A few weeks ago,
I stumbled across an internet forum thread
about thermal modding the old Intel MacBook Air laptops,
many users reported a big increase in performance up to 16%
because they were able to draw the heat away from the CPU.
It essentially turns the bottom case into one big heatsink.
Now, although the M1 laptops
are designed slightly differently,
they are similar enough that the same mod should work.
Funnily enough, I also saw my own videos
mentioned in the thread,
so I thought I'd try modding my own M1 MacBook Air
to see the results for myself.
Make sure you watch until the very end
because some of the results I was able to get
were absolutely mind blowing.
Quick disclaimer, if you're wanting to do this mod
to your own MacBook Air,
there's a good chance this might void your warranty
or even be unsafe.
Apple didn't intend the MacBook to be designed this way,
so proceed with caution.
First things first, we have to establish a good baseline
by doing some tests and benchmarks.
I made sure the room I was in was temperature controlled
and the testing was as similar as possible.
I ran several Cinebench and Geekbench benchmarks
and also did a render of some 8k R3D RAW footage
using DaVinci Resolve.
I added lots transitions and also some color correction
to the timeline.
And this is going to be the most interesting benchmark,
in my opinion, because it will give you an idea
of some real world differences
between the stock and modded MacBook Air.
I also did a thermal camera shot of the stock laptop
to see where the heat was concentrated
and the temperature of the external chassis.
As you can see from the back of the case here,
it's hitting about 49 degrees Celsius,
and the majority of heat
is directly above the heatsink as expected.
Down towards the bottom of the case,
the temperature is much cooler at around 37 degrees.
This was while the M1 MacBook was doing
a Cinebench benchmark.
Next up, the fun part,
adding the thermal pads to the heatsink.
I won't go into too much detail here
as I'll leave that for a separate video.
You will need some tools such as this iFixit kit
and also obviously some thermal pads.
I'll link all of this stuff in the description
in case you wanted to check them out on Amazon.
You'll then need to take off the back case
and apply the thermal pads.
I'm using a 1.5 and 3 millimeter pad.
The thicker one goes on the section of the heatsink
which is lower,
and the thinner 1.5 millimeter pad
goes on the upper section.
The aim is to establish contact
between the heatsink and the back case
to facilitate heat transfer.
The way Apple designed the MacBook Air
means the heat pretty much just stays in the case.
So in theory, applying a contact
between the heatsink and case,
should draw the heat away more efficiently.
Now if you're interested to know exactly how I did this,
watch the video in the top right corner.
Right, now that we have the baseline benchmarks done
and the mod completed,
let's see if it's made a difference, shall we?
So the difference was very surprising.
As you can see, across almost all of the benchmarks,
we were able to see a very noticeable improvement.
Now Geekbench isn't really a test
that will generate much heat,
so the results were essentially the same,
and so I decided just not to include the results here.
However, Cinebench is much more intensive
and therefore will put more strain on the M1 chip.
And you can see here the modded M1
gained a 15% increase in performance for multi core
and 1.5% for single core.
The single core test only uses one core
as the name suggests,
and will generate almost no heat,
hence the very negligible difference.
Finally and this is the best part,
the 8k raw resolve render was even more noticeable.
A full 10 minutes or 31% decrease in render time.
This is absolutely incredible,
and I was pretty shocked
to see this kind of performance gain.
This translates to a real world tangible benefit
for those doing editing,
or anything else that generally is very taxing
on the M1 chip and produces a lot of heat as a byproduct.
The M1 MacBook Air
is clearly much less thermally limited when it's modded,
as it's able to get rid of that heat trapped in the chassis
much more efficiently.
And as you can see here with the M1 MacBook Pro,
there is really not much difference any longer.
So the performance is great,
but there's always a catch
and that is the extra heat generated.
As you can see in these two side by side images,
the thermal profile stayed roughly the same.
The heat didn't seem to spread out
from the heatsink sensor much more.
The temperatures however, overall did increase.
