M2 Air Disappointing Thermal Design

[clevins]

Agreed. I think there's still lingering beliefs that the MacBook Air is Apple's low level machine, except, when they put the M1 in it, it was blowing away the Intel powered 16" MacBook Pro in many heavy and demanding tasks. And it was doing that with no active cooling. Regardless of how good the M2 is, the M1 is still a beast of a processor and will enable a very wide variety of light to heavy usage, all while sipping power.

Yep. If you need sustained high C/GPU performance the Air isn't your machine. Rendering 45 minutes of 8K RAW video? The Air will throttle. But compiling code for 5 minutes? It might but may not.

It's annoying how some people divide everyone into two camps - people who do work that has consistent, high processor demands and people who do nothing but surf the web and use Office. Reality is more complex. Sadly most reviewers conflate high performance with video/audio/effects work when the reality is that there's coding, engineering, financial modeling and many other niches.

 

[MK500]

iFixit is like, “Where’s the heatsink?”. M2 Air teardown:

 

[Shevlin]

Keep in mind that it was a difference of 11 degrees Celsius.

Celsius is always the default unit of temperature when talking about computer internals, even in America. I typed my comment with that in mind.

Before the thermal pad, it reached the peak of 108 within 28 seconds of a 100% CPU load in Cinebench R23.
After the thermal pad, it only reached 97 after the same 28 seconds.
It took 1 minute and 20 seconds to reach 108 degrees.

And huge amounts of heat on the bottom of the laptop will only be the case when exporting for an extended period of time, after a minute or two. So in those cases, one option is to put it on a tabletop until it finishes and cools down.

If you’re running workloads similar to what Cinebench simulates, then you need a Pro. Apple did not design the Air for people running those kinds of workloads, which makes up a majority of their customers.

If you do run workloads like the ones Cinebench simulates, the thermal pad takes less than a minute to reach the same temp it reaches without the pad, and it does so while transferring that heat to the bottom.

Nobody likes their laptop getting too hot to rest on their laps and having to move to a tabletop. There isn’t always a table ready. The portability of a laptop is a big reason people buy them, especially the Air.

It will also spread that same heat further in the body subjecting components to higher heat than they were designed or tested for. If something does break, you have to hope you didn’t leave any residue when you take the pad off for warranty repair, otherwise you’re screwed.

A couple hundred extra points in Cinebench is not worth all this. I wouldn’t be surprised if the difference in real-world performance is maybe a couple extra seconds if it does exist.

Common 4K editing will be fine because it relies on the media engines, so the M2 chip won't really heat up much at all

To me that’s yet another another reason why a thermal pad is pointless.

It's not a perfect fix, but it's the best we got!

I do not see a fix. I see an attempt to make the Air better at Pro workloads, which it was never intended for and makes the laptop worse in the process. The Pro exists for people who run those workloads.

 

[Danfango]

This is fine. It's not designed for sustained workloads, just average users. Everyone in this thread's CPUs are probably 90% idle for 23.5 hours a day. Mine barely peaks 50% on my 14" MBP doing heavy work all day. It'd be fine for me as well.

But no you're going to buy a manual VW Golf and drive it around in second gear at 50mph all day and whinge when it gets too hot.

 

[MK500]

Don’t get too caught up in the whole “Pro” name. It’s just a marketing term. I’ve spent decades working for Fortune 500 companies across the US, and I can assure you that professionals use all kinds of Macs for all kinds of tasks, and the “Pro” name means nothing.

As an example: the lowly Mac Mini is Apple’s best selling server computer of all time. The rack mounted “Mac Pro” is installed in a minuscule fraction of actual server racks compared to the Mini.

Use the tool that fits your budget and that works for you. That’s what professionals do.

 

[Danfango]

Don’t get too caught up in the whole “Pro” name. It’s just a marketing term. I’ve spent decades working for Fortune 500 companies across the US, and I can assure you that professionals use all kinds of Macs for all kinds of tasks, and the “Pro” name means nothing.

As an example: the lowly Mac Mini is Apple’s best selling server computer of all time. The rack mounted “Mac Pro” is installed in a minuscule fraction of actual server racks compared to the Mini.

Use the tool that fits your budget and that works for you. That’s what professionals do.

Some sense. Thank you!

 

[MK500]

So 108 to 97... Translated to Fahrenheit, that's a 19.8-degree difference.

I'd call that impressive for just a simple thermal pad mod.
And huge amounts of heat on the bottom of the laptop will only be the case when exporting for an extended period of time, after a minute or two. So in those cases, one option is to put it on a tabletop until it finishes and cools down.

