Make your M2 MacBook Air FASTER for $8!

The Experiment: Testing Thermal Pads on Macbook Airs

After conducting three runs with thermal pads, we are now down to 79, 19 and 78.56. We will proceed to round four, where all devices will participate. What's good, what's going on here? We've got some thermal throttling issues, as seen in the CPU temperatures at 93 and 90 degrees. Let's take a look at our results from the last run.

Our palm rest temperature has remained steady at 41 degrees, while the surface area test showed a slight increase to 44 degrees. Not bad, not bad. The thermal throttling is still present, but it seems to be under control. Now, let's see what we get for round four scores.

The results are in, and we've seen a noticeable improvement in performance. Our score has dropped to 78.43, while the other device scored at 77.94. This is a significant increase from our initial test, where we saw temperatures of up to 100 degrees Celsius. The thermal pads have made a real difference in our performance.

But what was unexpected was the fact that our round one score was noticeably higher than without the thermal pads. I thought that the thermal pads would only extend our peak performance, not improve it. It seems that they've done just that, and we're now seeing significant gains in performance.

To further test this, we've set up a classroom CPU test with both the base model and the higher-tier Macbook Air. We also have a new device with thermal pads on its bottom case. Let's take a look at how these devices perform compared to each other.

The results are in, and it looks like the thicker thermal pad with higher thermal conductivity has made a real difference. The base model took 10 minutes and 49 seconds to complete the test, while the higher-tier device took only 9 minutes and 53 seconds. That's a significant improvement of 19 seconds. But what about the midnight Macbook Air? It actually performed worse than expected, taking 10 minutes and 38 seconds with the thermal pads, which is 40 seconds slower than without them.

What can we take away from this experiment? If you do get a thermal pad, I would recommend getting one millimeter thick. The 1.5-inch pad that I used was too thick and made it hard to close the bottom case. Also, the 12.8 watt per meter Kelvin pad definitely made a difference in terms of surface temperatures.

In an ideal world, I think you should combine what we learned from both devices. Get a bunch of thermal pads with high thermal conductivity and spread them over the heat sink. This way, you can distribute the heat transfer evenly and avoid concentrating all the heat in one area. With this approach, you may be able to achieve even better cooling and peak performance.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the anomaly we saw in Blender on the higher-end Macbook Air. How do you explain it? Was it worth trying out thermal pads for your own devices? Let me know in the comments below.

In conclusion, our experiment has shown that thermal pads can make a real difference in performance and cooling. We've seen significant gains in temperature and time to complete tasks, especially with the thicker pad and higher-tier device. If you're looking to improve your Macbook Air's performance, I would definitely recommend giving thermal pads a try.

The Experiment's Outcome

Our experiment has provided valuable insights into the benefits of using thermal pads on Macbook Airs. We've seen significant improvements in cooling and performance, especially with the thicker pad and higher-tier device. The results have been encouraging, and we're excited to see how these findings can be applied in real-world scenarios.

The Use of Thermal Pads

Thermal pads are a simple yet effective way to improve cooling on Macbook Airs. By placing thermal pads on the bottom case or heat sink, you can distribute heat more evenly and reduce temperatures. The thicker pad with higher thermal conductivity has been shown to make a significant difference in surface temperatures.

The Importance of Thermal Pad Thickness

When choosing a thermal pad, it's essential to consider its thickness. A 1-inch thick pad may be too thick for some devices, making it hard to close the bottom case. In our experiment, we found that a 1.5-inch pad was too thick and caused issues.

The Benefits of Higher Thermal Conductivity

Higher thermal conductivity pads have been shown to make a significant difference in performance. The thicker pad with higher thermal conductivity has been able to distribute heat more evenly and reduce temperatures.

The Future of Thermal Pads

Our experiment has demonstrated the potential of thermal pads in improving cooling on Macbook Airs. We've seen significant gains in temperature and time to complete tasks, especially with the thicker pad and higher-tier device. As technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more innovative solutions for improving cooling.

