The content is good but when the title and description are lies, my reaction is to avoid channels that do that.

You say in the video *"I didnt try such temperings with my new M2 MacBook Air"* and Your video title says "I killed my M2 MacBook Air following Linus & Max Tech's advice!". Totally MISLEADING!! Even though the content was informative but..

Like you, I wondered whether using thermal pads inside the MacBook Air might be bad for other components in the laptop - but unlike you, I didn’t publish a video whose title claims that I ruined an M2 MacBook Air, when I actually didn’t. Shame on you for that.

I disagree strongly with the "don't take apart your macbook" advice. That is how you stay dumb and get price gouged by Apple. Get comfortable with taking apart your laptop apart SAFELY, and enjoy learning where the parts are. Use your incredible mind to come up with SMART modifications that improve performance without causing any long-term damage. One idea: Buy a new base plate, install a perforated grill into the area around the processor, then use a cooling pad to blow air up through the grill as you use your macbook. That will improve performance and INCREASE the longevity of your hardware. Or course, keep your original base plate so you can put it back on to get any warranty work done through Apple later on.

So you didn’t actually kill your M2? Jokes aside, it looks like there are some variations on temperature measure of other components when the mod is added. I wonder if there is a tolerance variation and battery of some individual laptops maybe touching the bottom case (which would be a very bad situation).

good info, but i didn’t see your air killed

Great Video! Just saw this after putting out our video testing a laptop cooling stand and a Magsafe cooler which had really good results and helped everything stay cooler than factory! I wish you tested out the M2 Air though, because the results are a lot different than with the M1 Air! First off, Apple allows everything to get hotter with the stock M2 Air than with M1 and faster at that. You're right about the batteries needing to not get too hot, and thankfully Apple has full control of that no matter what you do which is why even if you use the thermal mod if the batteries, charging chips, ssd, or chassis get too hot they will slow down the chip to keep them in the proper range. In fact, in many of our extended tests (even longer ones than the showed on screen) the hottest point in the system along with the bottom cover never went over 47C which is the same temp that it reaches with the M2 air stock. At first we were surprised by the CPU throttling even if it wasn't running at the full 108C that Apple now allows for the chip instead of 100C for the M1 Air, but it was because the other components were reaching their Max temps like they would with the stock M2 Air. After that, the M2 chip actually ran cooler than factory, and the bottom case was at the same temp as a factory M2. Using the pads and a cooling fan was really quiet even though we used a thin one, and the whole system ran really cool. Its great for extended workloads especially gaming on an M2 Air which ended up running more consistently than even the M2 Pro as well as running cooler. Fantastic video production, and ether way like we said in our review, for most its best to just stick to the stock system and enjoy what it is!

I'm a game developer who regularly works on large projects that demand both the GPU for testing the game in simulators and the CPU to build projects in Unity, Xcode, and Android Studio. My MacBook Air M3 was suffering a lot due to throttling, often reaching more than 95 degrees Celsius. This modification made my top temperature go down to 86 degrees Celsius. The MacBook is running approximately 11 degrees Celsius cooler on average. The batteries never reached more than 41 degrees Celsius in the worst-case scenario. I totally agree that this modification is not something you should consider if you are not a heavy user. But if you do use heavy tasks like video encoding, game development, or building projects, you will get way more out of your hardware by doing it. Additionally, it cools down much faster when I finish heavy tasks. It used to take forever to bring it below 80 degrees Celsius; now it's almost instantaneous.

Good video! I’m a subscriber. But you didn’t actually kill your M2 MBA like the title says.

I done that mod to a friends M1Air but i installed heat shield in the batteries due to this. You use the gold tape heath shield used in automotive competition and apply it to the various components around does a huge diference, also cut a grill for air using a laser cuter and applied a filter. Overkill but does the job.

Excellent video! There is really no point in getting an MBA and expect it to perform like MBP. Let the laptop work as designed.

@5:24 that overlay of the internals on top of the casing really looks awesome! I’d love to see a translucent case on a MacBook!

Thanks a ton for going so deep into temps! What are the usual temp of M2 Air vs M1 pro 14 inch?

The temperature registered lower without the Mod because there is a Gap between the back panel and the CPU and the heat is in fact trapped inside the laptop causing the batteries to heat even more. Once you apply the Mod, the heat is transferred to the back lid causing the internal temperature to drop while increasing the lid temperature. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Nice video, but where did you get the info about the temperature of li-ion battery? I've seen around the internet that the working temperature is up to 55 degrees.