It's not a perfect fix, but it's the best we got!

It‘s genius in its simplicity and reversibility. And there is a lot of room for adjustment and optimization. If I was installing the mod today, I would probably saturate the system until it hits a steady state (30 Minutes maybe?) and then measure the bottom. If it is too hot for comfort I would experiment with fewer pads and different locations (maybe only on the outer edges, for example). At some point I would likely find a balance that is comfortable.

I’m really thankful that you guys published this Mod, and I think it may help a lot of people get a lot more value from their M2 Air.

And if people find it is too hot; then they can just remove it. 4 screws and 5 minutes.

 

[netnative]

In my view, it is not a good idea to turn to the bottom plate of your M2 MacBook Air into a heat spreader. But say what you may about Vadim Yuryev and Luke Miani’s thermal pad mod videos, they exposed that the thermal management that Apple provided for the M2 chip in the redesigned MacBook Air is at least insufficient. iFixit’s most recent video suggests that it is practically nonexistent. At a time when phones have vapor cooling chambers, Apple could and should have done better.

 

[bbates123]

It has already been said here many many times but the thermal throttling isn't an issue for 99% of users so people need to just get over this. If you're doing sustained loads get a 14" Pro. The new Air is really a fantastic machine worthy of much praise - maybe the best laptop Apple has ever made. I love mine and I'm coming from an M1 Air. Reading the negativity in these threads is such a downer. Why do I do it? Glutton for punishment I guess.

 

[bbates123]

 

[rgwebb]

I think the thermal design questions about the new M2 MBA is much ado about nothing. From what I can gather the high level summary is: yes, there is throttling but it still outperforms the M1 MBA; coincidentally, that means it is still an amazingly performant computer compared to the rest of the market in this class and price range.

The bigger cause for complaints are the price bump and diminished disk i/o performance on the entry product offering. Especially since one area where the M2 MBA is sure to underperform the M1 MBA is entry v. entry comparison on disk i/o bottlenecked processes and that is exacerbated if such process causes disk swap due to the 8 GB unified memory.

 

[Apple_Robert]

What makes Luke and this other guy qualified to say it is insufficient? The YouTubers are manufacturing controversy for the sake of clicks.

In my view, it is not a good idea to turn to the bottom plate of your M2 MacBook Air into a heat spreader. But say what you may about Vadim Yuryev and Luke Miani’s thermal pad mod videos, they exposed that the thermal management that Apple provided for the M2 chip in the redesigned MacBook Air is at least insufficient. iFixit’s most recent video suggests that it is practically nonexistent. At a time when phones have vapor cooling chambers, Apple could and should have done better.

 

[Macalway]

It's going to take time, obviously. All this talk is just that.

 

[netnative]

What makes Luke and this other guy qualified to say it is insufficient? The YouTubers are manufacturing controversy for the sake of clicks.

Would you not expect that a new chip that can consume more power, run at higher clock rates, and presumably get hotter need improved cooling? And yet, Apple did not provide it in the redesigned MacBook Air. Also, take into account iFixit which cannot be easily dismissed as a YouTuber.

 

[dgdosen]

Noticing this thread after watching the iFixit video...

IMO, Marco Arment (ATP) was able to eloquently define a common thread of several hot button issues users have with Apple:

Users get upset when Apple 'regresses'

A few of those regressions comes to mind:

- The butterfly keyboard - regression of - typing
- The iPad mini 6 - regression and horizontal jelly scrolling in portrait mode
- Apple Silicon not running Bootcamp - regression of not running lesser operating systems
- The M2 SSDs - regression of SSD speeds (on base models)

And now there's the M1 - M2 heat sink issue. Is it a regression? The M2 Air was always known to lack active cooling. Would the M2 air perform better with a similar heat sink as the M1? iFixit sure seems to think the shipping solution in the M2 isn't doing much of anything. I'd be happy if Apple had more information on the matter...

 

[exoticSpice]

Would you not expect that a new chip that can consume more power, run at higher clock rates, and presumably get hotter need improved cooling? And yet, Apple did not provide it in the redesigned MacBook Air. Also, take into account iFixit which cannot be easily dismissed as a YouTuber.

Ok then I have better experts. Which say the chip is designed to work like that and the system knows what to do.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1548771664430858241

Jon Masters is ex-nuvia and Dylan is a chip analyst.

Yes that is why the M2 MBP exists and 14" and 16". Apple never designed the M2 Air for long sustained workloads they even said so.

 

[exoticSpice]

iFixit sure seems to think the shipping solution in the M2 isn't doing much of anything.