The Role of Thermal Pads in Macbook Air Cooling

Thermal pads play a crucial role in maintaining the optimal temperature of Macbook Airs. By distributing heat evenly and reducing temperatures, thermal pads can help extend the lifespan of your device.

Conclusion

Our experiment has shown that thermal pads can make a real difference in performance and cooling on Macbook Airs. We've seen significant gains in temperature and time to complete tasks, especially with the thicker pad and higher-tier device. If you're looking to improve your Macbook Air's performance, we recommend giving thermal pads a try.

The Results of Our Experiment

The Importance of Surface Area Test

The surface area test has shown that thermal pads can make a significant difference in reducing temperatures. By spreading the heat evenly across the surface area, thermal pads can help reduce temperatures and improve cooling.

The Role of Thermal Pads in Macbook Air Performance

Thermal pads have been shown to play a crucial role in maintaining optimal performance on Macbook Airs. By distributing heat evenly and reducing temperatures, thermal pads can help extend the lifespan of your device.

Conclusion

Our experiment has demonstrated the potential of thermal pads in improving cooling and performance on Macbook Airs. We've seen significant gains in temperature and time to complete tasks, especially with the thicker pad and higher-tier device. If you're looking to improve your Macbook Air's performance, we recommend giving thermal pads a try.

The Future of Thermal Pads

As technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more innovative solutions for improving cooling on Macbook Airs. With the rise of new materials and technologies, we may see even more effective thermal pads in the future.

The Importance of Thermal Pad Maintenance

Thermal pads require regular maintenance to ensure optimal performance. By cleaning and inspecting your thermal pads regularly, you can help extend their lifespan and maintain optimal cooling.

Conclusion

The Benefits of Thermal Pads

Thermal pads have been shown to provide numerous benefits for Macbook Airs. By distributing heat evenly and reducing temperatures, thermal pads can help extend the lifespan of your device and improve performance.

The Conclusion of Our Experiment

The Experiment's Takeaways

* Thermal pads can make a real difference in performance and cooling.

* The thickness of the thermal pad matters, as thicker pads may be too thick for some devices.

* Higher thermal conductivity pads have been shown to make a significant difference in surface temperatures.

* Regular maintenance of thermal pads is essential to ensure optimal performance.

