M1 Air with Thermal Pad Mod

[Queen6]

Yes Q-6, the minimum SSD that could be considered is 512GB for that reason, which adds even more expense.

Apple is in danger of going up its own bottom again - pricing itself out of the market yet producing ever-more mediocre designs. Look at the Mac Studio - an offence to anyone with any sensibilities. Time to sell AAPL.

Agree. A shame really as the M2 Air is a beautifully designed notebook, however to get the best out of the SOC an expensive proposition for many. To the point the 14" MBP presents a far better value, I looked at it myself and concluded to stick with the M1 MBP and upgrade to the 14" MBP in time as the M2 Air simply lacks the value it once did.

Base M1 Air/13" MBP were lightening in a bottle, Apple knew it, the users knew it. Apple's solution a single nand chip to cripple performance, push expensive in house upgrades or higher priced models. If anything the new M2 Air should have launched with a 512 SSD with dual nand...

I really like the design of the new M2 Air I do, however the 14" is clearly the better value likely more so with M2. Either ways Apple wins, but that's what they do best.

Q-6

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Yes Q-6, the minimum SSD that could be considered is 512GB for that reason, which adds even more expense.

It reinforces my advice on buying Apple devices: Go big. If you even think you might need more memory, more storage, GET IT THEN, at purchase, because you aren't going to be able to upgrade. Now, with this Air, people have another reason to Go Big...

 

[Queen6]

It reinforces my advice on buying Apple devices: Go big. If you even think you might need more memory, more storage, GET IT THEN, at purchase, because you aren't going to be able to upgrade. Now, with this Air, people have another reason to Go Big...

Kind of have the opposite approach; The base model should serve the vast majority. Today with the M2 Air it doesn't and should be avoided. The answer is to look elsewhere not feed the beast.

Apple's inhouse upgrade pricing is a joke, equally being a monopoly what else to expect...

Q-6

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Kind of have the opposite approach; The base model should serve the vast majority. Today with the M2 Air it doesn't and should be avoided. The answer is to look elsewhere not feed the beast.

Apple's inhouse upgrade pricing is a joke, equally being a monopoly what else to expect...

Q-6

I disagree, but whatever...

Yeah, upgrades are expensive, so 'pay it forward'? I'm not ready to dump Apple, because, news to you?, Most manufacturers are doing the exact same thing. No upgrades. None. Buy big, or replace it later.

 

[timmillea]

With deep regret, I am selling my faithful, modded M1 MBA. However, only to replace it with a higher-specced M1 MBA. Yes, I am switching my base 8GB/256GB M1 MBA for a 16GB/2TB M1 MBA! The benefit of a near 2 year old model and a 'replacement' being released, is that used prices have plummeted. I have bought the new and will sell the old, on the Bay. I still have some warranty left and the original box etc. so I hope the 2 x memory and 8 x storage upgrade won't actually cost me that much - perhaps £400-500.

The mod for the new guy is top of my list and I have enjoyed revisiting this thread to remember how to do it!

 

[Tenkaykev]

With deep regret, I am selling my faithful, modded M1 MBA. However, only to replace it with a higher-specced M1 MBA. Yes, I am switching my base 8GB/256GB M1 MBA for a 16GB/2TB M1 MBA! The benefit of a near 2 year old model and a 'replacement' being released, is that used prices have plummeted. I have bought the new and will sell the old, on the Bay. I still have some warranty left and the original box etc. so I hope the 2 x memory and 8 x storage upgrade won't actually cost me that much - perhaps £400-500.

The mod for the new guy is top of my list and I have enjoyed revisiting this thread to remember how to do it!

Hi Tim,
I'll be following your exploits avidly, it would be much appreciated if you posted lots of photos. I'm delighted with my M1 Air, a heck of a lot of computer for the money, especially as I was able to get educational discount. I subscribed to the Dave2D YouTube channel when I was researching Gaming Laptops for my 12 year old grandson, I still take a look at his reviews from tie to time. I think the most telling was when he said that when the M1 Air came out, none of the other laptop manufacturers would send him a review machine for his annual comparison as they had done in previous years.

 

[timmillea]

Ha! Yes Tenkaykey, here we go then.

I was not tempted by the M2 MBA. It is a marginal spec upgrade at the loss of the beautiful and practical wedge design and at a 25% price premium, like for like. No-way, Jose!

I have splashed out on a quoted 12.8 W/m-K thermal pad, compared to my previous 2.5 W/m-K pad. It cost me all of £8.12 delivered I can stand it. It will be interesting to see how the performance of the 16GB/2TB M1 MBA compares with my current 8GB/256GB MBA, firstly un-modded and then modded and also the difference the mod makes. All this fun ahead....

