2018 MacBook Pro cooling mod

[MetalMac]

A basic question but am I correct in saying that the air intake is where I've circled in green and the exhaust in red? Many thanks. Col.

View attachment 830928

Yes, that is correct.

 

[anthdci]

Could you maybe do this halfway, some of the thermal pads but not all? I don't think I'd mind the bottom panel getting warm, but to the point of burning is excessive. Obviously, that would reduce the effectiveness of it.

 

[cynics]

I'd be weary of the mods effects on the fan operation. Various components don't have temp sensors are being cooled due to accompanying components that have temp sensors being cooled.

For purely example sake, say under heavy load the thunderbolt controller(s) need cooling but this generally addressed because the CPU/GPU/SSD/etc that is leveraging it also need cooling.

Not saying that is the case but something to consider since the MBP can operate with 0 RPM fan.

 

[Transamers]

Now my MacBook runs at 38 degree while running safari only
Cinebench 2400-2600cb

 

[MetalMac]

Could you maybe do this halfway, some of the thermal pads but not all? I don't think I'd mind the bottom panel getting warm, but to the point of burning is excessive. Obviously, that would reduce the effectiveness of it.

I did this exact thing using thermal pads with half the conductivity of OP's, specifically ARCTIC (6.0 W/mK), and the result is still good thermal dissipation from the chips and no burning hot bottom.

 

[m4rk0]

I have been following silently this thread with interest.

However, I am unable to open my 15" 2018 MBP. I get all of the clips to release the bottom but along the display hinge the lid is secured and cannot get it to slide nor lift.

Edit
I managed to open it.

 

[elamor4738]

I've alluded to this mod in an earlier post, I have since implemented it and used the moded machine for a while to form a mature opinion about it. I think this mode is great for people who regularly use their MacBook in clamshell mode although I cannot recommend it because it obviously voids warranty (but Apple doesn't have to know since it's non-destructive).

Pros for the mod:

• non-destructive, completely reversible
• relatively cheap, easy and safe to apply
• does not significantly affect normal usage
• up to 20 degrees lower temperatures under sustained load
• reduced fan speed under such load, and therefore noise
• higher sustained power under such load, up to 7W more power
• can accept external cooling like heat sinks or ice packs for silent cooling even at max power

Cons:

• can burn your skin if not careful
• prohibits laptop use under high loads
• potential damage to skins/cases/tables/table mats
• thermal improvements are mostly negated when sitting flat on a surface

Theory

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/im-thinking-of-a-thermal-mod-for-the-mbp.2133914/

As I have mentioned in this post, due to the proximity of the heat source and the bottom cover which is effectively a big radiator, we can simply couple them together and let the bottom panel radiate heat into the environment.

View attachment 794001
Application

Quite simply, you remove the bottom cover, and apply 1.5mm thick thermal pad to the hottest areas like so:
View attachment 794002

The power regulators up top don't really need this because they can tolerate very high heat but I paded them anyway because they could offer better efficiency at lower temperatures and thus reduce power consumption.
View attachment 794010

And that's it, you just pop the cover back on and you're good to go. Except for the bottom cover to effectively radiate heat, it can't just face the surface of a table because that will just heat the table up to the same temperature and then you don't radiate much more heat.
For optimal performance you need to either place the machine in a stand or flip it over on the table so that the bottom panel is facing preferably a cool area of the room (not under the sun beside a window).

Results

All tests are done in clamshell mode, this makes a difference because the CPU package actually draws about 5W more power regardless of everything else, when you output video.
View attachment 794006
In this chart blue represents stock obviously, I tested by simply opening up a save game in StarCraft 2 in Windows with turbo boost disabled, which produces a constant and reproducible load.

Orange is the moded machine but just placed on the table like normal. As you can see there is an improvement but not much.

The magic happens when you flip the machine over and let it just radiate into the room, represented by the gray line. The yellow line represents the flipped over machine with a big aluminum heat sink just placed on it. There is almost no difference from the heat sink because heat sinks don't provide significantly increased surface area for radiation, it gives improved surface area for convection.