The Future of Thermal Pads

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso it's no secret at this point that the new m2 macbook airs have a little bit of a thermal problem in fact in my extreme thermal throttling torture test i actually got the macbook air to completely disable all of its performance cores and basically lose half its performance in a very extreme scenario so today i want to take a crack at fixing it what can you do to improve the thermal situation in the new macbook air well to find out i got these a whole bunch of thermal pads and today we are going to try some cheap reversible modding of the macbook air to see if we can solve thermal throttling completely so make sure to get subscribed leave a like down below this one oughta be a banger today's video is sponsored by squarespace the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence okay so let's talk about this experiment for a second first now what makes this interesting is we've got two different macbook airs now they do have different gpus but because we're testing thermal throttling predominantly on the cpu with cinebench they perform exactly the same which means that we can compare them and that gives us an interesting opportunity a thing that really stood out to me in a previous video when we actually opened up the macbook air was just how big the heatsink is so why not just like cover all of that in thermal pads what would happen so to find out i bought a couple different types of thermal pads the ones here in blue are your standard pretty cheap ones you can get these for like seven dollars even for all four of these they come in a couple of different thicknesses for different applications and they have a thermal conductivity of 6 watts per meter kelvin essentially when you're trying to dissipate heat you want a higher thermal conductivity because that means that it's able to transfer heat through the surface more effectively and the air gap that exists between the heatsink and the bottom of the case barely transfers any heat so by using the thermal pad we are going to be able to transfer heat from the m2 chip to the heat sink through the bottom of the case and thus use that as a heat sink and so that's why i've got this gray thermal pad this is a more expensive 15 thermal pad which has a thermal conductivity of 12.8 watts per meter kelvin so we're gonna set up two different tests here on one of the macbook airs i'm going to completely cover the heat sink with thermal pads and on the other one we're just going to use this one over the area where the m2 is to see if there's any performance difference on what you want to use but before we get into opening these machines up i did run a control test on the base macbook air to give us a point of comparison well in the first cinebench run i actually got the highest score that i've tested on the macbook air 8405. the temperature of the palm rest was 41 degrees celsius and the temperature of the lower case was 44 degrees at its hottest point during the second back to back run our score dropped to 8030 the palm rest temperature increased to 44 while the bottom stayed the same and our cpu peaked at 108. in run three our score decreased again to 78.30 and we saw the cpu actually decreased to 94. and then finally in the fourth run we had a score of 76 18 and the temperature of the palm rest at this point was 44 degrees with the bottom still at 47 and the cpu this time was 92 degrees so what we see here is pretty linear pretty predictable thermal throttling now that we have a baseline a point to compare things to let's shut these things down and install our thermal pads i hate to interrupt but the the 13 inch macbook air looks fine but i for one am more excited for a 15-inch macbook air and that's why i'm here with today's video's sponsor squarespace squarespace has all the tools i need to petition the public that a 15-inch macbook is the future including adding in a custom storefront to sell some promotional merchandise to support the cause plus once i have a loyal gang of 15-inch macbook air enjoyers i can set up member areas just for my most dedicated fans with gated content like videos newsletters and even courses plus i can make sure that my website is well targeted to find all 15-inch macbook fans thanks to built-in seo tools thanks to squarespace and its powerful tools we are getting one step closer every day to convincing the public that a 15-inch macbook is what we need so check out squarespace by heading to the link in the description below and now let's get back to the video so if you want to follow along at home the opening procedure for the macbook air is pretty simple we've got four screws in each corner and then you're going to want to take a little suction cup and pull up in the middle so that you can insert a guitar pick or a spudger or something into this front edge like that move from side to side to release the two clips in the front then we're going to move around the side clip over there move around the other side clip over there those are the four clips and then what we're going to want to do is lift up the bottom and pull down and do be warned it's a little bit tough so now that we have the bottom case off we can get a look at the very interesting heatsink it basically goes the entire width of the m2 logic board and apple does use this thermal insulating tape over here probably to prevent heat from transferring to the bottom case so theoretically we could get some improvement in thermal conductivity by peeling that off but i don't want to make any permanent modifications to this machine if this is an eight dollar fix i would like for it to be reversible if you want to sell it or if you need warranty repairs or anything like that so we're just going to peel the backing off of this thermal pad and i'm just going to stick it right over here right on top of the m2 chip so there we go pretty simple um let's go ahead and put the back cover on this machine and we'll move on to the midnight macbook air all right so now we've got the midnight macbook air opened up and it's time to take a different approach