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M1 Air with Thermal Pad Mod
- sixothree 6y agoJust don't sit it on your lap.
- jws 6y agoThe trick is to make good skin contact with your legs before you heat it up. You are a mammal and can easily dissipate over 100 watts, it is your human super power. The bottom will only get a bit warm as you pump away all the heat. In days of old I used to keep the fans from coming on for an aluminum PowerBook with this trick.
- infogulch 6y agoThe human heat sink. Sounds like something from The Matrix.
- ComputerGuru 6y agoYou can even lose weight this way! (I’m mostly kidding but not entirely. Most of our resting state calorie consumption is spent on thermal homeostasis, and the greater a temperature gradient your body needs to overcome whether to warm up or cool down, the more calories it’ll burn in doing so. Although if you’re sitting in the freezing cold or in an air conditioned room and putting a warm laptop on your lap, you’re probably going to be burning fewer calories since you’re nudging your body temperature in the right direction.)
- rsync 6y agoI am convinced this is why children get so dead-tired after the swimming pool - even if only wading around. They have a small body mass and they need to regulate a ~20 degree temperature differential ...
- ComputerGuru 6y agoThat’s a logical enough deduction to file under “accept as scientifically valid unless and until proven otherwise,” at least as far as I’m concerned!
- BugsJustFindMe 6y ago> whether to warm up or cool down, the more calories it’ll burn in doing so To warm up yes, but to cool down? How would it make sense to generate more heat (burn calories) to cool down?
- ComputerGuru 6y agoOur bodies are less efficient but no less incredible at lowering their temperature as they are at raising it. See for example the production and excretion of sweat takes energy, as does increased heart rate to improve circulation in an attempt to a) handle/average out local hot/cold spots, b) improve shedding of excess heat via radiation in the extremities, which is one of the reasons we have weird thin, fin-like protrusions sticking out of our heads on either side: pumping blood through these thin slabs with high surface area gives maximal chance to reduce the temperature of the blood as the air flows over them. Again the the same with the upper and lower extremities, which radiate heat at greater levels than the trunk. Also, increased, shallow breathing to attempt to cool down blood circulating in the high surface area exposed in the alveoli of the lungs (which is normally why exhaled breath is much warmer than the local air temperature). There are other mechanisms as well, I am by no means an expert but thermal homeostasis is of extreme importance and we’re quite good at it - and like any other physics process, heat exchange is a form of work that requires the expenditure of energy.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoI remember reading a study that for male laptop users the extra heat has a small but real impact on fertility
- flixic 6y agoLinus Tech Tips did a video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghDvyItIHTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghDvyItIHTY
- Joeri 6y agoCreated labs did a step by step guide: https://youtu.be/IACHo5y9Los https://youtu.be/IACHo5y9Los
- robert_tweed 6y agoHe also referenced the story from 2002 about the man who burned his "delicate bits" with a hot laptop. He suggests it may be apocryphal. I remember that story [1]. The main reason I remember it is because of the reported warning text. At that time, I owned a Dell Latitude L400 laptop, which did indeed come with the exact warning text quoted in the article. It got got far hotter than any other laptop I have used. I have no trouble believing it could burn someone. [1] https://www.theregister.com/2002/11/22/man_burns_penis_with_laptop/ https://www.theregister.com/2002/11/22/man_burns_penis_with_...
- davee5 6y agoThis is why at Apple the division making MacBooks is called "portables" and not "laptops." They're officially not supposed to go on your lap. Also the thermal limits of the human dermis are pretty well studied and documented. The vast majority of CE products are designed not to exceed 50°C, which is when the thin skinned (children and elderly) start to get second degree burns pretty fast. 60°C is where you burn almost immediately. Interestingly 45°C is "threshold of pain" for most folks, but few companies set that as the target limit. Since thermal dissipation is a ∆T game that last 5 degrees matters a LOT for wattage out (on a hot day outside 30-35°C is a good surface temp estimate, so that last five degrees is the difference between 10 or 15 degrees out, a non trivial delta.)
- Tepix 6y agoSounds like it's worth doing if you want to do longer edit sessions with Final Cut Pro on the M1 Air. I like that you can control how hot the bottom gets by applying more or less thermal pads.
- stu2b50 6y agoThis is a good way to easily give yourself more endurance performance but I wouldn't recommend it - it does make the chassis uncomfortably hot.
- BossingAround 6y agoDepends on the use-case. If you use your laptop mostly in a clamshell mode connected to a monitor and keyboard, you don't really care about the chassis.
- stu2b50 6y agoI suppose. There probably is a thin niche that would appreciate the performance gains, but I feel that in most cases you'd rather have a pro or really a mac mini if you mostly use it as a desktop and have a need for sustained performance over time.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoCould be both. You can use the computer on your lap if you're doing word processing and checking email, or on a desk if you're editing video.
- stu2b50 6y agoRight, but it's a pretty scarce section of the venn diagram between Needs a laptop (since you're not getting a Mini) to use portable Needs endurance CPU performance (and notices a 15% performance decrease) Frequently docks laptop during workloads Can't or doesn't want to pay extra for the MBP
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago> Frequently docks laptop during workloads That's not a requirement, you merely need to use your laptop at a desk (or a table, or the seat-back shelf on an airplane) and not literally on your lap. That's usually how I use my laptop anyway, for comfort reasons. Certainly when I'm doing something CPU heavy, since I don't generally edit videos on the subway. I think the other three requirements are perfectly common.