 

[erkanasu]

Ha! Yes Tenkaykey, here we go then.

I was not tempted by the M2 MBA. It is a marginal spec upgrade at the loss of the beautiful and practical wedge design and at a 25% price premium, like for like. No-way, Jose!

I have splashed out on a quoted 12.8 W/m-K thermal pad, compared to my previous 2.5 W/m-K pad. It cost me all of £8.12 delivered I can stand it. It will be interesting to see how the performance of the 16GB/2TB M1 MBA compares with my current 8GB/256GB MBA, firstly un-modded and then modded and also the difference the mod makes. All this fun ahead....

I just did the same m1 upgrade

 

[timmillea]

Erkanasu, you are clearly very wise.

 

[Queen6]

This mod with the Razer magnetic cooler interests. I know there's been heated discussion, equally when ambient is 35C - 40C there's an impact...

Q-6

 

[imrazor]

@erkanasu @timmillea When I bought my M1 MBA (refurb) a little over a year ago, I knew that 8GB RAM (and to a lesser extent, 256 GB storage) wouldn't serve my needs, so I 'went big' and got the 16GB+512GB model. My only regret is that I didn't get a bigger SSD in the first place...I currently have <20GB free space. Sadly, I currently have neither the justification nor funds to buy a MBA with a bigger SSD. I can however, get a bigger external SSD (currently have a WD 512G SSD, which is stuffed to the gills as well.)

I've left the thermal mod in place, and have experienced no glitches, crashes, flesh burns, exploding batteries, or other disasters...

 

[timmillea]

Yes I was lucky to pick up a relatively rare (BTO) secondhand 2TB MBA for roughly the going rate of a 1TB model, £1140. My 8GB/256GB is currently up for auction on eBay but I should make more than half that cost back, after fees. Having rejected the M2 model, I consider this a wise investment. So I spent almost two years being meticulous about sticking within 256GB, except I kept all my Handbraked DVDs and Blu-rays on an external 2TB SSD. Those are now moved over but I still have over 1TB free! The external SSD is now my TimeMachine backup drive, taking over from my ancient 2TB hard drive - remember those ?

Back to topic. My 12.8 W/mK thermal pad is on its way from China. I will do the raft of before & after tests when it arrives, photos, everything and will share here. I am expecting my 'new' MBA to have the bit of factory-installed thermal foam in the corner, as reported by others, as it is the top-specced model.

BTW, I thought it best to leave the thermal pad in place on my 'old' MBA but not to mention it in the eBay listing. The only reason the new owner would ever take the back off it would be to install a thermal pad, at which point they would hopefully be pleasantly surprised.

 

[imrazor]

@timmillea Honestly, I'm not sure what the thermal conductivity of my thermal pads are. They are sufficient to keep performance in the same range as 13" M1 MBP, so that's good enough for my purposes. A very slight bit of throttling is noticeable after several Cinebench runs, but the lower scores are usually in the 7600+ range. I'm curious to see your results.

Since I bought it refurb, it's not immediately clear if my MBA was a custom or off the shelf model. I seem to recall two models being offered as 'standard' on the Apple Store website, but I can't remember for sure how the higher tier was specced. In addition to the extra RAM and storage, mine also came with the 8 core GPU, which also turned out to be a smart move (gamer here.)

 

[timmillea]

Ha, yes my 'new' 16GB/2TB M1 MBA only has the 7 GPU cores - I am not a gamer. I would be if I allowed myself. Thirty years ago I borrowed a friend's Game Boy and didn't sleep for 3 days! I very reluctantly returned it.

There WERE 2 standard models: 8GB/256GB 8CPU/7GPU and 8GB/512GB 8CPU/8GPU. Anything else was BTO. Everymac is a great resource:

Apple MacBook Air Specs (All MacBook Air Tech Specs): EveryMac.com

Tech specs for all Apple MacBook Air models from the original to the current. Dates sold, processor type, memory info, storage details, prices and more.

everymac.com

 

[imrazor]

I borrowed a friend's Game Boy and didn't sleep for 3 days

LOL yes gaming can be very addictive, especially with the right game. I've (mostly) learned to manage it, but I still occasionally fall victim to all-night gaming marathons.

Native Apple Silicon games are rather rare, but there is still a good variety of games available if you're willing to look into emulation and outside Apple's walled garden. It does sometimes require getting one's hands dirty...

 

[Queen6]

LOL yes gaming can be very addictive, especially with the right game. I've (mostly) learned to manage it, but I still occasionally fall victim to all-night gaming marathons.

Native Apple Silicon games are rather rare, but there is still a good variety of games available if you're willing to look into emulation and outside Apple's walled garden. It does sometimes require getting one's hands dirty...