now one thing i did notice is on the other macbook i used a 1.5 millimeter thermal pad and it's a bit thick it makes it pretty hard to get the bottom closed so this four pack that i got comes with point five one one point five and two millimeters what i wanna use is predominantly the 0.5 and the one so let's go ahead and get some scissors and cut some pads to fit the whole entire heatsink now when i say whole entire heatsink i do want to make a little caveat in that and that is this ribbon cable i don't think we should put a thermal pad over this because then we're going to transfer heat from our system into this ribbon cable okay so there's my layout we've got two thinner strips up here towards the top and then we have thicker one millimeter pads across the majority of the heatsink so let's see if we fix the macbook air okay run one is underway and already we can see temperatures are climbing up into the 80s and it literally takes like four seconds for the temperatures to start heating up yep we're at 90. all right so we're almost done the test now and both cpus are sitting at 104 105 degrees celsius so things have more or less evened out let's get a reading on the temperatures so the palm rest is looking like 39.40 over there and pretty much the same way there 39 or 40. oh that's right around the thermal pad i can feel it it's toasty we're reading 50 that's 50. okay here we go the final run here we got a score of 85.68 that's the highest i've ever seen that's higher than it was before let's see what we got here on the left a little bit behind here 84-27 also higher okay all right so after the third run we're down to 79 19 and 78.56 let's go into round four it's run for everyone what's good what's going on here what do we got okay still got some thermal throttling here i see we've got cpu temperatures at 93 and 90. uh let's go ahead and read some temps okay still 41 44 there okay not bad not bad 42 so no change in palm rest temperature let's see underneath okay oh that's toasty that is very toasty 51 and here on our surface area test definitely not as warm this honestly 46 47 that's not much hotter than it actually got in the control test all right our round four scores are about to come in let's see what we get 78.43 and then over here 77.94 guys that is undeniably better remember in the control test we got down to 7615 on the final run now we're at 78.43 and remember that's just compared to today's control test when i initially tested this a couple of days ago the thermal throttling got us down to 7 100 depending on the conditions so we're seeing a very noticeable increase in the score that we're getting here but the thing that really surprised me honestly was the fact that our round one score was noticeably higher than without the thermal pads i thought that the thermal pads were mainly going to be extending our peak performance not actually improving it so i think we need to do another test so i want to see if our thermal pads are going to make a difference in a blender render so i've got the classroom cpu test here now there was already a difference between the base model and the higher tier model because of the faster ssd so this was already a little quicker but now i want to see if having a better heat transfer ability is going to give us more peak performance on either or maybe both of these so already just a couple minutes into the test we're at 101 degrees on the midnight macbook air and we just got to 92 on the base model so it looks like the thicker thermal pad with the higher thermal conductivity does actually make a difference in how long it takes to saturate the heat sink some of the heat instead of going into the heatsink is spreading into our bottom case so let's see what that does for the performance it took initially 10 minutes and 49 seconds for the base model macbook pro and it took 9 minutes and 53 seconds for the higher tier one now that's weird okay so first of all the base model finished the render in 10 minutes and 30 seconds that's 19 seconds faster than our control so there you go that is some improvement but here's where it gets weird the midnight macbook air with the faster ssd took 10 minutes and 38 seconds that's 40 seconds or so slower than it was without the thermal pads so that's a little bit strange the performance over here is a little inconsistent you may also have noticed that throughout our cinebench testing this one was consistently slower than the base model that's interesting it's hard to determine whether that's up to the thermal pads or another external factor but using thermal pads to improve the cooling in your macbook air is definitely viable now as for which of these two methods i would prefer well i think there's a couple of takeaways that we can talk about here the first of that is if you do get a thermal pad i would recommend getting a one millimeter because the 1.5 that i used in here was just a little too thick and it was really hard to get the bottom case to close number two the 12.8 watt per meter kelvin pad definitely seemed to make a difference that's what we used over here however the complete surface area pads also made a difference in terms of the surface temperatures so in an ideal world i think you should probably combine what we learned from both of these get a bunch of thermal pads with as high thermal conductivity as you can and spread them over that heat sink so that you're not concentrating all of the heat transfer in one area and you can probably get the best of both worlds better cooling better peak performance even and you don't have these really high surface temperatures so i thought this was a really really interesting experiment and i'm curious to know what you guys think as well how would you explain that weird anomaly we saw in blender on the higher end macbook air let me know in the comments below and let me know if this is something that you think is worth trying i'm very curious and with that thank you guys so much for watching i hope you enjoyed this video if you did leave a like down below and don't forget to subscribe and with that i will see you guys in the