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MacBook Air internals revealed in tear-down photos

The folks over at iFixIt are the first to issue an illustrated report after having completely torn-down their HDD-based MacBook Air. Some photos and notes from their efforts follow.

Of particular interest is iFixIt's claim that they'll soon be among the third-parties who plan to manufacture and sell replacement batteries for the Air. The firm's extensive tear-down can be seen here, highlights of which are available below.

Meanwhile, high-resolution shots of the front and back of the MacBook Air's petite logic-board are also available.

MacBook Air Tear-down Highlights

  • A temperature sensor sits on an external board glued between the CPU and graphics chips.
  • The hard drive sits beneath the USB, micro-DVI, and audio ribbon cables.
  • The Air is the first Intel-based Mac to run on 45 watt Power adapter. THe MacBook uses a 60-watt and the MacBook Pro an 85-watt
  • Earlier MacBook MagSafe power adapters work, but won't fit when the Air is placed on a flat surface.
  • The Air is held together by approximately 88 screws.
  • 19 screws require removal to reach the battery — 10 to dislodge the bottom case and another 9 securing the battery to the chassis.
  • The entire display assembly weighs only 465 g (slightly more than a pound), 34 percent less than the functionally-equivalent display assembly on the MacBook.
  • The actual LED display panel is less than 3mm thick.
  • A substantial engineering effort went into designing robust Wi-Fi antennas.
  • The speaker board is located beneath the arrow keys on the keyboard.
  • The Air's RF Module includes a Broadcom 802.11 chip with the markings BCM4321KFBG.
  • The heat sink is made of very thin aluminum and looks totally different from anything we've seen in a Mac before.
  • There are 16 Micron RAM chips (eight one-gigabit chips on each side of the logic board) for a total of 2 GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM.
  • The graphics chip is an Intel North Bridge GS965.
  • iFixIt also identified a Silicon Image SIL1392CNU HDMI video chip and Texas Instruments TPS51120 dual current mode synchronous step-down controller (power management).
  • A Broadcom BCM5974 touch screen controller chip on the interconnect board is the same chip you'll find in the iPhone and iPod Touch.

MacBook Air teardown photos compliments of iFixIt
MacBook Air teardown
MacBook Air teardown photos compliments of iFixIt
MacBook Air teardown
MacBook Air teardown photos compliments of iFixIt
MacBook Air teardown
MacBook Air teardown photos compliments of iFixIt
MacBook Air teardown
MacBook Air teardown photos compliments of iFixIt
MacBook Air teardown
MacBook Air teardown photos compliments of iFixIt
MacBook Air teardown
MacBook Air teardown photos compliments of iFixIt
MacBook Air teardown
MacBook Air teardown photos compliments of iFixIt
MacBook Air teardown
MacBook Air teardown photos compliments of iFixIt
MacBook Air teardown
MacBook Air teardown photos compliments of iFixIt
MacBook Air teardown
MacBook Air teardown photos compliments of iFixIt
MacBook Air teardown
MacBook Air teardown photos compliments of iFixIt
MacBook Air teardown
MacBook Air teardown photos compliments of iFixIt
MacBook Air teardown
MacBook Air teardown photos compliments of iFixIt