Stepping up the MacBook Pro ladder

[quinterro]

I have owned a couple of 2012 MacBook Pro laptops for several years. I like them, but they run slow and hot with more recent versions of MacOS.

To hopefully mitigate this issue, I splurged on a 15" 2015 i7 MacBook Pro with Iris Pro integrated graphics. It arrived today, and I have just installed Sequoia along with most of the applications I used on the other MacBook Pros. Given what I have read about discrete graphics in older MacBooks, I'm glad I went with one with only integrated graphics.

It's much faster than the 2012 i5 MacBook Pros I own, but I think I need to apply new heatsink paste to improve the thermals.

 

[Nixontheknight]

That would be a good idea. For thermal paste, I recommend Arctic MX-4

 

[quinterro]

That’s exactly what I had for thermal paste. I cleaned it up while working last Saturday, applied new heat sink paste and put everything back together.

It seems to run cooler, but it seems to have brain farts regarding OCLP’s patches. I have had to revert the patches and reinstall them several times so far.

 

[Forrest]

I bet Catalina runs much better on your i7 MacBook

 

[quinterro]

I replaced the 256GB SSD with the 512GB drive from my 2013 Mac Pro. After reinstalling Sequoia it seems to be behaving itself.

The MacBook Pro is a joy to use, replacing the ThinkPad E595 I also keep in the living room. Not really replacing per se, but less problematic. At least the MacBook Pro doesn’t forget that it is plugged in every time it is plugged in.

 

[Schmoburger]

That’s exactly what I had for thermal paste. I cleaned it up while working last Saturday, applied new heat sink paste and put everything back together.

It seems to run cooler, but it seems to have brain farts regarding OCLP’s patches. I have had to revert the patches and reinstall them several times so far.

I found using Macs Fan Controller helped a lot with my i7 mid-2012 temps with Sonoma running. I set the fan to start ramping up at 32 degrees celcius and set the target max temp at 85 degrees... this has the fan idling just under 3000rpm and keeps the temps in a good range. when its working hard its still below 95 degrees with no throttling, so im happy with that. an i5 should be a bit cooler. i have Monterey on my i5 and it stays cool without tweaking the fan curves. granted, i know at least the i7 would have its original thermal paste still applied too so im sure ive got room to bring the temps down.

As far as OpenCore goes, the concensus seems to be that 2.5.0 isnt stable right now, and you should avoid updating until at least 2.5.1 is relessed with (hopefully) the bugs worked out, and probably even use 2.4.1 for ground up patches. many people are having issues with getting stuck in the dirty root volume depatch/repatch loop or having the patches break if you so much as fart too loudly. I found 2.5.9 completely unusable on both my i5 and i7 mid-2012's. The one time i successfully got it patched, on the i7, as soon as I put new RAM in it the patches broke and then i was stuck back in the dirty root circle, so i gave up and went back to 2.4.1 and so far so good. i just had to be a bit naughty with the i7 and install Sonoma as an update over a patched Install of Monterey because best i can tell, it was having thermal shutdown issues partway through the install whilst unpacking the OS when it was booted into the Sonoma boot USB. doing most of that legwork booted into Monterey still seemed to fix the issue and i had no problems as a result of doing it this way. Just ran the post-install patches after it was all set up and it runs like a top.

 

[quinterro]

As far as OpenCore goes, the concensus seems to be that 2.5.0 isnt stable right now, and you should avoid updating until at least 2.5.1 is relessed with (hopefully) the bugs worked out, and probably even use 2.4.1 for ground up patches. many people are having issues with getting stuck in the dirty root volume depatch/repatch loop or having the patches break if you so much as fart too loudly. I found 2.5.9 completely unusable on both my i5 and i7 mid-2012's. The one time i successfully got it patched, on the i7, as soon as I put new RAM in it the patches broke and then i was stuck back in the dirty root circle, so i gave up and went back to 2.4.1 and so far so good. i just had to be a bit naughty with the i7 and install Sonoma as an update over a patched Install of Monterey because best i can tell, it was having thermal shutdown issues partway through the install whilst unpacking the OS when it was booted into the Sonoma boot USB. doing most of that legwork booted into Monterey still seemed to fix the issue and i had no problems as a result of doing it this way. Just ran the post-install patches after it was all set up and it runs like a top.

I just upgraded to 2.5.0.