I have not tested this but placing it on a laptop cooler should be just as effective as flipping it over on the table. (where as those products don't actually help the stock laptop, or most other laptops for that matter)

If I add a fan to blow across the heat sink, temperatures are further reduced to around 72 degrees. Such a setup can completely eliminate internal fan activity even under heavy loads. And you can use fan control to force the fans to minimum speed and still run at over 30w without hitting 100 degrees for any amount of time.
View attachment 794008

View attachment 794009

I also tested constant power, by immediately running Cinebench after I warm up the machine with StarCraft. As you can see, the stock machine can then only accommodate about 25w of cpu power, while the moded machine can run at 31W.

At this point CPU power is basically bottlenecked by thermal paste performance, even with ice packs directly on the bottom panel, I could not really get any high power through the CPU. I'm guessing I would need to apply liquid metal for further improvements. Interestingly, when you distribute the load across CPU and GPU, you can get like 40w through the package without thermal throttling but the CPU can only take about 35.

Potential problems

Obviously this makes the bottom cover dangerously hot! You think your Touch Bar is hot? that won't actually burn you, not for like 10 minutes. This mod makes the bottom cover so hot it can burn you in a few seconds! Unless of course you have just removed your external cooling equipment.

This means you can no longer game with the thing on your lap without a blanket, which I don't think is an important use case to consider. You can still browser the web or watch videos with it on your lap no problem. In fact you can cool the laptop with your blood and circulatory system this way, so long as the thermal power doesn't overwhelm your skin.

So I wouldn't place the $200 leather sleeve under my MacBook after the mod if I plan to run heavy tasks, but regular cloth, fabrics and wood surfaces should be fine with such temperatures, which is as high as you can expect from a hot cup of coffee.

Hello, this is indeed a very smart and effective mod! I have been thinking of utilizing the same principle of conductivity since the mbp has an aluminium cover and that's how I ended up in your post. I only have one question, I have the mid 2012 pro 15' model and the back cover seems to have a black form of sticker on it, do you know it's intended use? should I remove it before I install the the thermal pads? Is it heat resistant?

Thank you very much

 

[The_Lebuis]

I've alluded to this mod in an earlier post, I have since implemented it and used the moded machine for a while to form a mature opinion about it. I think this mode is great for people who regularly use their MacBook in clamshell mode although I cannot recommend it because it obviously voids warranty (but Apple doesn't have to know since it's non-destructive).

Pros for the mod:

• non-destructive, completely reversible
• relatively cheap, easy and safe to apply
• does not significantly affect normal usage
• up to 20 degrees lower temperatures under sustained load
• reduced fan speed under such load, and therefore noise
• higher sustained power under such load, up to 7W more power
• can accept external cooling like heat sinks or ice packs for silent cooling even at max power

Cons:

• can burn your skin if not careful
• prohibits laptop use under high loads
• potential damage to skins/cases/tables/table mats
• thermal improvements are mostly negated when sitting flat on a surface

Theory

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/im-thinking-of-a-thermal-mod-for-the-mbp.2133914/

As I have mentioned in this post, due to the proximity of the heat source and the bottom cover which is effectively a big radiator, we can simply couple them together and let the bottom panel radiate heat into the environment.

View attachment 794001
Application

Quite simply, you remove the bottom cover, and apply 1.5mm thick thermal pad to the hottest areas like so:
View attachment 794002

The power regulators up top don't really need this because they can tolerate very high heat but I paded them anyway because they could offer better efficiency at lower temperatures and thus reduce power consumption.
View attachment 794010

And that's it, you just pop the cover back on and you're good to go. Except for the bottom cover to effectively radiate heat, it can't just face the surface of a table because that will just heat the table up to the same temperature and then you don't radiate much more heat.
For optimal performance you need to either place the machine in a stand or flip it over on the table so that the bottom panel is facing preferably a cool area of the room (not under the sun beside a window).

Results

All tests are done in clamshell mode, this makes a difference because the CPU package actually draws about 5W more power regardless of everything else, when you output video.
View attachment 794006
In this chart blue represents stock obviously, I tested by simply opening up a save game in StarCraft 2 in Windows with turbo boost disabled, which produces a constant and reproducible load.

Orange is the moded machine but just placed on the table like normal. As you can see there is an improvement but not much.

The magic happens when you flip the machine over and let it just radiate into the room, represented by the gray line. The yellow line represents the flipped over machine with a big aluminum heat sink just placed on it. There is almost no difference from the heat sink because heat sinks don't provide significantly increased surface area for radiation, it gives improved surface area for convection.

