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New MacBook Pro Features Smaller Heatsink Due to Supply Chain Issues

The guy in the video does not appear to know what he is talking about when it comes to thermodynamics. The difference in temperature is due to the increased number of transistors and increased clock speed. The M2 Max has 25% more transistors. N5P process is 15% more efficient. So, expect about 10% increase in overall power consumption. This accounts for higher temperatures.
 
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jezbd1997 said:
watch the max tech video. it is an issue. embarrassing they purposely made a perfect laptop have some downsides on 2nd gen.
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MaxTech really isn’t that great of a channel… They just need to find something to make an issue so they can justify making more videos. The M2 essentially uses the same silicon process but has more stuff on it and is clocked higher. It’s going to run hotter as a result. The size of the plate above the silicon just needs to cover everything, anything larger simply just adds thermal capacity to the heat sink, but not additional cooling power for long term. If the Heat pipes/fins/fans are the same size, the amount of cooling they can provide is the same, a smaller plate just means the heat sink will be heat soaked sooner. Turning up the speed of the fans immediately brings the temps down (even shown by Max Tech in one video). Basically, this is a nothing burger being blown out of proportion.
 
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It bothers me that the headline states something as a fact that the article reveals is conjecture by someone. iFixit doesn’t have an anything official from Apple. They’re guessing. All it would have taken would be to have put the word, “possibly” before “due” in the headline. Sigh.
 
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deconstruct60 said:
A smaller interface block when collecting from multiple sources of different temperatures isn't really an upside. The central die is running hotter at peak loads ( more stuff added than power savings 'bought' by very smaller incremental node change of N5P ). Then drag the RAM dies closer to the bigger hotter die. At the same time shrink that interface block so the RAM dies load into the transfer process substantively closer to the hotter main die.

It is going to show higher coupling effects. Crippling coupling? No , but higher.

The interface block has to be somewhat of a heat sink so that the heat pipes that pull the heat from it and transfer to the more distance fins also has a source to pulled. The radiators are a transfer to the air. (those metal radiators over the fan outlets are not a massively larger volume than the interface blocks here. A multiple bigger, but not a crazy large multiple. They can't keep and hold heat for a long time. Their main job is to create high heat flow through the heat pipes. Not be a "hoover dam" reservoir. ). The radiators are a bigger reservoir of heat, but still need a smaller reservoir at the precursor point to the heat pipes. Trying to hold as little as possible in the chip dies themselves before collected by the heat pipes.
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I disagree with your thoughts regarding the size of the interface block. If spreading heat to the LPDDR packages is an issue, and since they are closer to the SoC chip in the M2 Pro & Max, you should decrease the size of the interface block so that it doesn't come in contact with the LPDDR packages. The interface block is the 2nd hottest part of the thermal chain there (or 3rd or 4th if you count the SoC chip lid and thermal paste in between the block and the chip). The block is highly heat conductive. By putting it in contact with the LPDDR, heat will be transferred faster from the SoC chip to the LPDDR, faster than through the plastic PCB substrate and the wiring.

Either that, or you can have a larger interface block that covers them, and put an insulating layer between it and the LPDDR packages. Apple does this with the heat spreader or heat sink in the M2. It's a very wide piece of metal with a highly heat conductive black tape on top. For NAND packages, their appears to be an insulating layer between it and the heat spreader.

But for this application, I'd make the interface block even smaller and not even touch the LPDDR. This is assuming the LPDDR runs cooler than the chip which is really should be when the chip is loaded. The interface block will be hotter than the LPDDR, and therefore, transfer its heat to the LPDDR.
 
HVDynamo said:
MaxTech really isn’t that great of a channel… They just need to find something to make an issue so they can justify making more videos. The M2 essentially uses the same silicon process but has more stuff on it and is clocked higher. It’s going to run hotter as a result. The size of the plate above the silicon just needs to cover everything, anything larger simply just adds thermal capacity to the heat sink, but not additional cooling power for long term. If the Heat pipes/fins/fans are the same size, the amount of cooling they can provide is the same, a smaller plate just means the heat sink will be heat soaked sooner. Turning up the speed of the fans immediately brings the temps down (even shown by Max Tech in one video). Basically, this is a nothing burger being blown out of proportion.
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Exactly, an issue very few will run into that is solved when the fans turn on.

