in your MacBook Pro. OK, My system is running hot what should I do? To start with Apple gives us a lot of thermal sensors to see what’s happening you only need a good tool to access them and present the data in a useful and readable form. I’ve used a few different tools and I’ve not seen any better than this one TG Pro Matt keeps it updated and if anything is found to be a problem fixes it quickly. Many of the other makers just don’t fix their problems or added support for the newest system as fast as Matt has. The next step is Keep your system CLEAN! most systems I have seen are loaded with dust and debris! Keeping the fan blades and its cowling as well as the heat sink fin area dirt free is very important! TG Pro will help you see when it’s time, and when you need a bit more air flows you have a heavy process running push the fans a bit harder. Even still, cleaning and replacing the thermal paste (TIM) is also important about every four or so years for most systems. But, its important you don’t over do it! Again I’ve seen systems messed up by glopping the paste! Even Apple goes to far.
Make sure you use just enough to cover the black silicon chip no more! That leaves the last element of the movement of heat the heatsink its self! I’ve encountered quite a few bad heatsinks. look for pinholes in the tube area often I see white particles around a hole and/or staining of the logic board right under the hole were the coolant has leaked out. Just as a primer give this a read Thernal Analysis of the Necessity of a CPU Heat Sink Fan As you can see theres a lot of math involved!
What do you mean by “fix”? To fix something, it needs to be broken first.
