I find it hard to believe any claim that Apple's warranties require computers to remain unopened.
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M4 Air Thermal pad
- Thread starter jeffmr4
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You’re clearly committed to doing this, so have fun acting on a scamfluencer’s This One Trick instead of the measured advice given here.
it wasn't designed for it. if apple really felt like it needed a thermal pad then they'd have done that.
the Air works as intended. it will never get hotter than it's meant to be due to throttling. and if it's always throttling then you shouldn't have bought an Air.
so what if you can't afford a model with active cooling? that's not Apple's problem. you're buying a product with unreasonable expectations of it.
do it at your own risk and if anything happens don't cry that apple won't fix or replace it for you.
the Air works as intended. it will never get hotter than it's meant to be due to throttling. and if it's always throttling then you shouldn't have bought an Air.
so what if you can't afford a model with active cooling? that's not Apple's problem. you're buying a product with unreasonable expectations of it.
do it at your own risk and if anything happens don't cry that apple won't fix or replace it for you.
Don’t destroy your laptop/warranty for Maxtech who were caught fudging numbers for clicks and pushing their agenda. MBA is not a gaming computer, you most likely need a fan. Thermal Pad isn’t gonna magically cool the MBA when it needs more than a pad. But go ahead and report back.
This is funny lol. Considering Maxtech is the one you quoted earlier. Dosdusde1 is in another planet compared to these click baiters, and it’s insult to him put him with them. May be you should do your homework on reliable folks to follow.
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Another option to consider, if you're (1) really skilled at this stuff but are (2) put off at the thought of losing your warranty: do the thermal pad stuff after your warranty expires. And then whether it works out or not, you know you won't be risking the warranty.
From time to time I consider getting a second-hand MacBook Air and putting a thermal pad in it for fun. I wouldn’t do it on a device that’s still under warranty, but that’s just me.
From everything I’ve read, there’s not much of a noticeable difference, but if you’re doing it for the fun of doing it, go ahead and enjoy yourself. If you’re doing it for sustained performance, I don’t think you’d really be able to feel much of a difference in real usage.
From everything I’ve read, there’s not much of a noticeable difference, but if you’re doing it for the fun of doing it, go ahead and enjoy yourself. If you’re doing it for sustained performance, I don’t think you’d really be able to feel much of a difference in real usage.
I am not a technician but interested in relevant (!) and in real-life technical advancements.
As so, I know that mostly it is far better and much cheaper to buy a second hand Laptop which is 1-2 gen. older , perhaps just 10% less max. performance, BUT one that is not a basic model at all.
In your case I´d absolutely preferred a second hand MBP 13" . Even one with M1, but with much of the following Features equipped. Most of the had once very, vers high prices, and get sold for much less than half the price, sometimes even für a third of the price...
It serves with a much better screen, much better sound, more SSD space and often enough more memory. More memory, bigger SSD perhaps more oder better:
COOLING, and a pro-chip and on top
- GPU
- Hardware-accelerated ray tracing
- Neural Engine
- memory bandwidth
Macrumors has an excellent and objective buying guide, where you can verify my opinion.
For someone with an limited Budget it is cheaper and at the same time much better in terms of price/performance to buy a recent model which is quite good equiped than a basic model of the newest generation.
As for cooling at home:
There are a lot of good an cheap stands for laptops which give you a lot more air under your MBA. And a lot of them have extremely silent ventilators if needed.
And there are a lot of other non-invasive methods to prevent overheating and guarantee better cooling/passive cooling...
You asked a few questions. Do I think it is safe? No. Have I tried it. No. I have tried covering neither my gpu or cpu in thermal paste although I did buy a gaming PC where they added paste custom and didn't make a big difference I can recall?
My thoughts?
I personally would never do it for a numbers of reasons of which I won't bore you with here. All I would say is whatever you do, if you ever sell it the device second hand you must disclose to future buyers. I would keep that it mind before I proceeded and for me that would be it. We are done. Not worth resale value loss for me.
For you, if you are prepared to assume any risk and just want to see for yourself and learn something about your Mac while doing it I see nothing wrong with it. Just be careful.
If I were you I would either return it if possible or keep it as long as I could and get as much use of it as I could. I might even pay for the extra warranty then take care of my investment and enjoy it. If I was really experiencing throttling then my needs would dictate spending more on a Pro Model. If it is struggling now, what will it be doing in a year or two? Maybe buying an older M2 Pro model if you can find one at a cheaper price but higher specs might be a better choice than a newer air?
I ended up removing it. I didn't want heat transfer to damage other things the pad was in contact with, like the trackpad ribbon. Also, the pad didn't stick very well and it was difficult putting the lid back on so I wondered if it had moved at all. When I removed the case, it hadn't moved but it was torn and not completely flat. I wouldn't discourage anyone else from doing it but this was my experience.
hi, im thinking to do the thermal pad mod on my m4 air 15inch too. i also buy a magnetic cooler for phones to try to reduce the heat on the bottom of the macbook. how is been since you put the thermal pads?. also i buy 1mm 14.8W/mk thermal pad.
