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I Bought the Cheapest MacBook Air on eBay (£15)

Joe C-J

18,261 views

I bought what might be the cheapest MacBook Air on eBay. Just £15 and unsurprisingly… it was broken.

In this video, I tear it down, replace the keyboard, trackpad, and storage, clean years of grime out of it, and see whether it’s worth saving at all. Once the hardware is sorted, I install Fedora Linux and put this 2015 MacBook Air through its paces to see how it holds up in 2026.

Along the way there’s:
Far too many tiny screws
A suspicious liquid spill
Linux configuration, stress testing, and thermals
And proof that old Intel Macs aren’t dead yet

What’s in the video:
Full teardown & deep clean
Keyboard and trackpad replacement
NVMe upgrade
Thermal repaste
Fedora KDE install
Fan control, power management & stress testing
Battery health check
Gaming test on 11-year-old hardware

Software & tools used:
Fedora KDE
mbpfan
TLP
stress-ng
fastfetch
btop / htop
Flatpak + Flathub

Notes:
Beer was substituted with tea halfway through.
This may have affected decision-making.

Thanks for watching,
Joe

________________________
Chapters
0:00 - Intro
1:08 - Repair work
5:46 - Fedora Linux
11:02 - My thoughts + outro

20 Comments

@Blackadder-4711 8 months ago

So many SSDs! 😮
Be careful that nobody robs you! They're worth more than gold! 😂

@jansshrimps3785 8 months ago

tbh, it looks really clean for something thats 11 years old. like i was supprised at how small the mother board was.

@GreyFox-u9n 8 months ago (edited)

Here I am again, Joe. For a ‘Brute Force Man’ you’re extremely organised and gentle. Another great video. Thanks ☺️. And I see this video has answered my previous question regarding the fan app ❤

@Spacemanspark 8 months ago

I own a Macbook air 2017 model that runs arch (btw). Been using it like this for well over a year, had never heard about mbpfan until watching your video. Gave it a go and wow, that does make a surprising difference, with temps hovering closer to 85-88c under load rather than the 100c throttle limit it was reaching when being pushed! Thanks for the video, that's awesome stuff. Also good to know how to replace the touchpad/keyboard if I ever need to.

@maxuyt26 8 months ago

You did an amazing job, i couldn't do that whitout breaking the machine apart😅

@zamwastaken 8 months ago

This deserves more views

@audiquagaming 8 months ago

I approve
Of the beer and the cup of tea!!!!😂

@epiphany_sudo 8 months ago

You were doing a great job, thank you Joe

@matt4193 8 months ago

Didn't know the trackpad was glass. Nice restoration!

@josecespedes4551 8 months ago

Great video!!! Straight to the point without missing any details, without stupid side jokes, nor stories. Loved it! Must admit had a little problem with your accent.
Best wishes from Panama 🇵🇦

@RetroLodge 8 months ago

Wow I'm surprised how this laptop turned out I've enjoyed watching this video

@tambow44 8 months ago

hearing that beer crack open is so satisfying after the work put in.

looks amazing bro nice !

@mikecass8306 8 months ago

Bargain, thanks Joe 😀👍👍👍

@christianas 8 months ago

Nice one Joe. Bring the brewdog back 😁

@zoidberg444 8 months ago

Cool.

Got Mint on my A1466 13 inch from 2015. Runs decently enough.

@orrefis 8 months ago

nice restoration, but oof flatpak

@audiquagaming 8 months ago

I love it I have Debian on a 2012 MacBook Air runs good

@sucharsharma 5 months ago

You can change the theme to mac os type theme on kde. It works great.

@jpecorel1 8 months ago

Good choice of beer, buddy.

@jimmahgee 8 months ago

This was a really cool watch, very informative, thank you! I didn't know about mbpfan and tlp, or the stress testing. I followed along with all of it on my MacBook Pro 2012 (750GB disk, 8GB RAM), also running Fedora Workstation, and did the same stress-ng command. The i7-3520M CPUs all got up to 94oC. That's without changing the thermal paste or cleaning the fan, both of which I'm going to do with a more experienced friend very soon. They are about 50oC with just Firefox open in the background with a single tab. I'm guessing that's too hot and hopefully the fan/paste will help a lot? Would you be otherwise concerned with those temps?