I am thinking about putting a thermal pad over the cpu and possibly gpu to get a little better performance (less throttling) out of it. Do people think this is safe? Have you tried it? and Have you covered the gpu as well as the cpu or just the cpu? Thanks for your thoughts.
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M4 Air Thermal pad
- Thread starter jeffmr4
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I’ve seen it done with the M1 Air on a YouTube channel. Is it safe? If you’re not skilled then laptop repair it’s easy to damage something. Any damage you cause obviously isn’t covered under warranty so you might completely ruin the laptop. Also modifying it you’re pretty much voiding your warranty. Apple isn’t going to work on it after it’s been modified.
My advice is to get the 14” base MacBook Pro. It doesn’t require any modification and it has the cooling you want. Also, it has a better screen.
I'm somewhat skilled with getting around in a laptop. Unfortunately, I don't have the financial means to get a Pro. It seemed like doing this would put it closer to MacBook Pro performance. I've thought about the warranty thing and that is a good thing to think about.
Another thing I'm wary of is that the once using the pad, the bottom of the laptop becomes a giant heatsink. I want to be sure the battery heating up more than it usually does would not be a problem. I'm not as concerned with the life of the battery, just the heat.
Another thing I'm wary of is that the once using the pad, the bottom of the laptop becomes a giant heatsink. I want to be sure the battery heating up more than it usually does would not be a problem. I'm not as concerned with the life of the battery, just the heat.
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Throttling on the air is greatly exaggerated here… the M4 sips power. I do photoshop, Lightroom and some games on mine and I never experience throttling in any meaningful way. Studies have shown that when the AS air does throttle…it’s only a 10% reduction in speed. To me a rare 10% drop is absolutely not worth my thinking I am more qualified than Apple engineers and potentially risking damaging my computer and voiding the warranty. Shrugs. Test it yourself and do your own risk benefit analysis.
MaxTech and others on Youtube have found that the performance gains are significant and it does throttle significantly if you throw any hard work at it (also in their videos). I never said anything about thinking I'm more qualified than anyone else. I'm a bit of a tinkerer and like souping up computers now and again. Its more of a hobby than anything else. I also like trying new things. I'm not sure what games you have tried but I am specifically trying Assassin's Creed Shadows, which is challenging for any hardware. I am not using the native application because I've researched and found that it is optimized poorly for Mac. I use GeForce Now which works very well on many of my devices and am interested in squeezing a little more performance out of it. Anyway, thank you all for your comments and be careful about assumptions you make about other people. They may not be true ...
I ran a couple of experiments to see at what point the throttling starts. This is not something I have knowingly experienced in my normal use of this machine.
First, I initiated an export of 372 24Mpx Nikon raw files from Lightroom Classic as 24Mpx highest quality jpg files. I monitored CPU temps with TG Pro. About 150 images into the export you could see the throttling begin and the temps decrease significantly. Temps would suggest that Lightroom Classic was making heavy use of all the cores: efficiency, performance, and GPU.
I also used RaceRender to render a 4 minute 1GB 1080p60 video from 2 1080p60 video sources and some data overlays. The performance cores were the only ones working hard and cpu throttling did not occur.
Bottom line for me: if I was still doing event photography where I need to churn out hundreds or thousands of images a day, then a MBP would be the right choice, most likely with a Pro or possibly a Max cpu. But I'm not, and throttling is not a concern for my use of this machine.
First, I initiated an export of 372 24Mpx Nikon raw files from Lightroom Classic as 24Mpx highest quality jpg files. I monitored CPU temps with TG Pro. About 150 images into the export you could see the throttling begin and the temps decrease significantly. Temps would suggest that Lightroom Classic was making heavy use of all the cores: efficiency, performance, and GPU.
I also used RaceRender to render a 4 minute 1GB 1080p60 video from 2 1080p60 video sources and some data overlays. The performance cores were the only ones working hard and cpu throttling did not occur.