- BossingAround 6y agoSeems like the difference between thermal throttled MBA and non-throttled MBP is ~15-20%..?
- chrismorgan 6y agoThermals are fun. Doing video encoding on my Surface Book (i7-6600U) in a 25–35°C ambient temperature, lying its heat source down on a marble floor speeds it up by 60% within a minute or so. (Remember the Surface Book puts its CPU behind the screen, so it doesn’t transfer much heat through the base. This is in its performance mode, where it can get impressively hot for a 15W CPU, like ow-that-actually-hurts hot. But because that’s not the base, I think they weren’t scared to transfer heat to the body, which is what it sounds like this M1 MacBook Air is avoiding.)
- AmVess 6y agoI did this to mine. It no longer throttles under any type of regular use. I did an hour long encode using Final Cut Pro and the hottest it got was 83C. The hottest the battery got was 44C, so it is doing a fine job of dumping the heat outside of the device. The bottom cover does get hot, but I don't keep it on my lap. I don't do any gaming with it, but I tested Rise of the Tomb Raider and it handled it very well without throttling. My XPS turned into a leaf blower in seconds with the same game and still managed to throttle at times. I'd recommend the MB Pro M1 if you want to do longer projects. I'm pretty sure the MBA would become heatsoaked after encoding for a few hours. The Pro has a fan. It's a good mod that takes a few minutes to do and really delivers. Apple really killed it with the M1. I have the base model. Affinity Photo is another app that has been optimized for the M1, and in some operations manages to be faster than my 8 core/16 thread Ryzen 3700 with 32GB of ram. It simply curb stomps my XPS in every single performance metric while being totally silent and never throttling under what I use it for. Safari has also been tuned for the M1, and it is the fastest browsing machine I have ever used.
- chillacy 6y agoI'm contemplating this mod too, what app do you use to measure the temps?
- Toutouxc 6y agoMacs Fan Control is free and, despite the name, works fine on the Air (it just shows a notice that the computer is cooled passively). Also it's a simple move-to-Applications .app, and I like those.
- chillacy 6y agoVery nice! Just a note that I had to download a beta version here https://github.com/crystalidea/macs-fan-control/issues/435 https://github.com/crystalidea/macs-fan-control/issues/435 for M1 support.
- floatingatoll 6y agoFolks, keep in mind that you're doing this to something containing a lithium battery. If it explodes, your hot case is going to get far hotter. Please be cautious. A brief FAQ list to address the predictable replies: Q: But it hasn't burned anyone! Yet. Q: It won't, obviously! And yet, it might. Q: Nonsense! You're thermally overclocking a physical object that happens to contain enough charged lithium to kill a small household. Q: I know what I'm doing! Then you put a "heat warning" sticker on the top cover, right? Q: Of course not, that would make it ugly. And anyways I don't have one. So you're consciously choosing not to take appropriate safety precautions? Q: They're not appropriate. You don't know what you're doing. Q: Safety precautions aren't that big of a deal, it's just a few degrees warmer! Are you familiar with the phrase "served as a lesson to us all"? Q: A comment on the Internet said that it's safe to use my bare legs as heatsinks. "Served as a warning to others". Q: But I know how to apply thermal paste properly! All the better to injure yourself and your property with. Q: I have the right to modify my own objects! And, in return, you grant those objects the right to harm you if your modifications introduce drawbacks. Q: That's impossible! Nothing's impossible when it comes to people modifying things while thinking they know better. Q: It's so low of a likelihood that I'm willing to take my chances. That's your right, as long as the object isn't in the vicinity of other human beings at any point in its modified life.
- soganess 6y agoWhile you are right and I applauded your caution. It is also fair to note that no (electronically non-conductive) heat dissipation mod is likely going to cause a runaway thermal event hot enough put the kind of stress you are talking about on a battery, at least not on an M1 Air. If you were using liquid metal and it caused a short, sure, but that is a regularly occurring issue with liquid metal. This is an electronically non-conductive thermal pad with, what do you figure, a 5w/mK thermal conductivity? On a device that probably never cracks 15w peak. And you can bet if it does, it would only sustains that output on the order of seconds. That said, I'm all for stopping unskilled people from attempting unsafe things. But then again, doing those sorts of things would sum up my hobbies neatly.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
- theodric 6y agoI threw my M1 MacBook Air in a snowbank in -11°C last night, let it chill for 15 minutes, then ran Geekbench and Cinebench Here's GB: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/6487568 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/6487568 Cinebench was 7709, about 900 points higher than my usual bench result.
- BugsJustFindMe 6y agoIsn't that dangerous for the screen?
- BugsJustFindMe 6y agoA lot of people are saying "Ok, but this burns your legs/crotch". But could you do this and then better insulate the outside of the bottom so that the heat transfers into the case faster and out of the case slower per square inch? You'd still have an effectively much larger heat sink.
- m463 6y agothe question I have is: Is the mac mini similarly affected?
- stu2b50 6y agoNo, the Mini has a fan and a hilariously large enclosure for airflow. Both the Mini and Pro have no trouble sustaining loads indefinitely.