I have not tested this but placing it on a laptop cooler should be just as effective as flipping it over on the table. (where as those products don't actually help the stock laptop, or most other laptops for that matter)

If I add a fan to blow across the heat sink, temperatures are further reduced to around 72 degrees. Such a setup can completely eliminate internal fan activity even under heavy loads. And you can use fan control to force the fans to minimum speed and still run at over 30w without hitting 100 degrees for any amount of time.
View attachment 794008

View attachment 794009

I also tested constant power, by immediately running Cinebench after I warm up the machine with StarCraft. As you can see, the stock machine can then only accommodate about 25w of cpu power, while the moded machine can run at 31W.

At this point CPU power is basically bottlenecked by thermal paste performance, even with ice packs directly on the bottom panel, I could not really get any high power through the CPU. I'm guessing I would need to apply liquid metal for further improvements. Interestingly, when you distribute the load across CPU and GPU, you can get like 40w through the package without thermal throttling but the CPU can only take about 35.

Potential problems

Obviously this makes the bottom cover dangerously hot! You think your Touch Bar is hot? that won't actually burn you, not for like 10 minutes. This mod makes the bottom cover so hot it can burn you in a few seconds! Unless of course you have just removed your external cooling equipment.

This means you can no longer game with the thing on your lap without a blanket, which I don't think is an important use case to consider. You can still browser the web or watch videos with it on your lap no problem. In fact you can cool the laptop with your blood and circulatory system this way, so long as the thermal power doesn't overwhelm your skin.

So I wouldn't place the $200 leather sleeve under my MacBook after the mod if I plan to run heavy tasks, but regular cloth, fabrics and wood surfaces should be fine with such temperatures, which is as high as you can expect from a hot cup of coffee.

Nice mod. I am on my way to the thermal pads store. I did a test with some thermal paste and I realized that you can do a in between mod by making contact with the shell at the end of the heat pipe. It transfer a small amount of heat, but still make a difference. So you can choose how warm you want your shell to be by putting more or less pads starting on top of the fan and adding towards the cpu.

 

[satanworker]

I have been following silently this thread with interest.

However, I am unable to open my 15" 2018 MBP. I get all of the clips to release the bottom but along the display hinge the lid is secured and cannot get it to slide nor lift.

Edit
I managed to open it.

I'm planning to make this mode on exactly the same machine, what exactly I should cover with pads? Like vrm or something?

 

[satanworker]

can anybody tell me what should I cover with thermal pads except heatsink?
My mac is dropping frames sometimes while gaming under bootcamp if I push it too hard but the temps are actually low like 78-85 and it goes like 90+ for first 30 min but then it drops, I bet it's vrm overheating but maybe it's video memory also, any thoughts?

 

[JohnZimmerman]

Great idea!
Want all pros and no cons? Buy an extra bottom cover on eBay, and adhere the pads to the cover itself. Then you can swap covers when taking the laptop on the go.

 

[The_Lebuis]

Great idea!
Want all pros and no cons? Buy an extra bottom cover on eBay, and adhere the pads to the cover itself. Then you can swap covers when taking the laptop on the go.

I just did the mod with a 1mm copper plate in between the heat-sync and the case. I don’t think it is possible to swap bottom cover cause the silicon pads will stop sticking after a couple applications. I’ll probably do a post about my mod soon.

 

[Allistah]

AnI see that the OP used 1.5mm thick pads for this mod and his was 12 W/mK. They now have 17 W/mK pads on Amazon. lol

I think I'm going to buy some but only put it on the heatsink areas so that the machine acts as normal as possible with regard to the fans and such.

 

[zuongpham]

I recently got an infrared thermometer, I'm reading like 70 degrees at max load.
But under normal use it's less than 40

I was wondering if there is a way to keep the bottom cover at 60 degrees C max. Not asking you to do any more test. But I guess using less heat conductive pads or stick only from heat sink fins toward CPU (CPU being last, like one person here mentioned) and not covering all areas will do the job. It might also depend you model of your CPU and GPU

Very good mod sharing, I'm looking into it myself right now. I'm using i9 with Vega 20, trying to game in bootcamp better.

 

[zuongpham]

I recently got an infrared thermometer, I'm reading like 70 degrees at max load.
But under normal use it's less than 40

Question, when you measured the temp did you messure directly where the case conducts heat from CPU? What would be the temp near battery area?

