Probably drivers. Apple doesn’t exactly prioritize Boot Camp drivers.
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2020 Air Heatsink Modification Thread
- Thread starter ilikewhey
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Yes.
To play VP9 on macOS your machine needs to use non-hardware-acceleration based software. The CPU in any machine more recent than Skylake has specialist hardware for decoding VP9 (and h.265 as well), but apple is not exposing it, because they want the industry to use h.265. To be fair h.265 is more efficient, but it is patent encumbered.
In theory vp9 is less patent encumbered, but is controlled by Google. It is less efficient.
Apple paid the license fees to use h.265. Google don't want to.
Upshot of all this: Macs won't play vp9 content very well. Youtube doesn't transcode uploaded 4k videos to h.265. End users lose because they're either consuming more bandwidth for VP9 videos and(if on macOS)/or more CPU consumption, worse battery life, etc.
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I have a 4k monitor.
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Yeah. It's like taking marathon runner and tying his legs together then making him do the marathon. And complaining he's off pace. Or (for those who remember the days before GPUs) running a 3d game in software rendering. The hardware acceleration features make a massive, massive difference.
But, for VP9 video on macOS, they are basically disabled. Safari just doesn't play VP9 at all. Chrome does it in software.
I've always had weird behaviour with Chrome when watching YouTube. I have a 13" 2016 base nTB MBP.
Most of the time here's my temps when watching YouTube in Chrome with about 10 other tabs open:
1080p - 44°C fan off
2k - 49°C fan off
4k (on my MBP's 2K screen) - 69°C, fan 1200rpm
This is all fine, but I've noticed when I've left my MBP on for a day or two, or opened 5+ YouTube tabs then playing one 1080p video will cause temps of 90°C and force the fan to run quite high. Even when I close all the other tabs it gets this hot. But if I restart Chrome, then it returns back to normal, about 45°C no fan playing 1080p video.
Anyone have any theories to explain this?
Most of the time here's my temps when watching YouTube in Chrome with about 10 other tabs open:
1080p - 44°C fan off
2k - 49°C fan off
4k (on my MBP's 2K screen) - 69°C, fan 1200rpm
This is all fine, but I've noticed when I've left my MBP on for a day or two, or opened 5+ YouTube tabs then playing one 1080p video will cause temps of 90°C and force the fan to run quite high. Even when I close all the other tabs it gets this hot. But if I restart Chrome, then it returns back to normal, about 45°C no fan playing 1080p video.
Anyone have any theories to explain this?
Hardware have a hard limit on how many rendering context. my guess is multiple codec is active so it falls back to software rendering pages.
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Makes sense except when it starts exhibiting this hot behaviour, I can close all the other tabs and the one 1080p video will still make temps go up to 1080p and make it stutter a bit too.
Hello from Barcelona !!! I hope you are all in good health. I could not bear the temptation to write what I have been testing on my 2019 Air bought a week ago.
The first thing I did was change the thermal paste for an Artic MX4 and I managed to lower a couple of degrees in some applications but the video of the snake from 4K at 60fps is jerky ... yesterday I removed the back cover and put a Pro case protector and also ...
Finally I could see that there are foams on the lid that create a tunnel through which the wind must pass ... because I took and lined the entire part of the lid with metal tape and thus also made contact with the cpu and dissipated by the tape the heat. It almost reaches the top of the fan turbine. Well close everything and test, first put the Macs Fan Control to create the 8,000 rpm to the fan and then I put the famous video of the snake, because nothing went up to 100º and did not go down from there, instead at 1440P I had managed to lower the temperature somewhat . It is new and in guarantee and I do not want to touch it anymore but I think that a tube of the turbine above the heatsink would reduce the temp of the cpu.
The first thing I did was change the thermal paste for an Artic MX4 and I managed to lower a couple of degrees in some applications but the video of the snake from 4K at 60fps is jerky ... yesterday I removed the back cover and put a Pro case protector and also ...
Finally I could see that there are foams on the lid that create a tunnel through which the wind must pass ... because I took and lined the entire part of the lid with metal tape and thus also made contact with the cpu and dissipated by the tape the heat. It almost reaches the top of the fan turbine. Well close everything and test, first put the Macs Fan Control to create the 8,000 rpm to the fan and then I put the famous video of the snake, because nothing went up to 100º and did not go down from there, instead at 1440P I had managed to lower the temperature somewhat . It is new and in guarantee and I do not want to touch it anymore but I think that a tube of the turbine above the heatsink would reduce the temp of the cpu.