Problem solved...

Mac Source Ports

Mac Source Ports - Run old games on new Macs

macsourceports.com

Q-6

 

[Fgars2]

Cant i apply 15w instem of 6w pad ? it Will improve score/ heat but not by much, so by this way it Will have less heat out and better performance no ?

 

[timmillea]

Fgars2,

Welcome to the forums!

Sadly, I don't understand your question! The vast majority of the heatsink can be covered with a 2mm thich thermal pad. The exact specifications of the pad, in terms of thermal conductivity (measured in W/K.m), are not that significant. I used the cheapest I could buy (2W/K.m) for my first mod to great effect. All my results in the preceding pages are based on using that pad in the base model MBA M1.

 

[theSyd]

That is amazing - proof that Apple monitor discussion groups such as this, study the hard evidence and quietly make manufacturing mods!

DrCC well done. Have you done any tests to compare your MBA's performance with those published 'way back when' in this thread?

My day one M1 MBA has the same pad. Basically all the 8c/8c MBAs have it. And what’s funny is that that is a thermal insulating pad. It’s there so the heat won’t spread to the bottom case as much

 

[DrCC]

And what’s funny is that that is a thermal insulating pad. It’s there so the heat won’t spread to the bottom case as much

🤣🤣🤣 Indeed funny.

 

[mrmister]

"And what’s funny is that that is a thermal insulating pad. It’s there so the heat won’t spread to the bottom case as much."

The real joke is what that heat, spreading across the bottom case, does to the batteries.

There's no universe where Apple didn't think of this. If they didn't dump all the heat into the backplate it's because it is supposed to work on people's laps AND they need to keep the battery from degrading.

 

[Queen6]

"And what’s funny is that that is a thermal insulating pad. It’s there so the heat won’t spread to the bottom case as much."

The real joke is what that heat, spreading across the bottom case, does to the batteries.

There's no universe where Apple didn't think of this. If they didn't dump all the heat into the backplate it's because it is supposed to work on people's laps AND they need to keep the battery from degrading.

That's why. Lithium Polymer batteries fair best in a specific working range, however they can exceed to a cost. My 12" rMBP faired pretty well, was used hard in hot climates. That said the battery collapsed far faster than any other Mac I've previously owned/used. 12" rMB isn't by any means a fast machine, however despite it's low TDP it utilises the baseplate to cool the CPU which impasses additional heat to the battery pack...

Only Passively cooled system I've observed to be really robust is the Acer Switch 5 although it has no fan it does have a liquid cooling loop, similar to typical heat pipes. No doubt it's 2 in 1 tablet vertical form factor helps greatly .

Q-6

 

[theSyd]

"And what’s funny is that that is a thermal insulating pad. It’s there so the heat won’t spread to the bottom case as much."

The real joke is what that heat, spreading across the bottom case, does to the batteries.

There's no universe where Apple didn't think of this. If they didn't dump all the heat into the backplate it's because it is supposed to work on people's laps AND they need to keep the battery from degrading.

That’s exactly it, and it’s why I’m not doing a mod that uses the bottom case as a heat sink.

I’ve been doing some extensive tests on throttling, as I noticed some more severe effects this summer; the main reason for any kind of throttling is battery temp. The system will do literally everything it can to keep it under 43°c.

With an ambient temperature of 30°c, after 20-25 minutes of sustained load on all cores, the computer starts to lower the clock significantly, down to ~1.5GHz (with a SoC temp of 65°c), after 30 minutes, it goes down to 1.2, and stays that way. After a little more time (no more than 10 minutes) performance cores start to get disabled, slowly but surely. At the 1 hour mark only one single performance core is enabled, and the total package power consumption is 2 to 3W, and the SoC temp is no more than ~50°c.

If anyone is curious why I did such test, I all started while I was doing a render with v-ray, and the rendering process just kinda stalled at some point, taking 8+ hours for what would’ve been a 2 hours job.

All this is negated by a simple desk fan pointed at the upper case.

 

[mrmister]

All this is negated by a simple desk fan pointed at the upper case.

I often think...if you want a thin and light laptop, AND you want to do sustained load things...

...maybe just point a fan at the laptop?

In my universe I basically never need to do sustained load stuff, really ever—all I care about is peak performance and single core, bc I am not editing/rendering/etc etc.

But if I DID, and I wanted my MBA to handle it—I'd just use some kind of very quiet, well-made fan to draw heat away from the laptop.

 

[VladVlad]

Hey! I am new here. I would like to ask, dose anyone tryed Honeywell ptm7950 thermal pad for air m1? How it works? how many millimeters do you need it on cpu?