Bottom line for me: if I was still doing event photography where I need to churn out hundreds or thousands of images a day, then a MBP would be the right choice, most likely with a Pro or possibly a Max cpu. But I'm not, and throttling is not a concern for my use of this machine.
MBA throttling under sustained high load is greatly exaggerated. I looked quite hard at throttling on MBA with M1 and M2 chips in this thread. I haven’t looked at M3 and M4 but doubt the general conclusion is different. Here is my key chart of M1 and M2 results: Note that the Y axis is not a zero origin making the throttling effect appear greater than it is. On the M2, 8643 down to 7373, 15% after 30 mins. I have also run Chess analysis programs for up to two hours at 100% CPU. This throttled more but the machine is perfectly stable. I tried an M1 MBP which didn’t throttle but I couldn’t stand the continuous fan noise at 5500rpm!
PS presume you have seen this long thread on the subject. Much detailed info in there.
Bottom Line….I wouldn’t do a thermal pad mod to a brand new M4 MBA but the tinkerer in me might be tempted on an old M1 MBA.
PS presume you have seen this long thread on the subject. Much detailed info in there.
Bottom Line….I wouldn’t do a thermal pad mod to a brand new M4 MBA but the tinkerer in me might be tempted on an old M1 MBA.
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Afaik M4 Air is still not a cheap toy. You are free to do anything with your own “toy” but beware: with heat comes decreased battery life. So if you are planning to use it for longer without fears of pillowing – better to stay away from these thermal pads. Bloggers such as MKBHD and Max Tech earn huge sums of money and can buy as many of these MacBooks as they want to, so I would take their advices with the grain of salt: i.e. you are technically “cooling” you Mac with this pad but since it has no direct access to motherboard you are just aiding passive cooling a bit, so throttling will still happen occasionally.
I have an older M1 Air and I had not experienced heating in any application that I currently use. For image manipulation I do use Pixelmator instead of highly-praised Photoshop because PS does something weird and uses more resources than it actually needs, I sometimes had a feeling it is mining crypto in a background and not editing my RAW images.
For gaming I would advise you to get some other, “beater” device like Switch 2 or maybe some sort of Windows machine. Do not grab Playstation, you will hate it. Sony servers always lag and give bans for no reasons. Leave Mac for what it is best - work/life stuff, or just continue to play GFN – this is the best option so far and you can invest as less as possible into gaming right there and right now, plus side is that you don’t need to install 115 GB game on your internal SSD
I have an older M1 Air and I had not experienced heating in any application that I currently use. For image manipulation I do use Pixelmator instead of highly-praised Photoshop because PS does something weird and uses more resources than it actually needs, I sometimes had a feeling it is mining crypto in a background and not editing my RAW images.
For gaming I would advise you to get some other, “beater” device like Switch 2 or maybe some sort of Windows machine. Do not grab Playstation, you will hate it. Sony servers always lag and give bans for no reasons. Leave Mac for what it is best - work/life stuff, or just continue to play GFN – this is the best option so far and you can invest as less as possible into gaming right there and right now, plus side is that you don’t need to install 115 GB game on your internal SSD
What's the point? It was never designed to have thermal pads, it's just not needed. You have to really be caning it to get it to throttle anyway. And if you are doing that frequently, then you've bought the wrong laptop & wasted your money.
Define significantly. Because the only real quantitative differences I have seen is 10%. Maxtech is clickbait with cooked up measurements using artificial benchmarks… just not going to risk my machine on that. You want to risk yours, fine.
As far as assumptions go, I never said anything about you, I used the word ‘I’. You don’t like my wording, cool. But don’t assume it’s always about you.
It is your computer, I am presenting the other side not for you, but others that might think this is a cool idea. Because it’s as I said a risk benefit analysis. Because you asked for opinions. My opinion there is risk, and so far you haven’t quantified the reward.
Another opinion. Sometimes you get what you pay for. My guess is if you don’t kill your laptop, you still won’t be satisfied with how assassins creed runs, but I could be wrong there.
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Bad idea overall to open it up unless you are 100% confident in your skills and its out of warranty. If you are so concerned about throttling get something like this.