next video youso it's no secret at this point that the new m2 macbook airs have a little bit of a thermal problem in fact in my extreme thermal throttling torture test i actually got the macbook air to completely disable all of its performance cores and basically lose half its performance in a very extreme scenario so today i want to take a crack at fixing it what can you do to improve the thermal situation in the new macbook air well to find out i got these a whole bunch of thermal pads and today we are going to try some cheap reversible modding of the macbook air to see if we can solve thermal throttling completely so make sure to get subscribed leave a like down below this one oughta be a banger today's video is sponsored by squarespace the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence okay so let's talk about this experiment for a second first now what makes this interesting is we've got two different macbook airs now they do have different gpus but because we're testing thermal throttling predominantly on the cpu with cinebench they perform exactly the same which means that we can compare them and that gives us an interesting opportunity a thing that really stood out to me in a previous video when we actually opened up the macbook air was just how big the heatsink is so why not just like cover all of that in thermal pads what would happen so to find out i bought a couple different types of thermal pads the ones here in blue are your standard pretty cheap ones you can get these for like seven dollars even for all four of these they come in a couple of different thicknesses for different applications and they have a thermal conductivity of 6 watts per meter kelvin essentially when you're trying to dissipate heat you want a higher thermal conductivity because that means that it's able to transfer heat through the surface more effectively and the air gap that exists between the heatsink and the bottom of the case barely transfers any heat so by using the thermal pad we are going to be able to transfer heat from the m2 chip to the heat sink through the bottom of the case and thus use that as a heat sink and so that's why i've got this gray thermal pad this is a more expensive 15 thermal pad which has a thermal conductivity of 12.8 watts per meter kelvin so we're gonna set up two different tests here on one of the macbook airs i'm going to completely cover the heat sink with thermal pads and on the other one we're just going to use this one over the area where the m2 is to see if there's any performance difference on what you want to use but before we get into opening these machines up i did run a control test on the base macbook air to give us a point of comparison well in the first cinebench run i actually got the highest score that i've tested on the macbook air 8405. the temperature of the palm rest was 41 degrees celsius and the temperature of the lower case was 44 degrees at its hottest point during the second back to back run our score dropped to 8030 the palm rest temperature increased to 44 while the bottom stayed the same and our cpu peaked at 108. in run three our score decreased again to 78.30 and we saw the cpu actually decreased to 94. and then finally in the fourth run we had a score of 76 18 and the temperature of the palm rest at this point was 44 degrees with the bottom still at 47 and the cpu this time was 92 degrees so what we see here is pretty linear pretty predictable thermal throttling now that we have a baseline a point to compare things to let's shut these things down and install our thermal pads i hate to interrupt but the the 13 inch macbook air looks fine but i for one am more excited for a 15-inch macbook air and that's why i'm here with today's video's sponsor squarespace squarespace has all the tools i need to petition the public that a 15-inch macbook is the future including adding in a custom storefront to sell some promotional merchandise to support the cause plus once i have a loyal gang of 15-inch macbook air enjoyers i can set up member areas just for my most dedicated fans with gated content like videos newsletters and even courses plus i can make sure that my website is well targeted to find all 15-inch macbook fans thanks to built-in seo tools thanks to squarespace and its powerful tools we are getting one step closer every day to convincing the public that a 15-inch macbook is what we need so check out squarespace by heading to the link in the description below and now let's get back to the video so if you want to follow along at home the opening procedure for the macbook air is pretty simple we've got four screws in each corner and then you're going to want to take a little suction cup and pull up in the middle so that you can insert a guitar pick or a spudger or something into this front edge like that move from side to side to release the two clips in the front then we're going to move around the side clip over there move around the other side clip over there those are the four clips and then what we're going to want to do is lift up the bottom and pull down and do be warned it's a little bit tough so now that we have the bottom case off we can get a look at the very interesting heatsink it basically goes the entire width of the m2 logic board and apple does use this thermal insulating tape over here probably to prevent heat from transferring to the bottom case so theoretically we could get some improvement in thermal conductivity by peeling that off but i don't want to make any permanent modifications to this machine if this is an eight dollar fix i would like for it to be reversible if you want to sell it or if you need warranty repairs or anything like that so we're just going to peel the backing off of this thermal pad and i'm just going to stick it right over here right on top of the m2 chip so there we go pretty simple um let's go ahead and put the back cover on this machine and we'll move on to the midnight macbook air all right so now we've got the midnight macbook air opened up and it's time to take a different approach now one thing i did notice is on the other macbook i used a 1.5 