 

[knoa]

A few months ago this idea came to me and I found your precious report which gave me much confidence.
Thank you 1096bimu.

I expected a bit more performance improvement, but I'm satisfied with the result.

MacBook Pro 15" Early 2013 (Core i7-3740QM)
(laid on dedicated aluminum heatsink with thermal pad)
Added internal thermal pad: GP-EXTREME 1.5mm thick
Environmental temperature: 18.9 degrees Celsius

Before the mod:
CPU idol: 60 degrees
CPU Cinebench: 2.50-2.60GHz 100-103 degrees
Cinebench 20: 1015pts
Geekbench 4: 3758/11479 OpenCL 13394

After the mod:
CPU idol: 49 degrees
CPU Cinebench: 2.70-2.80GHz 100-103 degrees
Cinebench 20: 1076pts (+6%)
Geekbench 4: 3567/12192 (+6%) OpenCL 13343

 

[The_Lebuis]

I've alluded to this mod in an earlier post, I have since implemented it and used the moded machine for a while to form a mature opinion about it. I think this mode is great for people who regularly use their MacBook in clamshell mode although I cannot recommend it because it obviously voids warranty (but Apple doesn't have to know since it's non-destructive).

Pros for the mod:

• non-destructive, completely reversible
• relatively cheap, easy and safe to apply
• does not significantly affect normal usage
• up to 20 degrees lower temperatures under sustained load
• reduced fan speed under such load, and therefore noise
• higher sustained power under such load, up to 7W more power
• can accept external cooling like heat sinks or ice packs for silent cooling even at max power

Cons:

• can burn your skin if not careful
• prohibits laptop use under high loads
• potential damage to skins/cases/tables/table mats
• thermal improvements are mostly negated when sitting flat on a surface

Theory

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/im-thinking-of-a-thermal-mod-for-the-mbp.2133914/

As I have mentioned in this post, due to the proximity of the heat source and the bottom cover which is effectively a big radiator, we can simply couple them together and let the bottom panel radiate heat into the environment.

View attachment 794001
Application

Quite simply, you remove the bottom cover, and apply 1.5mm thick thermal pad to the hottest areas like so:
View attachment 794002

The power regulators up top don't really need this because they can tolerate very high heat but I paded them anyway because they could offer better efficiency at lower temperatures and thus reduce power consumption.
View attachment 794010

And that's it, you just pop the cover back on and you're good to go. Except for the bottom cover to effectively radiate heat, it can't just face the surface of a table because that will just heat the table up to the same temperature and then you don't radiate much more heat.
For optimal performance you need to either place the machine in a stand or flip it over on the table so that the bottom panel is facing preferably a cool area of the room (not under the sun beside a window).

Results

All tests are done in clamshell mode, this makes a difference because the CPU package actually draws about 5W more power regardless of everything else, when you output video.
View attachment 794006
In this chart blue represents stock obviously, I tested by simply opening up a save game in StarCraft 2 in Windows with turbo boost disabled, which produces a constant and reproducible load.

Orange is the moded machine but just placed on the table like normal. As you can see there is an improvement but not much.

The magic happens when you flip the machine over and let it just radiate into the room, represented by the gray line. The yellow line represents the flipped over machine with a big aluminum heat sink just placed on it. There is almost no difference from the heat sink because heat sinks don't provide significantly increased surface area for radiation, it gives improved surface area for convection.

I have not tested this but placing it on a laptop cooler should be just as effective as flipping it over on the table. (where as those products don't actually help the stock laptop, or most other laptops for that matter)

If I add a fan to blow across the heat sink, temperatures are further reduced to around 72 degrees. Such a setup can completely eliminate internal fan activity even under heavy loads. And you can use fan control to force the fans to minimum speed and still run at over 30w without hitting 100 degrees for any amount of time.
View attachment 794008

View attachment 794009

I also tested constant power, by immediately running Cinebench after I warm up the machine with StarCraft. As you can see, the stock machine can then only accommodate about 25w of cpu power, while the moded machine can run at 31W.

At this point CPU power is basically bottlenecked by thermal paste performance, even with ice packs directly on the bottom panel, I could not really get any high power through the CPU. I'm guessing I would need to apply liquid metal for further improvements. Interestingly, when you distribute the load across CPU and GPU, you can get like 40w through the package without thermal throttling but the CPU can only take about 35.

