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I bought my 2.8 GHz Late 2008 Macbook Pro two and a half years ago, and just love the thing. The thing is, within the past two weeks, the CPU/GPU/heat sink temperatures have been increasing far beyond what they had before under any type of load (usually when using the discrete GPU). I only started noticing when certain demanding games on my XP partition forced the computer into sleep mode.
Making it much worse, I had carelessly exposed the computer to humid air many times during its lifetime, unaware that it would set off "water sensors" inside the case. This, of course, voided my warranty. According to my local certified Apple dealer, the way a repair would work is that they would send it to an Apple facility, and they would rebuild it, replacing the logic board and upper case because of the water sensors, regardless of whether that was actually causing the overheating. This would cost $1400, possibly wipe my hard drive, and probably be an affront to my sentimental attachment
I took the computer home from the shop today to back up my data and figure out what to do next. Oddly, the overheating seems to have stopped, at least for now. I don't know what they could have done during the process of looking inside and checking behind the fans that would have stopped the problem, but I'm worried about it happening again.
My questions are:
1. What are the chances of humidity-related damage causing overheating and no other noticeable effects? How long can corrosion continue after exposure?
2. What other causes could there be for this inconsistent overheating?
3. What are the chances of overheating causing permanent damage despite the automatic sleep mode? (Of course, if they would just replace the logic board anyway...)
4. What kind of places can I turn to that would look for the cause of the problem and repair it (or add thermal grease, clean it out, so forth)? What are the chances that they could replace a damaged sub-component of the logic board instead of the whole thing?
If there's no decent way to repair it, I might buy a desktop for my games, and keep this one for internet and email purposes. Even when it was acting up, it wouldn't get that hot while using the integrated graphics card. In that case:
5. If I waited a few years to get it fixed, would the price go down, or would they run out of parts and be unable to fix it at all?
I have no decent desktop to fall back on, so any advice is appreciated. Thank you.
Making it much worse, I had carelessly exposed the computer to humid air many times during its lifetime, unaware that it would set off "water sensors" inside the case. This, of course, voided my warranty. According to my local certified Apple dealer, the way a repair would work is that they would send it to an Apple facility, and they would rebuild it, replacing the logic board and upper case because of the water sensors, regardless of whether that was actually causing the overheating. This would cost $1400, possibly wipe my hard drive, and probably be an affront to my sentimental attachment
I took the computer home from the shop today to back up my data and figure out what to do next. Oddly, the overheating seems to have stopped, at least for now. I don't know what they could have done during the process of looking inside and checking behind the fans that would have stopped the problem, but I'm worried about it happening again.
My questions are:
1. What are the chances of humidity-related damage causing overheating and no other noticeable effects? How long can corrosion continue after exposure?
2. What other causes could there be for this inconsistent overheating?
3. What are the chances of overheating causing permanent damage despite the automatic sleep mode? (Of course, if they would just replace the logic board anyway...)
4. What kind of places can I turn to that would look for the cause of the problem and repair it (or add thermal grease, clean it out, so forth)? What are the chances that they could replace a damaged sub-component of the logic board instead of the whole thing?
If there's no decent way to repair it, I might buy a desktop for my games, and keep this one for internet and email purposes. Even when it was acting up, it wouldn't get that hot while using the integrated graphics card. In that case:
5. If I waited a few years to get it fixed, would the price go down, or would they run out of parts and be unable to fix it at all?
I have no decent desktop to fall back on, so any advice is appreciated. Thank you.