- [Instructor] If you've been following
my M1 MacBook Air Thermal mod videos
you would have seen that the next video
in this series was seeing
if adding a laptop cooling pad would increase performance.
I also wanted to see if this combo would in fact
beat the M1 MacBook Pro as the cooling fan on the laptop pad
is roughly three times bigger than the internal one
on the pro
and you know what they always say bigger is always better.
Getting straight into it as you can see here
yes, the cooling pad does have a positive effect
on the performance but only slightly.
To simplify these results the addition of the cooling pad
mainly bridges the performance gap
even further between the thermal mod MacBook Air
and the MacBook Pro making them both essentially equal
in terms of performance.
These results show that the laptop cooling fan
barely adds any additional performance
Only about one to one and a half percent in most situations.
One thing to keep in mind though
is that this will likely increase
depending on your environment
for example, using your laptop in a hot and humid room
with zero existing air flow
or using your laptop on a particular surface
for example using it on a glass table versus a wooden table.
I didn't do this much in depth testing for this video
because honestly it's a ton of additional work
and would yield similar results to what I already have.
Finally, we have the difference in performance
between a moderate and one MacBook Air
with cooling pad and a stock MacBook Pro.
As you can see here,
there is effectively zero difference now.
Again, bear in mind, they are both base models
so the MacBook Pro has an extra GPU core
compared to the MacBook Air.
Now, if you're interested, stick around a little bit longer
and I'll show you the entire testing
and benchmarking process with some other cool details.
Okay, So here we have the thermally modded MacBook Air
as you can see, we are just in my living room today
and that's just because
this is the most thermally neutral room that I have.
So the temperatures here are always pretty much the same
which means it's going to give me a really reliable
baseline temperature to be able to test
the effectiveness of A the thermal mod in a previous video
and now in this video
the effectiveness of the laptop cooling stand.
So what we'll do now is we'll run a few Cinebench tests
also some rendering, et cetera
and then we're going to put the fan underneath
and we'll see how it performs.
Alrighty, now the multi-core Cinebench test has finished
as you can see here without the fan, just the thermal mod
we're getting 7,700 points
and obviously the same single core 15, 14 points.
So what we'll do now
is I'm going to take out the laptop fan cooler.
I'm going to pop this bad boy on it
and then I'm going to do the test again.
So I'm sure you've seen my previous videos
on the laptop cooling pads.
They don't really work, but now that we have
so much more heat being transferred to the exterior case
of the MacBook Air, perhaps this time they will
so let's switch it on and see what we get.
Now as you can see, if I lift up the laptop
the fan is spinning and it's quite a large fan as well
so there's quite a lot of air flow.
Now, the aim of this test, isn't to see
just if the laptop runs cool
we don't really care about that
We just want to see if performance is increased.
So what we're looking for is increased Cinebench scores
or decreased render times.
So without further ado let's redo these Cinebench testing
and we'll see what results we get.
So as you can see there
the multi-core test has now finished.
We've got a score of 7,776, which beats out
the previous score without the laptop fan cooler
by about 77 points or about 1%
in terms of single core, the original score was 15, 14
as you can see there, we've got 15, 18,
so not a really huge difference
but definitely a noticeable one.
Okay guys, so it's now actually a couple of days later
and the reason it's taken me so long
is just because I wanted to double check the results
just to make sure that they were accurate
because as you guys can imagine
there's so many different variables, so much can change.
So for example, if the temperature of the room changes
by just half a degree that can throw out all the tests.
So it's taken some time, but I am confident now
that I've got a pretty good end result.
So starting with the modded M1 MacBook Air
on the laptop cooling pad
I'm seeing around a one to 2% increase in performance.
So with the render times
you can see I've done quite a few renders here
on this AK red raw footage timeline.
I'm seeing about a 20 to 25
or 32nd decrease in the render times
when the laptop is on the laptop cooling pad.
So really not a huge difference
it's a lot less than I originally thought.
So one or 2%, really not much, to be honest
you're probably going to get the same result
if you simply just prop the Mac up on something.