Potential problems

Obviously this makes the bottom cover dangerously hot! You think your Touch Bar is hot? that won't actually burn you, not for like 10 minutes. This mod makes the bottom cover so hot it can burn you in a few seconds! Unless of course you have just removed your external cooling equipment.

This means you can no longer game with the thing on your lap without a blanket, which I don't think is an important use case to consider. You can still browser the web or watch videos with it on your lap no problem. In fact you can cool the laptop with your blood and circulatory system this way, so long as the thermal power doesn't overwhelm your skin.

So I wouldn't place the $200 leather sleeve under my MacBook after the mod if I plan to run heavy tasks, but regular cloth, fabrics and wood surfaces should be fine with such temperatures, which is as high as you can expect from a hot cup of coffee.

Hi, first thanks a lot for your post, it made me realize that I was't the only one with this idea and it made me actually do the fallowing project. So I did what you did, but with a little twist. I have 1,5 mm of room, why don't I try to add a copper plate?

Ill explain the project and will fallow withe the result and my opinion.

First thing I opened my late 2013 13 inch MacBook Pro and removed the heat sync in order to sand off the black coating exposing the copper surface. The heat sync is held up by five screws so quite easy to get out. The heat sync on my model was 30$ on eBay so I figured not the end of the world if I end up damaging it. By removing the black coating I was hoping to get better heat transfer and to have a little bit more clearance between the heat sync and the bottom case. If you decide to remove your heat sync you will have to replace your thermal paste witch is not a bad idea, even if you have a newer model. Plenty of videos are available on how to do so and how much thermal paste you need to apply.

Here is my heat sync back in my macbook.

Next step was to figure how much clearance I had between my heat sync and the bottom case. By putting small stickers ball on my heat sync and compressing them by putting back my bottom case, I figured I had about a little more than 1,5mm of clearance. I measured my flat stickers ball with calipers.

I bought a 1mm thick 10cm wide square copper plate of of eBay for about 5$. I tried a 1,5mm too but it clearly did not fit.

Next step was to cut my metal plate. I did two stencil using paper. I traced the paper stencils on my copper plate and cut the two peaces.

I placed the peaces at their right position in the macbook, by sticker balls to the plates and closing the macbook, I transferred the right position of the plate on the bottom case.

As you can see on the next pictures I had to remove a bit of the isolation layer on the bottom case.

Next I applied a a even thin layer of thermal pasted on both plates and stick them in place.
I used a layer of aluminium tape with a layer of masking tape to make sure to not short anything on the board. If you have access to Capton tape It would probably make a better job.

Again by using stickers balls I reported the heat sync position on the tape and cut a 1 cm channel.

I used .5mm silicone thermal pads and cut them to the right size and put them in the channels.
I bought a kit with .5mm 1mm and 1.5mm pads off of amazon to make sure I had the right thickness.

Only thing left was to close the laptop.

Now for the results, I did not expect to draw more heat out of the machine by using a copper plate. In theory more heat can be transferred cause I used a thinner silicone pad but I don't think that it is making that big of a difference.
My goal was to spread the heat more evenly across the bottom case and I am satisfied with the results.
The heat is distributed across almost all of the bottom, of course a little bit on the right side, but there is no very hot spot. Under small load like 1080p youtube steaming the bottom case became warm to the touch nothing more.
In my case my laptop was't thermal trotting, I could keep my dual core i5 around 70c with a custom fan curve. So I did not achieve any more performance. The big difference is in the noise level. By using a cooling pad at low speed, my laptop fan stabilise at about 2500rpm out of the max 6500 for 65 to 70c under full load. The laptop and pad combo remain silent.

I am satisfied withe the result, I paired my laptop with a egpu so I end up with a pretty powerful silent machine.

The whole project cost me about 20$ and I would totally recommend it.

Hope you enjoyed

 

[randomhkkid]

Edit 15/06/2020: Adding a small heatsink that rests on the bottom of the laptop with a slow fan pulling air across it I can sustain >70W combined load. CPU >3.4GHz and GPU > 900MHz for hours at a time with temps in the mid/high 80's.

Just reactivated my account to post that I did this mod on my MBP 16 2.4GHZ, 64GB, 5500M 8GB.

Cut my fanspeeds in half for day to day work and fixed my throttling in games.