It's better than having nothing and it does do something there is thermal paste on the M2 Air heat spreader.

 

[GuruZac]

Ok then I have better experts. Which say the chip is designed to work like that and the system knows what to do.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1548771664430858241

Jon Masters is ex-nuvia and Dylan is a chip analyst.

Yes that is why the M2 MBP exists and 14" and 16". Apple never designed the M2 Air for long sustained workloads they even said so.

Agreed. And I've seen videos where the M2 and M1 Airs are rendering the same project and the M1 actually gets hotter.

 

[rgwebb]

This is getting out of control. Throttling exists for a reason, and as has been stated ad nauseam, if you are pushing the M2 Air to the point of serious throttling, you underbought your computer. Why would anyone buy a computer they know has no active cooling/fanless if you are doing sustained computing.

The overwhelming need to complain. (edit: I think this is a more G-rated place but you can figure out what was there before by context)

 

[exoticSpice]

This is getting out of control. Throttling exists for a reason, and as has been stated ad nauseam, if you are pushing the M2 Air to the point of serious throttling, you underbought your computer. Why would anyone buy a computer they know has no active cooling/fanless if you are doing sustained computing.

Yes the actual chip experts agree with you and I linked the twitter thread for proof. The M2 MBA is designed to throttle cause it's fanless.

 

[rgwebb]

The M1 and M2 MBA are the two best fanless laptops on the market. They can do things that their competitors could not hope to achieve either due to Intel heat limitations or the lack of a true desktop operating system.

The "thermal throttling" concerns are specious controversy engagement trawling and we're all dupes in that respect I suppose. The house always wins...

 

[MK500]

Yes the actual chip experts agree with you and I linked the twitter thread for proof. The M2 MBA is designed to throttle cause it's fanless.

MacBooks with fans also throttle. Windows machines with Intel processors as well. AMD too.

But they all have heatsinks. The cool thing about heatsinks is they pull the heat away from the SoC. This allows higher speeds for longer before they need to slow down to cool down. A great example is the M1 Air, which has a nice little heatsink. It still has to slow down; but not as quickly as it would if it had no heatsink. Fanless computers usually have larger heatsinks than computers with fans.

I like heatsinks. But if you don’t, that’s OK! Now you have a choice!

 

[Gelam]

Agreed. And I've seen videos where the M2 and M1 Airs are rendering the same project and the M1 actually gets hotter.

That is interesting, if you have the link to that video can I see it please?

I think people here is expecting the M2 Air to at least have a better thermal capacity or heat transfer rate to the environment than the M1 Air (I am no thermal engineer so I am not sure if the word I used is correct). Anything that is less is unacceptable to their eyes and the lack of a heat sink kind of supports their assumption that the M2 Air is poorer in thermal capacity or have worse heat transfer rate. However, this might not be true because we are all not thermal engineers.

So videos that compare M1 and M2 air clock speeds, wattage, and temperature using the same benchmark and work loads will be a very solid evidence to know for sure which thermal design is superior.

 

[yitwail]

That is interesting, if you have the link to that video can I see it please?

So videos that compare M1 and M2 air clock speeds, wattage, and temperature using the same benchmark and work loads will be a very solid evidence to know for sure which thermal design is superior.

It was previously posted in page 3 of this topic, but you evidently missed it, so here it is:

However, it doesn't demonstrate 'superior thermal design' necessarily, because the result could also be due to difference in chip efficiency on a given task.

 

[Gelam]

MacBooks with fans also throttle. Windows machines with Intel processors as well. AMD too.

But they all have heatsinks. The cool thing about heatsinks is they pull the heat away from the SoC. This allows higher speeds for longer before they need to slow down to cool down. A great example is the M1 Air, which has a nice little heatsink. It still has to slow down; but not as quickly as it would if it had no heatsink. Fanless computers usually have larger heatsinks than computers with fans.

I like heatsinks. But if you don’t, that’s OK! Now you have a choice!

Maybe the M2 Air uses the same design as the 12" MacBook where the board is the heatsink/spreader itself? And then the heat is transferred to the keyboard deck/top case instead of the bottom case in the case of the 12" MacBook?

I don't know this is the only thing I can think of if the M2 Air does have equal or superior thermal capacity to the M1 Air.

It was previously posted in page 3 of this topic, but you evidently missed it, so here it is:

However, it doesn't demonstrate 'superior thermal design' necessarily, because the result could also be due to difference in chip efficiency on a given task.

Ah thank you! Yes I jumped into this thread reading the last page only hehe, thank you.