Yeah sure when the battery is charging for most safe and effective charge temps should be under 45°c but when it's draining it's perfectly fine for it to even reach up to 60°c

what if i add thermal pad by also cover gold/silver tape to the heat sensitive parts? does it solve the problem?

I have done the thermal mod to my M2 MacBook Air and the battery temps have not reached over 37 degrees under stress test in the last 7 days. I think this video may be a little exaggerated. Have a look at the temps in test with thermal pad mod and a laptop cooler!

I have thermal pads installed on my m1 air since 1 year now and it's working great. Battery still at 100% and says "normal status". However, when playing metro exodus, it gets super hot, so I would not recommend doing that.

Great video thanks! I would like to hear your thoughts on Moft's cooler stand as well

Didnt linus also say specifically say he wouldnt do it because it heats the case too much

what is the reference for lithium polymer batteries degrading after 46deg during discharge? Almost every battery manufacturer states lithium polymer can safely discharge up to 60deg celsius before degrading, well within the mod limits. I would be interested to see where this information came from?

You can make the thermo-mode, and when you need more performance, put the macbook on a laptop stand with fans. Then the lid will be cold, and productivity will not fall. Without heat transfer to the bottom lid by thermal padding, such stands are practically useless for MacBook Air. Because the M1/M2 radiator has no direct contact with the lid, and there are no holes from below for the movement of the cooling air flow inside the MacBook.

Does space grey model suffer from fingerprint, smudges and port scuffing?

The intel mac predecessor battery temp always go above 50c under load so i dont think this is really a problem. You know that Its hot like this or even more than this for over 10 year when its intel base right?

Yeah this title is why I’m not going to tell KZfaq I’m not interested

hear me out, what about a actual new bottom for the laptop, probably slightly bigger than the original and with fans?

what if you use less pads. Less extra performance but also no dangerous heat for the battery?

I thought about the problem in the past and now I get an awnser. Thanks

I can confirm that Linus and Max Tech's advise was perfect and there is nothing worth watching in this 9 minute long video. I have used the modded M1 macbook air for 2 years straight with running iOS builds with no problems on the battery end whatsoever so yea.. nothing is wrong with that. The laptop cooling pads don't work because the bottom of the laptop is not even directly connected with the heat sink. So NO! cooling pads won't work.

so much fearmongering about 5°c higher temps XD

A custom bottom plate with thermally isolated sections could solve the problem with the battery.

Video content: Tampering with the thermal engineering of your device could shorten its life, and you should trust that the engineers know what they're doing. KZfaq video title: i kIlLEd mY mACbOoK aIr aLMoST DIeD HaUNtEd GoNE sEXuaL aT 3am

So where is the dead M2 Air?

i think with such large surface area of the back plate part of the heat would dissipate partly before it reaches the battery area. they're like 2-3 inches apart. or you could just use smaller thermal pads so that only part of the heat got transferred to the back plate. it would keep the cpu slightly cooler while still making use of small area of the backplate to dissipate the cpu heat.

I tried to cool it, i putted ice under my macbook (no fan design late 2017) Its a big diy stuff, it didn't thermal throttle, but whats the point of it? If you buy macbook air you buy for its design, aka light and thin

Why not put heat shield in part where the battery is?

You can add foil shielding over the battery cells?

I wonder if there are any passive colling pads you can use externally, instead of those uaf bases with fans

Hey, I want to buy a MacBook Pro with m1 max, can you give me some tips that I should know before buying?

dude make a 9:30 min video with a 1:30 min worth of informations. gotta love the algorithm driven content

I have used an M1 air for software development for about 2 years with thermal pads, I am not saying that I used always all the capabilities of the M1 chip thus the benefits of the pads, but when i had ran some performance intensive tasks which used all the resources of the M1 chip - usually not for long times - that was a huge difference and the air 's battery is now at 80% so that 20% degradation maybe in two years is expected in factory conditions as well.

So why iPad pro with the same M1 chip can have motherboard directly contact with the back chassis? Bare in mind that the iPad also have Lithium battries.

Dude is saying that heating a back panel will degrade the battery but trapping heat inside the lid won’t ? Lol

I saw someone do a "life hack" on their asus zephyrus g14 in which you put a small piece of paper between the trackpad and the battery, in order to make the trackpad quieter. And it works! Only time will tell if this affects the trackpad's usefulness.

all macbooks should have air exhaust ports on the bottom case to let some heat escape

Good view of the problem, I think it is fun to look at Max Tech's video on adding thermal pad to increase the performance of MBA, but you get a good point, it is not worth to put the machine in risk just to squeeze out it's performance.

