Fix your MacBook Air M2 overheating problem with a $15 mod
As you know, unlike the MacBook Pro M2, the MacBook Air M2 is not equipped with a cooling fan and is passively cooled by a heat sink. Unfortunately, during heavy use such as rendering and video editing, the cooling system of this device does not perform properly and the device quickly suffers from the phenomenon of thermal bottleneck. But a YouTuber, by applying a small change to the MacBook Air M2, was able to solve the problem of overheating of this device to some extent.
Fix MacBook Air overheating problem with thermal pads
Although the MacBook Pro M2 and MacBook Air M2 are equipped with identical versions of the M2 processor, the weakness of the MacBook Air’s cooling system causes its multi-threaded performance to drop drastically after a few minutes during heavy processing. YouTube page Max Tech has been able to partially solve the heating problem of this device by adding $15 heating pads. Before installing the thermal pads, the temperature of the MacBook Air M2 reached 108 degrees Celsius in a matter of seconds.
This YouTuber has opened the back panel of the MacBook Air first; A relatively simple task for which you have to open the four screws below the device and then remove the aluminum frame below the device with a plastic spatula – like a guitar pick. Then, as seen in the video, place the thermal pads on the heatsink of the device. If you’re in a pinch, you can even remove the motherboard and apply a layer of silicone paste to the M2 chipset to further improve the thermal performance of the device.
Installing a thermal pad for MacBook Air M2
After installing the thermal pads and tinkering with the device, the YouTuber ran various tests with the MacBook Air M2 to see how much the overheating issue was resolved. For example, when outputting 50 photos with Adobe Lightroom Classic, the MacBook Air with modified cooling was faster than the MacBook Pro with a fan. In the Cinebench R23 test, the problem of overheating the MacBook Air M2 still exists due to the high pressure applied to the M2 processor; The difference is that in normal mode and without thermal pads, the temperature reaches 108 degrees Celsius within 28 seconds, but if thermal pads are installed, this time increases to 83 seconds, which is a significant improvement.
Thanks to the thermal pads, the MacBook Air M2 with the modified cooling was able to get a higher score than the normal one, and the problem of overheating has also been partially solved. The last test is the 3DMark Wild Life Gaming test, which puts the graphics processor of the device under the maximum possible pressure, and due to the weakness of the cooling system, after a few minutes, the device experiences a thermal bottleneck phenomenon. Before installing the heating pads, the score in this test started to decrease after four minutes, but after installing the heating pads, the device can maintain its best performance for about eight minutes.
If you have bought or want to buy a MacBook Air M2 device and you are complaining about the problem of overheating, you can install thermal pads for your device and improve the performance of its cooling system.
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