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M2 Air Disappointing Thermal Design
- Thread starter MK500
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The M series chips are so powerful and efficient that if paired with a fan in MacBook Air would push a lot of people towards the Air who would have otherwise considered a Pro.
Apple is deliberately pushing those customers away from Air towards the more expensive Pro.
Its not very hard to put a fan in a 13" laptop in 2022.
Apple is deliberately pushing those customers away from Air towards the more expensive Pro.
Its not very hard to put a fan in a 13" laptop in 2022.
Market segmentation, having multiple models - it's pretty basic business stuff and not sinister.
Do you think they could make a 11mm thick laptop with a fan in it?
I really think it's ok to make the thin one, and also a thicker one with a fan. People can choose based on their needs.
oh but ipads and tablets don't have heatsinks. Basically the M2 Air is an iPad that runs macOS.
The M2 ipad pro(when it comes out) and M1 ipad pro don't have heatsinks its seems for fanless devices Apple is just letting the chip slow down in sustained workloads.
Buy one with a fan? One of the reasons I bought this was because it didn't have one. For my uses it doesn't need one. It will never get hot. I'm not a benchmark nerd or YouTube "content creator"
Just because they have some common elements, doesn't make them the same. What does it get us to go around thinking of the m2 air as "basically an iPad"? What do we gain from this analysis?
Wait you mean the engineers working at Apple know more than some dude on YouTube? I thought good ole Max had a degree in Apple thermal engineering 🤣
First ipads use the same M1/M2(2022 iPad Pro will have this) chip.Well we don't go bonkers over iPad Pros not having heatsinks do we?
Likewise the cooling system is the same on the M2 Air no proper heatsink just like the M1 ipad Pro. Just slows down when its gets too hot.
Yes but the way the entire SOC is used is completely different between macOS and iPadOS, and they're in different chassis, and people use them differently. It's an apples to oranges comparison.
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No dust can get inside the machine as no air goes in the computer
oh look even the Steam Deck has throttling when it gets hot and it has a fan:
And a fan as a mechanical part takes a lot of power to spin. Then the volume of a fan means a certain thickness of the chassis has to account for it plus the surface area for the profile of air flow. It makes a lot of sense to not put a fan in it, until it gets "too hot" of course.
Do you know that 2020 intel macbook air and M1 macbook air were of same size and thickness still M1 was missing a fan ?
Any idea how much watts a macbook air fan uses ?
in modern macs most of the time fans are not spinning at all. Only when you do something demanding the fan kicks in.
Intel macbooks Airs will get really got just from watching YouTube and having some tabs and zoom open. Intel macbooks boost their CPU high and this raises watts and that's why a fan is needed.
The M2 Air will be fine at light tasks and will not heat up for basic things.
The only Intel macbook that was fanless was the 12" macbook cause it had a 5 watt cpu kbut was so weak.
Whats the problem in giving M series Macs a fan so that they could achieve their full potential without throttling ?
The problem is there are people who want a computer, not a tablet, that doesn't have a fan. Now, you're clearly not one of those people, and for you, Apple provides the M series MacBook Pros in numerous configurations.
I don't know what's the big deal about fans and thermals. You guys know maxtech literally made the SAME VIDEO recommending the thermal hack for m1 air right? lol
at the 7:54 mark you literally see the guy doing the exact same thing and recommending the exact same product as the m2 air video
If you look through all the other reviews, the m2 runs a lot cooler than the m1. There's a popular Chinese reviewer stating that the fan in his m2 mbp 13 does not even turn on after working in final cut for an hour+
M1 was all the hype around performance for clickbait, and I will miss all the "m1 air outperforming 3090RTX!!1" videos (/s). All this fuss around M2 chip is just due to the fact that the YouTubers needed a 2022 clickbait refresh
at the 7:54 mark you literally see the guy doing the exact same thing and recommending the exact same product as the m2 air video
If you look through all the other reviews, the m2 runs a lot cooler than the m1. There's a popular Chinese reviewer stating that the fan in his m2 mbp 13 does not even turn on after working in final cut for an hour+
M1 was all the hype around performance for clickbait, and I will miss all the "m1 air outperforming 3090RTX!!1" videos (/s). All this fuss around M2 chip is just due to the fact that the YouTubers needed a 2022 clickbait refresh
Hi there, I'm a UX/UI designer and I've just ordered a Mac Book Air M2 to replace an ageing Intel i9 MBP.... Going to give it a go and see if it's any good, have read about this thermal throttling, is there any way to help with Cooling ie:
• A cooling stand with fans? (do they work)
• having it mounted on a stand? (I work from an LG Ultrafine 27" most of the time)
My GF has the M1 Macbook Air and I was pretty impressed with that when have used it, I'm mainly in Figma and limited Adobe work these days....
• A cooling stand with fans? (do they work)
• having it mounted on a stand? (I work from an LG Ultrafine 27" most of the time)
My GF has the M1 Macbook Air and I was pretty impressed with that when have used it, I'm mainly in Figma and limited Adobe work these days....
Meh I just read that fan Cooling stands do barely anything.. Reading up this thread I am inclined to think perhaps the throttling is much ado about nothing, at least with most of my general workflow. But we'll see...
Ok, so we're on the same page here - most of the time the fans are not needed.
So, for the people who basically never do anything that would make a fan turn on... how about a fanless mac?
Look, I am not defending on Apple's behalf as to how this M2 Air is (too) inefficient in heat dissipation. In fact I think they aimed too low.
But my above statement on fanless design was more in a general computing point of view, where passive cooling has its place when power consumption and volume are a premium, which is the case on a thin and light laptop.