How about sticking the thermal pads and laying a thin insulator over the batteries to shield it from the heat now spreading over the entire bottom lid of the machine?

People have been doing this to the Intel-based MacBook Pro 16 well before even the M1 Macs came out to stop thermal throttling. They all said the bottom corner was too hot when they applied thermal pads to the VRMs. They also claimed battery temperature was not affected. However, no hard data was ever shown for that model. I wonder if a KZfaqr could revisit Intel 16” and do a similar test on that model, so we could know if the active cooling could mitigate the battery temperature issue. Testing how M1 Max would react to this, especially 14” with 32-core GPU, would be interesting too.

Well then just put a isolation sticker between the lid and batteries LOL

Been runing my m1 MBA with thermal pad mod for 2 years. Playing Dota 2 everyday for a few hours, and everything is working fine. Battery health is 86% at 300 cycles. Not sure it's still normal, time will tell.

Canceled my M2 air with 16gb ram and 512ssd. Best buy has the 14'' Macbook Pro $300 off.

Great video! Does anyone know the software used to display the temperature of the components ?

04:49 "the lithium polymer battery can withstand up to 46°C" Adelaide, South Australia January 24, 2019 maximum ambient temperature that day, 48°C. And yet there's still an Apple store and Apple still sells their laptops there.

The masses are always misinterpreting these creators. These DIY projects are purely for fun and experiments, but the audience draw the conclusion that an M1 or M2 MacBook Air cannot function without these quirks. These laptops still provide great performances on their own and people can still use them for their workflows.

Well done, thank you for stopping me from making a mistake.

I confess it did not occur to me about the battery....thanks for the efforts you made.

5:52 Can anyone remind me where that sound comes from originaly ? it rings a bell, like a deep memory me playing video games, but I can't spot the origin ? Thanks :D

If we agreed u r right .. how about combining two methods ..thermal pads and fans stand so that the temperature of the lower cover disapates so fast thus it will be no longer battery rising Temps transferring from lower cover

So drilling two small holes on oposite sides it will have better effect than thermal pads.

having enthusiast level tech channels reviewing a mainstream laptop is like a F1 driver reviewing a toyota corolla. "Its too slow" is not a good review of it.

People that are doing this modification can afford and bottom (Lid) replacement. It's time to add some nice and clean vents or some flush holes to help mitigate heat. They can afford a bottom lid for testing purposes and send the laptop in with the original lid. Anytime I get a laptop on my bench the first thing I look at is easy to improve the cooling. Modifications on a secondary bottom or chasis peice is a godsend.

i've never really had problems with throttling on my m1 air and i can't say i've ever even felt it get very warm. However it sounds to me that people might be expecting a bit more from the macbook airs than what is reasonable to expect from a thin and light with passive cooling. also if i recall correctly the throttling wasn't even all that bad in the benchmarks especially compared to other thin and light laptops that throttle just as much or even more while also having fans blaring. Sounds more to me like people bought the wrong type of laptop for their use case, and were disappointed when that laptop was in fact the wrong laptop for their use case.

If I get one, I’d probably just use an external cooling pad for heavy tasks

I had the hp elite x2. And the aluminum case transfered so much heat to the battery that it expanded and broke the glass screen.

Anyone applied the pads outside the MBA? Thanks

thermal pad plus drill a rectangular hole at the back to at least hot air to flow.

I love my M1 MacBook Air even more.

It's was never advice. They both state to not do this (Max does, and I'm sure Linus does too)

I added a magsafe ring in the back of my macbook air m1 and then a magnetic fan. Now the temperature of the back cover stays low if high performance is required

wldve been useful to see battery temps (like actual data) with and without the mod

Jesus, could you make this video any longer? It could easily be half the length and not loose anything of value.

How about the thermals when you use it with pads and stand with cooling fans? Will it fix the 50°C safe mark for the battery

Damn so glad I saw your video, I was just about to buy some pads on amazon

The thermal pad hack is a neat trick that works. The problem is that tech reviewers are doing this on throwaway laptops, because nothing gets used regularly for more than a year. The typical viewer who is trying to save money by buying an MB Air for professional use as their only system may not be in that same "I buy and use a new laptop every product refresh cycle" category as they guy who buys and reviews products for a living. In fact, they probably aren't. Kudos for being the ONLY tech reviewer to point out the trade off cost of the hack.

