iFixit: MacBook Air 13″ Mid 2011 Teardown

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iFixit’s Director of Technical Communication Miroslav Djuric tells us that while the new MacBook Air is visually very similar to the last revision, there are more changes “under the hood” than are is evident at first glance, including of substantial improvements to the chipset and IO controllers. Djuric notes that moving to Intel’s built-in Intel HD Graphics 3000 IGPU from the Nvidia GeForce 320M chipset in the previous model freed up “tons of room” on the logic board and allowed Apple to squeeze a new Platform Controller Hub with Thunderbolt support onto the board.

On the downside, Djuric says that Wednesday’s Apple hardware announcements, while exciting in one context, also marked a sad day for consumer repair, with Apple deciding that the entry-level model of the “svelte and sexy” MacBook Air will replace the “simple and serviceable” white plastic MacBook as Apple’s price-leader laptop, with the consequenct that while users’ backpacks will be significantly lighter, future repairability and upgradability will suffer tremendously. He notes that unlike the plastic MacBook, the Air has a proprietary SSD, soldered (non-upgradeable) RAM, and replacing the LCD panel on it is “incredibly challenging,” with iFixIt giving it the same dismal 4 out of 10 repairability score as the previous-gen Air.

You can check out iFixit’s Miroslav Djuric talking about the new MacBook Air on YouTube:

Teardown highlights (13″ MacBook Air):

* The lovely USB reinstall stick from last year’s model is non-existent. So if your Lion starts getting hiccups, you’ll have to take it to an Apple Store to get it resolved, or pony up $69 for a Lion installer on a USB thumb drive that Apple says will be available next month.

* A Broadcom BCM20702 chip on the wireless board adds Bluetooth 4.0 support with BLE. BLE chips hold many advantages over classic Bluetooth including 128 bit AES security, 6 ms latency (classic Bluetooth is 100 ms), and less power consumption.

* A Broadcom BCM4322 Intensi-fi Single-Chip 802.11n Transceiver gives this Air the ability to get internet… through air.

* Just like in the mid-2010 MacBook Air, the SSD is not soldered on the logic board. Thankfully this means you can upgrade the SSD for more storage, but you’re still out of luck if you need extra RAM.


Removing the SSD

* Other than a larger plate to accommodate the bigger die face of the Core i5 processor, the heat sink looks nearly identical to the one used on the Core 2 Duo Airs of last year. Djuric says iFixIt will do some testing to see if temperatures are any higher in this machine.

* Surprisingly, there isn’t too much excess thermal paste between the processor and the heat sink. This is a nice departure from Apple’s recent trend of assaulting processors with gobs of thermal paste.


Taking Out The Logic Board

* Big players on the logic board include:

* Intel Core i5 Processor-2557M with integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics
* Intel E78296 01PB10 / E116A746 SLJ4K Platform Controller Hub. They’re guessing this includes an integrated Thunderbolt controller. It’s not this part, but it’s similar.
* Hynix H5TQ2G838ZR 4 GB RAM
* SMSC USB2513B USB 2.0 Hub Controller

* Shifting to integrated graphics on the processor freed up a lot of room on the board — enough for Apple to add the sizeable Thunderbolt-capable Platform Controller Hub.

* A new addition to the upper case is the network of LEDs attached to the keyboard backlight cable. A couple LEDs transmit light through fiber optic channels to evenly illuminate the keys on the keyboard.

* The thickness restrictions of such a thin display were the deciding factor in not equipping the Air with a FaceTimeHD camera.

The teardown:
http://bit.ly/pjrChe


Final layout

For more information, visit:
http://www.ifixit.com

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