Reddit thread where I'm more active

 

[Allistah]

Just reactivated my account to post that I did this mod on my MBP 16 2.4GHZ, 64GB, 5500M 8GB.

View attachment 919386

Cut my fanspeeds in half for day to day work and fixed my throttling in games.

Reddit thread where I'm more active

What year and model MBP do you have shown in the picture where you did this mod?

 

[Sarmboy]

I've alluded to this mod in an earlier post, I have since implemented it and used the moded machine for a while to form a mature opinion about it. I think this mode is great for people who regularly use their MacBook in clamshell mode although I cannot recommend it because it obviously voids warranty (but Apple doesn't have to know since it's non-destructive).

Pros for the mod:

• non-destructive, completely reversible
• relatively cheap, easy and safe to apply
• does not significantly affect normal usage
• up to 20 degrees lower temperatures under sustained load
• reduced fan speed under such load, and therefore noise
• higher sustained power under such load, up to 7W more power
• can accept external cooling like heat sinks or ice packs for silent cooling even at max power

Cons:

• can burn your skin if not careful
• prohibits laptop use under high loads
• potential damage to skins/cases/tables/table mats
• thermal improvements are mostly negated when sitting flat on a surface

Theory

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/im-thinking-of-a-thermal-mod-for-the-mbp.2133914/

As I have mentioned in this post, due to the proximity of the heat source and the bottom cover which is effectively a big radiator, we can simply couple them together and let the bottom panel radiate heat into the environment.

View attachment 794001
Application

Quite simply, you remove the bottom cover, and apply 1.5mm thick thermal pad to the hottest areas like so:
View attachment 794002

The power regulators up top don't really need this because they can tolerate very high heat but I paded them anyway because they could offer better efficiency at lower temperatures and thus reduce power consumption.
View attachment 794010

And that's it, you just pop the cover back on and you're good to go. Except for the bottom cover to effectively radiate heat, it can't just face the surface of a table because that will just heat the table up to the same temperature and then you don't radiate much more heat.
For optimal performance you need to either place the machine in a stand or flip it over on the table so that the bottom panel is facing preferably a cool area of the room (not under the sun beside a window).

Results

All tests are done in clamshell mode, this makes a difference because the CPU package actually draws about 5W more power regardless of everything else, when you output video.
View attachment 794006
In this chart blue represents stock obviously, I tested by simply opening up a save game in StarCraft 2 in Windows with turbo boost disabled, which produces a constant and reproducible load.

Orange is the moded machine but just placed on the table like normal. As you can see there is an improvement but not much.

The magic happens when you flip the machine over and let it just radiate into the room, represented by the gray line. The yellow line represents the flipped over machine with a big aluminum heat sink just placed on it. There is almost no difference from the heat sink because heat sinks don't provide significantly increased surface area for radiation, it gives improved surface area for convection.

I have not tested this but placing it on a laptop cooler should be just as effective as flipping it over on the table. (where as those products don't actually help the stock laptop, or most other laptops for that matter)

If I add a fan to blow across the heat sink, temperatures are further reduced to around 72 degrees. Such a setup can completely eliminate internal fan activity even under heavy loads. And you can use fan control to force the fans to minimum speed and still run at over 30w without hitting 100 degrees for any amount of time.
View attachment 794008

View attachment 794009

I also tested constant power, by immediately running Cinebench after I warm up the machine with StarCraft. As you can see, the stock machine can then only accommodate about 25w of cpu power, while the moded machine can run at 31W.

At this point CPU power is basically bottlenecked by thermal paste performance, even with ice packs directly on the bottom panel, I could not really get any high power through the CPU. I'm guessing I would need to apply liquid metal for further improvements. Interestingly, when you distribute the load across CPU and GPU, you can get like 40w through the package without thermal throttling but the CPU can only take about 35.

Potential problems

Obviously this makes the bottom cover dangerously hot! You think your Touch Bar is hot? that won't actually burn you, not for like 10 minutes. This mod makes the bottom cover so hot it can burn you in a few seconds! Unless of course you have just removed your external cooling equipment.

This means you can no longer game with the thing on your lap without a blanket, which I don't think is an important use case to consider. You can still browser the web or watch videos with it on your lap no problem. In fact you can cool the laptop with your blood and circulatory system this way, so long as the thermal power doesn't overwhelm your skin.