So the unmodded MacBook Air, as I mentioned before,
was getting around 49 degrees Celsius in the center,
and 37 a little bit more towards the middle of the case.
After the thermal mod was applied,
we were now hitting 59 degrees at the hardest part,
and a small change of about one degree
in the middle of the case.
This works had to be about an 18% increase in temperature
in the center of the MacBook after the mod.
This kind of makes sense
because we saw a similar percentage increase
in raw performance.
However, I will say that after rendering
8k footage in Resolve for 30 plus minutes,
the temps occasionally got up to around 63 degrees
right in the hottest part,
which is starting to get pretty toasty.
Let's jump into the studio
and have a bit of a further look
at how hot the case actually gets.
Okay, so now that we have applied the thermal mod
to the M1 MacBook Air, just how hot is it in everyday usage?
Well, just using the laptop normally,
so doing some word documents or some internet browsing,
watching some videos, just everyday typical usage,
I really didn't notice any kind of difference,
the heat on the top here at the keyboard
did not notice any kind of difference at all,
the heat on the back,
right now it's actually almost cool to the touch,
I can't detect any kind of heat there at all.
So this is totally fine to use on my lap
and in fact, I have been using on my lap for a few hours,
with absolutely no issues.
The only way you're going to feel
the extra heat generated by the mod,
is if you're doing something intensive, like a render,
which I'll show you now.
Okay, so this has been rendering
for about 20 minutes at this stage,
and it definitely is quite hot.
So to be honest, I really don't feel much difference
on the top here, it's again,
just quite hot as the M1 Air will generally get.
On the back, however,
this is where you're going to feel
the majority of the difference.
So if I just stand it up like this,
and I just can't touch it here,
it is definitely very hot,
it's only really comfortable for me to put my hand on here
for a few seconds.
It is definitely a lot hotter than it was before the mod,
but again, even before the mod,
I wouldn't have this thing on my lap while I was rendering,
it was quite hot.
But I'd say just based on touch line,
this is an easy 10 degrees Celsius hotter
than it was before.
The interesting part is though, around the edges,
it's actually not hot at all,
like it's barely warm on the edges.
It's really only once you get towards the middle here
that it is quite hot.
But even then,
like I don't think you're going to
necessarily burn yourself on this,
it's just quite uncomfortable,
you definitely can't have it in your lap.
Now what I love about this mod is just the end result.
For just general browsing and use on your lap,
I didn't notice the bottom of the MacBook
get any hotter than before.
In fact, it's still barely warm at all.
But when I do need to render or I'm playing a game,
the MacBook isn't going to be on my lap anyway,
so I don't notice the extra heat generated
on the bottom case.
I get essentially the performance of the M1 MacBook Pro,
but the cheaper price, better form factor
and lighter weight of the Air.
The best part is that this mod only cost me about 20 bucks,
and I can remove it at any time easily.
So what about negatives?
Well, the only negative people on the forums
have been able to find and myself included,
is that the battery can get a few degrees warmer,
which makes sense
because the battery takes up much of the internal space
and the heat from the M1 chip
is now spread across the entire back casing.
And the battery's obviously going to absorb
a little bit of that heat.
Is this a big issue, in my opinion?
No, unless you're doing something crazy,
like rendering 8k footage in the Australian sun.
Damn, do you reckon I'll still be able to get warranty?
One more thing that you may have seen my video
a few weeks ago where I tested laptop fans
with the M1 MacBook Air,
it didn't really make a difference then,
but now that literally the entire back casing of the Mac
is now technically one big heatsink,
I actually think it'll make a huge difference.
My guess is that we'll see
a very noticeable increase in performance
when compared with the M1 MacBook Pro.
Stay tuned on my channel to see this video coming soon.
Anyway guys, that's it for me today.
Hope you enjoyed this video,
it definitely was very interesting for me
to test and see the results.
If you have any comments or questions,
leave a comment in the comment section below.
If you want to know how to do this particular mod,
I'll have a tutorial video linked in the description,
but apart from that, thank you guys for watching
and I will catch you in the next one.