The thermal block actually isn't all that much smaller as it seems at the first look. While it lost height, it gained quite a bit in width. The difference in thermals might be caused by this in part, but not by much. The bigger junk is contributed by the increase in power budget for both the CPU and GPU. All of this doesn't matter tho, since there is no sign of thermal throttling. Also, the more important part of the cooling system are the radiators. Changing those would have a much more significant impact on thermal performance.The MaxTech video comparison between the M1 Pro 14" and M2 Pro 14" did indicate that the smaller heatsink leads to diminished thermal performance - and showed the M2 Pro system got fairly significantly warmer under the same workload. Kind of sucks, but that's interesting to know the process of what led them to make that engineering decision.