OK so this isn't exactly correct. Apple could not use a thermal pad as there are laws about heat from a mobile computer. The bottom of the case can't go over a certain temperature,

Linus tech tips hasn't made a video about the m2 MBA...

how did you kill you m2 macbook air after you firstly returned it to apple? You did a video saying you returned it before this. Right??? Right?

1. Most lithium batteries have temp sensors. Mac's in particular used to be prone to that kind of shut down in the sun. 2. Where do you think that heat goes when it's not transferred to the lid? It stays in the laptop. Builds up in the empty space and the processor throttles to cool that space. It's still going to do that with more heat being transferred outside the laptop. It just has higher thermal headroom. As the empty space is no longer absorbing as much heat. 3. Air is an insulator it actually doesn't conduct heat well. So the pocket between the battery and the outside of the case could be significantly cooler than the outside of the case. Also, the heat is going to go to the place with the most thermally conductive environment which is going to be the cooler air outside of the laptop, not the internal air. 4. It would be a cool video to do the cooling mat with the thermal pads. That's the case is acting like a giant heat sink and then you're just putting active cooling on it. You could probably even write a script to control the fans on the cooling pad based on the internal temperatures of the MacBook Air. PS. Thermal pads aren't magic. They're very commonly used, including in a lot of Apple product over the years. They're cheap because they've been around for years and have been used in industrial applications. A lot of times it's how the processors in your cars are cooled.

What you said that Apple won't accept your laptop with a sticked thermal pad is not quite right: I returned my M1 laptop with failed screen and Apple replace it despite having that thermal pad in it (they didn't touch it).

Why not use the thermal pad and laptop bench

this mod works great on the 2020 intel mba, 30-40 % performance increase. it also helps that the intel mba has a fan inside.

"I don't mean to criticize any particular creator or KZfaqr" "I killed my M2 MackBook Air following Linus and Max Tech's advice!"🤔

Hello! I have 2 questions hopefully someone will educate me. I’m a little bit confused. 1: can i use oleophobic coating on the M2 Air midnight? ( please note that I’m talking about on the aluminum case not on Retina display) 2: Can I use transparent plastic hardshell on my mac? ( I’m afraid plastic case will cause issue because the overheating problem of m2 chips, but I’m also so fed up by the finger prints and smudges, and really don’t want scratches and scuffs on my machine) I already bought the machine so can’t return it, can only think about solutions 😂

Hmm very good point, and makes sense why apply would not do that in the first place. Whole picture thinking

I actually bought the base model MacBook air m2. I upgraded from MacBook air 2018(i5 intel). This MacBook is amazing so far, I have played cs:go at low settings and it has not throttled but it does get warm, warm not hot) if you are doing light editing, gaming, This MacBook is great.

Where is the dead macbook ?

Jokes on you because from my experience, any 12 inch MacBook or intel 13 inch MacBook Pro get hot enough to actually burn you

Apple calls a piece of aluminum foil a "heatsink". 😂😂😂😂

I bought a m1 air and i after the video i opened it and someone glued some crap into it... literaly shaking right now

Thermal pad + ice pack and/or cooling fan = 🤔

I really worry about this but... We paid $1000 for a perfect thin efficient laptop, we can pay the half for a cheap gaming tower and melt it if we like

So did you kill the thing or not?

this is misleading. mod or unmodded, heat will eventually spread on other components. you didn't even bother to measure the heat on unmodded one and make a comparison to it which makes it more sus.

Meh. Unnecessary fear mongering. My M1 has been modded for more than a year now with no repercussions. I’m not the only one either. Just check the macrumours forum where this mod originated. A year later and my M1 is still at 100% battery capacity.

Amen. A laptop cooling pad is good option for cooling the MBA. Great suggestion. Someone should make a laptop cooling fan with an NVMe slot that is Thunderbolt 3/4???

why don’t you buy a MacBook Pro for the better performance? Why did this to MacBook Air hoping for the performance?

I still think the Thermal pad is way better because it lets the dust stay outside then I can change the cooling stand when I want.

M1 Air thermal mod has been here for quite a long time - why not to do some real research/statistics from people using it for a long time instead of "what might theoretically happen in a system that's built to manage cumulated heat anyway"?

99% of users arent "Stressing" their laptops, therefore don't care about all of this.