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Because lots of tasks just need 4 cores for a short period of time.
I thought the benchmarks (cinebench) showed the i5 still performed better than the i3 and the previous gen i5. Could be wrong but I thought that was the case
Cinebench is a good benchmark for "bursty" uses that the MBA is decent at. We need to wait for bare feats to do a test as they do prolonged testing. Even the poster above who is converting audio files would notice a difference as that is a prolonged use of the CPU. But for the average user it's a fine machine. I routinely have to batch process hundreds of megabytes 45 MP RAW DSLR files, in my use case the MBA will likely be heat soaked and slow down to speeds that are probably too close to the speed of my 2017 MB 12"
Cinebench is a test of sustained, multiple cores running at 100%. It's basically a stress test of CPU thermals / TDP. Its not a test of quick, bursty processor use.
That sounds really interesting, thank you for posting! Did you take any photos while you were doing this? I'd be fascinated to see what you came up with.
Hope you're doing well in Barcelona!
You are right. One run can be short enough that some machines can turbo boost through much of a single run, if it starts from idle. For example, the Thinkpad T480 lets the CPU draw 29W for 28 seconds straight. So the first run has the high score; it is the burst. That is why it is informative to see a few runs in a row to see sustained performance.
You're only supposed to use like a dot of that stuff, not put it on you're frosting a cake.
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I'm not an expert but the one time I've used Artic Silver thermal paste I had to really really make sure it was a thing layer - you might get even better performance if you use a specialty spreading tool (or a credit card if you don't have one) to make sure it is even and very, very thing.
Looking forward to seeing what you've done with the metal tape tomorrow! Thanks for posting, it's all good data
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True, it also seems excessive to me, but look at image 1046 and see how they affected the origin ... with respect to leveling, the heatsink itself expanding the surplus.
By the way today here in Spain there is confinement with lesser services, you too ??? Health !!!
By the way today here in Spain there is confinement with lesser services, you too ??? Health !!!
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Hmmm I think I see what you mean, was the original thermal paste in image 1046 about as thick as what you applied?
In Australia it is much the same, though not as bad as Spain. Most people are isolated, but our quarantine is not as strict as yours yet. All the best for you and good health!
In Australia it is much the same, though not as bad as Spain. Most people are isolated, but our quarantine is not as strict as yours yet. All the best for you and good health!
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For all the things that aren't 4k video rendering in software.
Like... pretty much everything else you do with the computer, including working with video in native apple applications (that use accelerated h.265).
And no, a quad won't drop down to i3 level even when hot, because you have 2x the cores that will be able to sustain more than 1/2 the clock speed of the i3.
in multi-threaded apps, you are:
- guaranteed a higher base clock than the i3
- have 2x the cores that run at that guaranteed higher base clock
- better GPU
- higher boost clock than the i3
- better GPU
- more CPU cache (definitely with the i7, not sure with the i5)
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I show you my inventions ... here you have the metallic adhesive paper inside the tunnel and on top I have placed three € 80% copper coins to press on the adhesive. I have found several heatsinks and none work for me ... Think my Apple is 2 weeks old! I have to be careful in case I want to return it and Apple doesn't notice anything I'm trying ... complicated ...
- - Post merged: Today at 1:40 PM - -
Here you have the test with the fan at 8,000 rpm and the famous 4K video at 60 fps (it is a lot of information since my 2015 Macbook Pro played it in jerks ...) In the last photo it is at 1440p. This is on Chrome and Macs Fas Control and on the battery. Before making the coins it also went up to 100º but there were no peaks, which there are now. It is complex.
- - Post merged: Today at 1:40 PM - -
Here you have the test with the fan at 8,000 rpm and the famous 4K video at 60 fps (it is a lot of information since my 2015 Macbook Pro played it in jerks ...) In the last photo it is at 1440p. This is on Chrome and Macs Fas Control and on the battery. Before making the coins it also went up to 100º but there were no peaks, which there are now. It is complex.
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Sorry but its the same price (1 euro difference) if you start from the I3/8/256 and do the i5+16GB+ 512 upgrades, than if you start from i5/8/512 and do the 16 GB upgrade... Apple is not stupid regarding money, no way to trick them (I tried lol)
Out of that I 100% agree with you, and don't agree with the click-buster-youtubers : performance will still be better with i5 than i3 even in high load