Stay tuned for the next video few days later "Apples M2, not as bad as we thought", to be followed by "5 reasons NOT to buy an M2" video, then "5 reasons TO buy an M2 video" ...
 
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Klapper.cz said:
That's exactly wrong.
First, optimal operation temperature is not an absolute number set in stone - if you make a chip, that's faster, gives more performance, and it runs a bit hotter, BUT you cool it just fine AND you want it to run this way, AND the battery is still mostly the same or even better - then there's no problem.
Looking at temperature alone and finding visually the only difference as the "reason" for the "wrong temperature", is not exactly the "scientific" way to do it..
Also the plate is smaller, because it's transferring (not cooling) heat from a smaller surface, the chip and memory around are smaller, you don't need larger plate if there's nothing to cool bellow it, end of story.
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Sure. End result: M2 Pro machine runs hotter than M1 Pro machine under same workload, at least in the example they gave. I do wonder about some of the other aspects of the results though, e.g. if M2 Pro was still indexing, etc.
 
UltimateSyn said:
Sure. End result: M2 Pro machine runs hotter than M1 Pro machine under same workload, at least in the example they gave. I do wonder about some of the other aspects of the results though, e.g. if M2 Pro was still indexing, etc.
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What they did not show you is the duration. It may have run hotter but likely for a briefer amount of time because it completed the task faster.
 
eicca said:
So you’re saying you know more about product design than the most powerful consumer computer development team on earth?

Have you ever once sat in on a product planning meeting?

They will spend hundreds if not thousands of hours debating a tiny change like this. And since they’ve decided to do it, it means they’ve determined it’s not a problem.

Get over it already. This, like every other “scandal,” will not end up actually being a problem in the slightest.
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I wonder how many product planning meetings they had on all the revisions of the butterfly keyboards…
 
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Realityck said:
Interesting how they claim its due to supply chain issues.
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Bogus claim. No evidence.
jicon said:
" Apple may have made thermal tradeoffs in order to deliver improved performance."
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More like Apple determined less cooling was necessary to maintain maximum temperatures from a year of M1 shipping and testing compared to M2.

I feel Apple was playing it safe on The thermals for M1 (better safe than sorry) and they optimized the heat sink design for cost vs. performance required for M2.

The Max Studio is an example of excessive cooling. Those heat sinks are crazy huge.
 
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Sowelu said:
Also, how can 'supply chain issues' change the size of a part? Wouldn't this produce fewer parts, not smaller parts? Was there a shortage of metal to pour into the mold? I don't think Apple buys pre-made parts and heatsinks, these are most likely designed for Apple per Apple spec. And who exactly determined that 'supply chain issues' played a role in this revised part?
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The supply chain issues relate to the memory modules. Apple designers decided on four smaller memory modules rather than two larger ones, because the supply of smaller modules was thought to be more reliable. The form of the heat sink just follows this choice.
 
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CarlJ said:
It bothers me that the headline states something as a fact that the article reveals is conjecture by someone. iFixit doesn’t have an anything official from Apple. They’re guessing. All it would have taken would be to have put the word, “possibly” before “due” in the headline. Sigh.
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Worse, they skip over all the intermediate logic to conflate two things in the headline. The supply of memory chips is constraining the design, not a bit of metal for the heat sink.
 
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I really hope nobody upgraded from an M1 Pro/Max. This generation is definitely an in between product. I don’t think Apple anticipated this launch to be as great as the 2021 lineup which is why they cut so many corners. All models are available for next day shipping which is quite unusual for a new product launch. But like I said, it was to be expected after the super cycle from 2021.
 
Pezimak said:
So they give it extra power, and then cripple it making it thermal throttle due to not being able to buy the heat sinks?
Not a good strategy. But that means when the supply chain issues are resolved people may well buy later M2 MB Pros that out perform the early models. For the same price!
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There's no problem obtaining heat sinks. If you actually read the article, the supply chain has to do with specific memory devices.
 
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M2 has no heat sink, everything else has an undersized ‘economy’ one. This is the worst generation of MAC
 
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