Hi godiex100. I actually ended up taking it out. When I did the pad was folded and torn because I had a hard time getting the case back on. Do what you like though.
Did you leave it in long enough to test whether it was actually accomplishing anything?
To pile on this, both Microsoft and Sony lost lawsuits related to canceling warranty when users opened their machines with the “warranty void if opened” stickers.
How Sony, Microsoft, and Other Gadget Makers Violate Federal Warranty Law
It’s illegal for Sony, Apple, Microsoft, and others to void a warranty just because you repaired your electronics yourself.
www.vice.com
Yeah people forget that Woz and Jobs started off building slightly illegal devices lol.
The Definitive Story of Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and Phone Phreaking
Every company has a creation myth, and Apple's centers on the two Steves, and their early, illicit foray into the nation's telephone system.
I made a thread a while back on thermal pad modding my MacBook Air M1, the results were significant and bettered further with use of a laptop cooling pad.
It's nice to have the option of a fanless quiet laptop for day to day things or pop it on the cooling pad to export a film or play a game.
It's nice to have the option of a fanless quiet laptop for day to day things or pop it on the cooling pad to export a film or play a game.
I am thinking of taking my MBA apart and drill some holes in the base add a mini fan and thermal pads. Fan will be always on but low volume. Now I will have a MacBook Pro!!
Next week I am putting an OLED touchscreen.
Or I could leave my MBA alone since it performs fine without a fan???
So despite my obvious sarcasm if you want to add thermal pads go ahead. You do you.
However, if you mess up something and try to get warranty to cover your mistake seems like a misuse of the warranty to me. If you take it upon yourself to modify the hardware NOT repair hardware then that is your responsibility. If you were attempting a repair to a screen or battery about the only things replaceable in a m series Mac your warranty should still apply but for modifications that are not required that is caveat emptor.
In my opinion the risk and potential for damage to add thermal pads far outweighs any benefits including voiding your warranty. If my MBA was struggling in the tasks I were doing on a daily basis I would get a MacBook Pro.
Mobile laptops are much more similar to phones now than a desktop computer. Less components are user replaceable. Warranty for such laptops is more important in m series laptops so doing anything that might potentially void the terms of the warranty are unwise in my opinion.
The cost difference between a 14" MBP with Pro chip and a comparative spec MBA is not bigger than the potential loss of voiding MBA warranty so it makes more sense to buy the pro model than modify air model that by design doesn't use air flow for cooling by using a thermal pad that still offers less performance gain than Pro model with Pro chip and active cooling with dual fans and vapor chamber/heat pipes.
In my opinion if thermal throttling occurred with my air and I couldn't upgrade I would use a gel cooling pad with a towel on top I can freeze and lay the laptop on it or use a cheap laptop fan. It will cool better than thermal pads alone and doesn't void anything.
Next week I am putting an OLED touchscreen.
Or I could leave my MBA alone since it performs fine without a fan???
So despite my obvious sarcasm if you want to add thermal pads go ahead. You do you.
However, if you mess up something and try to get warranty to cover your mistake seems like a misuse of the warranty to me. If you take it upon yourself to modify the hardware NOT repair hardware then that is your responsibility. If you were attempting a repair to a screen or battery about the only things replaceable in a m series Mac your warranty should still apply but for modifications that are not required that is caveat emptor.
In my opinion the risk and potential for damage to add thermal pads far outweighs any benefits including voiding your warranty. If my MBA was struggling in the tasks I were doing on a daily basis I would get a MacBook Pro.
Mobile laptops are much more similar to phones now than a desktop computer. Less components are user replaceable. Warranty for such laptops is more important in m series laptops so doing anything that might potentially void the terms of the warranty are unwise in my opinion.
The cost difference between a 14" MBP with Pro chip and a comparative spec MBA is not bigger than the potential loss of voiding MBA warranty so it makes more sense to buy the pro model than modify air model that by design doesn't use air flow for cooling by using a thermal pad that still offers less performance gain than Pro model with Pro chip and active cooling with dual fans and vapor chamber/heat pipes.
In my opinion if thermal throttling occurred with my air and I couldn't upgrade I would use a gel cooling pad with a towel on top I can freeze and lay the laptop on it or use a cheap laptop fan. It will cool better than thermal pads alone and doesn't void anything.
If you have to do heavy workloads including Virtualisation machines like I do I went with the mbp as well. Many including the best buy guys and my Mac user friends told me that MacBook Air passive cooling doesn’t cut it for my needs especially as an engineering student so I’d rather go a little more expensive to the MacBook Pro, get more ram for my apps to superpower then and for long term usage.
This. I had an m2 air I ran Houdini on and never experienced throttling even when doing sims. The only time I ever felt that machine get warm (and it wasn't even super warm) was doing an 18 hour simulation in clamshell mode.
The big problem is tech YouTubers who don't know much about tech run benchmarks and base their nonsense off of that. Anyone in tech worth their salt knows how utterly useless benchmarks are, they're designed to max all system resources, of course something is going to run hot using a benchmark but real software just doesn't operate like that.