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First, connecting the chip with the bottom case will not solve throttling in the long run. It might help heat to get to the bottom case quicker, but it does not significantly accelerate the process by which heat leaves the bottom case. In the end, the heat will accumulate on the bottom case and cannot spread anywhere else since the air around it is still. My idea is that Apple arbitrarily left a space between the main board and the bottom metal case because too much heat conducted to the bottom case would cause the battery to overheat. So unless you keep the heat transferred away from the bottom case by using a cooler, a thermal pad is not effective and is a threat to the battery
Ok, got the 'nos'. Thank you for your feedback. Anyone tried this with success on an M4 MBA? Thanks.
I have two M1 airs, both with the thermal pad mod. One is a launch day system so nearing 5 years old with the pads and no case/battery heating issues whatsoever. The thermal pad reduces idle/light work temps by ~10C (from 35C to 25C ish). I don't push the machines hard enough to get to the point of throttling, so I can't speak to that end of things.
Taking the bottom off the M1 air involves...removing 12 screws. I would not call this a "skilled repair." Adding a thermal pad to the M1 air will definitely not void the warranty, as long as you remove the pad before you send it back in for service.
I would agree with you, but I once had a friend ask me to ... install two missing bottom screws on his MacBook. He purchased and brought over replacements, and I screwed them in.
Apple has been known to reject AppleCare claims if they suspect a computer has been opened. They can test this by measuring the torque on the screws and visual inspection. Shrugs. I don't know how large the risk is, just that it exists.
I've only ever owned Apple laptops with fans in them, but I certainly thought about grabbing an M1 Air and would do the thermal pad mod on it if I did, because (a) I'm a power user and a tinkerer like you, OP and (b) I'm used to the bottom case of my laptops being fairly warm so I typically use the sleeve as a heat shield for my legs when using them on my lap.
I see no downside to getting the heat away from the processor and into the bottom case faster, and the thermal pad is removable. I've never had AppleCare give me any issues with my many laptops, and I've opened all of them at some point. As long as you put it back together properly, you should be fine.
I see no downside to getting the heat away from the processor and into the bottom case faster, and the thermal pad is removable. I've never had AppleCare give me any issues with my many laptops, and I've opened all of them at some point. As long as you put it back together properly, you should be fine.
It works very well for me but I am a little bit out in the country surrounded by older people who don't use the internet as much I think, or at least for very intensive things. My connection is Gigabit and I get 60 fps through GeForce Now. This is using the Ubisoft PC game. I wouldn't be able to do as well with the native version as I think it wasn't optimized very well for its hardware. I have an i3 chromebook, the M4 Air, (had an M1 MBP) and an i7 desktop PC with a GeForce 1050 TI card and all of them run it pretty well. I think I'm supposed to be getting up to 120 fps for things but I don't with Assassin's Creed Shadows. I haven't tested any other games on GFN. I think its a great value if you have a fast and consistent internet connection.
One thing I will say about removing the bottom of the case is that after you pop the 2 catches on the sides and 2 on either side of the trackpad, you have to lift the bottom case a little and slide it off of 4 screws near the screen. So, its not completely straightforward. Also, after adding the thermal pad (and possibly even before) sliding the back back onto those 4 screws is a little tough. I haven't noticed anything performance wise yet (did the geekbench tests and tested the game) but it does seem a little cooler on the keyboard and underneath like uller6 said. I'm sure that for sustained loads over a number of minutes, at least, it might benefit from it otherwise just the cooler laptop.
This is illegal in the USA. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act stipulates that opening a consumer device does not void the manufacturer warranty, as long as you don't break anything when you open the device. Apple may try to use this excuse to prevent doing warranty service, but as a consumer you should know your rights and stand your ground should this happen to you.
This is very true.
Apple will absolutely look for any slight reason to deny service, especially if someone’s opening and tampering.
We can think it’s right or wrong all day long, but it doesn’t change the simple facts.
In my opinion, thermal pads will never add enough value to void the warranty.