So I wouldn't place the $200 leather sleeve under my MacBook after the mod if I plan to run heavy tasks, but regular cloth, fabrics and wood surfaces should be fine with such temperatures, which is as high as you can expect from a hot cup of coffee.

Hey, thanks for the mod advice. I just did something similar as I use my laptop for music at home, the fan noise was prolonged and distracting under heavy cpu sessions. After doing this and placing the laptop on a metal 19” 6u rack blinder with a heatsink and fan underneath the computer fans NEVER come on. Sessions run better and it’s way quieter to work.

again, thanks for sharing this idea.

 

[randomhkkid]

What year and model MBP do you have shown in the picture where you did this mod?

First line of the post listed it haha 2019 MBP 16 2.4GHZ, 64GB, 5500M 8GB

 

[Flyview]

I just ordered stuff to do this on my Late 2013 15" MacBook Pro, so excited!

1g Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut (currently have some really old Arctic MX-2 on it)
Arctic 50x50x1.5mm thermal pad

Really hoping this will solve my ?VRM causing heavy CPU throttling even when CPU temps are fine, when external 4k monitor is connected.

Is it clear which the VRM chip(s) is? If not, can someone point it out?

P.S. If you guys haven't tried it yet, you can undervolt your CPU with Volta. I was able to go down -90mV and it makes a HUGE difference, something like 8-10c, but I will re-test everything tomorrow.

 

[Jackson Wong]

The black insulation layer on the backplate can be removed without having problems later on, it's most likely there to pass safety regulations (so that it don't burn people's laps)
Heat the plate up for easier removal

 

[Jackson Wong]

2018 13 inch MBP i7

Found these copper plates on Japanese Amazon to replace the pads

uxcell ノートパソコン CPU銅パッド 15mmX 15mmX 0.5mm ヒートシンク 6個入り

規格: 製品名 ヒートシンク銅パッド 材質 コッパー カラー コッパートーン サイズ 15 x 15 x 0.5 mm (L*W*T) 重量 6g パッケージ内容 6xヒートシンク銅パッド 商品説明: グラフィックス、ノースブリッジとCPUチップに使用されます。 銅パッドを大幅にGPU温度を下げ、ラップトップヒートシンクの問題のほとんどを解決することができます。

www.amazon.co.jp

Secured the plates with thermal paste, added a 0.5mm pad strip in the middle where the pipe sits down a bit
Heat pipe seems easy to puncture so I didn't strip the black paint; added liquid metal

It's seated on a bag of iOpener from iFixit (and an old eraser)

iOpener: iPhone and iPad Screen Opener, Adhesive Softener

No more adhesive battles! With our iOpener, you can quickly and easily remove glued components in electronic devices whether you're a repair professional or beginner. Apply gentle, even heat to loosen the adhesive holding smartphone, tablet, and laptop case components and batteries.

www.ifixit.com

Can run at 35 watts (3.3Ghz all core average) power limit without throttling for about 30 minutes before going down to between 27 to 35 watts (3.0-3.3Ghz), with Macs Fan Control set to Full Blast

 

[Adholz]

Yes it does improve circulation a bit, but not any more than just raising the bottom up.
No, heat does not rise. The primary method of heat exchange between the bottom plate and the components is radiation, which is unaffected by orientation. But yes if you somehow cool the bottom plate, it will absorb more radiation.
I'm in no condition to do this measurement because it requires me to open my machine up two more times, and damage the thermal pads when I take them off, which are not exactly free.

Now that I am thinking more about this, the theory should predict a noticeable difference if you can externally cool the bottom panel on the unmoded machine. Cooling it down to room temperature should create a scenario similar to the moded machine simply flipped over in terms of thermal radiation. But that is your practical limit with the unmoded machine, you can't go any further, and fans will still work up to maximum speed.
However in order to cool the panel to room temperature you need a heat sink with fan to make that happen. Where as if you mod the machine and have the same heat sink with fan, you get even better cooling and the internal fans can stay idle basically forever.

If you look back to the bar chart in OP, Mod+up+sink+fan=72 degrees. where as I am predicting at best, 79 degrees with stock+up+sink+fan. How much would I get with just stock+up? certainly better than 96 but I'm not convinced of anything better than 90 and the internal fans will be at max speed.

Did you remove the thermal insulation on the bottom cover?