So if you put a book, a small book
or a piece of wood underneath and you just prop it up
so there's some airflow underneath
in the few tests I did on that
it seems to return pretty much the same results.
Of course, if you are willing to spend 15 or 20 bucks
on this laptop cooling pad, I definitely would go for that.
It definitely does help in keeping the internal components
just the slightest bit cooler by about maybe one degree.
I will have this linked in the description
but yeah, honestly guys, I'm a little bit disappointed.
I did think it would have a more noticeable difference
but you know a couple of percent is still pretty good.
So the reason why I don't think the laptop cooling pad
had much of an effect
is because I think the actual thermal design of this thing
even with the thermal mod added onto it is pretty good.
So as long as it's just getting that heat away
from the M1 chip, that's where you're going to see
the biggest difference in performance
it doesn't necessarily have to actually dissipate
on the bottom chassis of the Mac
as long as you're just getting that heat away
from the M1 chip into the metal chassis of the Mac
it will just naturally dissipate over time
and it doesn't really seem like the fan
or the laptop cooling stand underneath
has much of an effect on that.
Now, do I actually recommend doing this mod?
Well, I'll talk about that in a followup video
a little bit later on, but generally no
if you've got the money just get a MacBook Pro
it is still a really good machine.
You don't have to worry about the thermal mod
or the laptop cooling pad, you've got the fan built into it
and it's a very solid device
with this particular thermal mod.
Obviously you run the room, avoiding your warranty
although there is a relatively low risk of that happening.
In my personal opinion
I think it's just a really cool and fun mod to do
and it's more for those who don't really mind
if anything bad happens to their Mac because of that
but again, I'll leave that for another video.
Now, moving on to the performance of this modded machine
with the laptop cooling pad versus the MacBook Pro
this is actually pretty interesting.
So again, as you might be able to see over here
I did quite a few test renders over here.
So a couple of hours of rendering
and at this point I can pretty confidently say
there's really no difference at all between the two.
Every single time I tested the two against each other
at the same time,
they finished within about 15 to 20 seconds of each other
and doing some other testing on this
it actually beats out the MacBook Pro in some areas.
So that's Cinebench test I did earlier
the multi-core benchmark some other shorter renders
and things like that
this will actually beat the MacBook Pro
but again even with the laptop cooling fan
there's really not much of a huge difference
between the two.
You're looking at worst case scenario
pretty much equal performance, best case scenario.
In some aspects, the MacBook Air will beat the MacBook Pro
by anywhere up to about one, two, three or 4%
and I think as Linus Tech Tips
actually mentioned in his video
the reason for that is because any heat that is generated
by the M1 chip immediately goes straight to the chassis.
Whereas in the MacBook Pro
you have to wait till the fan kicks in
and then not only kicks in but actually ramps up
to a high enough RPM to dissipate the heat.
So with that kind of 32nd gap
that's really the only difference between the two
but that is still super super impressive
because this is 300 us dollars less expensive
and has one less GPU core.
So on paper, the MacBook Pro should destroy this thing
but with the mod and to a much lesser extent
with the thermal pad,
this actually beats the MacBook Pro out in some situations
as I said before most of the time they're pretty much equal
but in some situations, yes, this is more powerful.
So I suppose to conclude the topic of this particular video
should you pick up a laptop cooling pad
for your stock Mac book Air?
Probably not, you can see my other video on that topic.
Should you pick it up for a modded M1 Mac book air?
Again, probably not, I do actually recommend it though
because the one or two degree difference you will get
over time may add up
but in terms of the actual results
and the data I've accumulated over the last few days
there's really not much of a noticeable difference.
Anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed this video
this is probably going to be one of my last videos
on the thermal mod topics.
I will have maybe one more video on it
in the next couple of weeks,
just doing a recap of the mod
and if there's any long-term issues
and also if I can reverse the mod fully
but apart from that guys, hope you enjoy the video
leave a comment down below if you want to ask me anything
and I will catch you in the next one.