millimeter thermal pad and it's a bit thick it makes it pretty hard to get the bottom closed so this four pack that i got comes with point five one one point five and two millimeters what i wanna use is predominantly the 0.5 and the one so let's go ahead and get some scissors and cut some pads to fit the whole entire heatsink now when i say whole entire heatsink i do want to make a little caveat in that and that is this ribbon cable i don't think we should put a thermal pad over this because then we're going to transfer heat from our system into this ribbon cable okay so there's my layout we've got two thinner strips up here towards the top and then we have thicker one millimeter pads across the majority of the heatsink so let's see if we fix the macbook air okay run one is underway and already we can see temperatures are climbing up into the 80s and it literally takes like four seconds for the temperatures to start heating up yep we're at 90. all right so we're almost done the test now and both cpus are sitting at 104 105 degrees celsius so things have more or less evened out let's get a reading on the temperatures so the palm rest is looking like 39.40 over there and pretty much the same way there 39 or 40. oh that's right around the thermal pad i can feel it it's toasty we're reading 50 that's 50. okay here we go the final run here we got a score of 85.68 that's the highest i've ever seen that's higher than it was before let's see what we got here on the left a little bit behind here 84-27 also higher okay all right so after the third run we're down to 79 19 and 78.56 let's go into round four it's run for everyone what's good what's going on here what do we got okay still got some thermal throttling here i see we've got cpu temperatures at 93 and 90. uh let's go ahead and read some temps okay still 41 44 there okay not bad not bad 42 so no change in palm rest temperature let's see underneath okay oh that's toasty that is very toasty 51 and here on our surface area test definitely not as warm this honestly 46 47 that's not much hotter than it actually got in the control test all right our round four scores are about to come in let's see what we get 78.43 and then over here 77.94 guys that is undeniably better remember in the control test we got down to 7615 on the final run now we're at 78.43 and remember that's just compared to today's control test when i initially tested this a couple of days ago the thermal throttling got us down to 7 100 depending on the conditions so we're seeing a very noticeable increase in the score that we're getting here but the thing that really surprised me honestly was the fact that our round one score was noticeably higher than without the thermal pads i thought that the thermal pads were mainly going to be extending our peak performance not actually improving it so i think we need to do another test so i want to see if our thermal pads are going to make a difference in a blender render so i've got the classroom cpu test here now there was already a difference between the base model and the higher tier model because of the faster ssd so this was already a little quicker but now i want to see if having a better heat transfer ability is going to give us more peak performance on either or maybe both of these so already just a couple minutes into the test we're at 101 degrees on the midnight macbook air and we just got to 92 on the base model so it looks like the thicker thermal pad with the higher thermal conductivity does actually make a difference in how long it takes to saturate the heat sink some of the heat instead of going into the heatsink is spreading into our bottom case so let's see what that does for the performance it took initially 10 minutes and 49 seconds for the base model macbook pro and it took 9 minutes and 53 seconds for the higher tier one now that's weird okay so first of all the base model finished the render in 10 minutes and 30 seconds that's 19 seconds faster than our control so there you go that is some improvement but here's where it gets weird the midnight macbook air with the faster ssd took 10 minutes and 38 seconds that's 40 seconds or so slower than it was without the thermal pads so that's a little bit strange the performance over here is a little inconsistent you may also have noticed that throughout our cinebench testing this one was consistently slower than the base model that's interesting it's hard to determine whether that's up to the thermal pads or another external factor but using thermal pads to improve the cooling in your macbook air is definitely viable now as for which of these two methods i would prefer well i think there's a couple of takeaways that we can talk about here the first of that is if you do get a thermal pad i would recommend getting a one millimeter because the 1.5 that i used in here was just a little too thick and it was really hard to get the bottom case to close number two the 12.8 watt per meter kelvin pad definitely seemed to make a difference that's what we used over here however the complete surface area pads also made a difference in terms of the surface temperatures so in an ideal world i think you should probably combine what we learned from both of these get a bunch of thermal pads with as high thermal conductivity as you can and spread them over that heat sink so that you're not concentrating all of the heat transfer in one area and you can probably get the best of both worlds better cooling better peak performance even and you don't have these really high surface temperatures so i thought this was a really really interesting experiment and i'm curious to know what you guys think as well how would you explain that weird anomaly we saw in blender on the higher end macbook air let me know in the comments below and let me know if this is something that you think is worth trying i'm very curious and with that thank you guys so much for watching i hope you enjoyed this video if you did leave a like down below and don't forget to subscribe and with that i will see you guys in the next video you\n"

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