2020 Air Heatsink Modification Thread

[Saul Giordani]

Appreciate the advice, Loog. I've been experimenting with disabling certain features or apps to see what effects they will have on the energy use; it's been decent so far. I will absolutely test without the monitor/dock first, but I'll also run tests with the monitor attached just so I can see real-world changes for my personal usage.

VC can be devastating on these laptops, and I'm sure I won't experience a 100% silent laptop. But, even with disabling Turbo Boost and limiting my fan speed to 3-4,000rpm, I'm avoiding throttling. That's good news to me, and it makes me hopeful that these mods you have all outlined here will help even more.

Above all, I just want my laptop to run normally without peaking at 100*C and throttling over the smallest of tasks. It's such a capable machine that has been handicapped by the thermal design, and that bothers me conceptually more than anything. I have a Windows machine I built that's much more capable to handle intense tasks, but I'm still chasing the MacBook mods and am very glad I came across this thread last night!

On a side note, I'm still waiting for PM approval so I can send you a request for your custom copper shim. I'm not able to send messages yet, but am interested if you still have the 0.3mm available.

After the Thermal Pad MOD the performance on my MBA i7 have increased dramatically, especially for VC tasks.

Before the MOD, using Zoom, the fans were going to 8k rmp after 2-3 minutes and the temperature to 85-90º, now the fans stay at 2.5k and the temperature doesn't pass the 65º.

Honestly I don't understand such difference, but I'm very happy with this results.

 

[christophosphorus]

After the Thermal Pad MOD the performance on my MBA i7 have increased dramatically, especially for VC tasks.

Before the MOD, using Zoom, the fans were going to 8k rmp after 2-3 minutes and the temperature to 85-90º, now the fans stay at 2.5k and the temperature doesn't pass the 65º.

Honestly I don't understand such difference, but I'm very happy with this results.

That's fantastic, Saul. My parts arrive tomorrow, and I'm eager to complete the mods and see the results.

 

[PhightinPhils26]

Maybe we could all agree on the same method/steps for when we do benchmarks? (which ever people think is best)

I’m game for whatever. I Originally put this together for myself but as I was doing it I realized others may benefit. So, it can go how ever you really want it to.

 

[christophosphorus]

For those of you who cut the copper shims to size, did you find that a scissor and patience were the way to go? I think DanSilov mentioned to be careful so you don't warp the edges too much, but curious how others have proceeded. I do have a Dremel somewhere, too...

 

[adrianstuartt]

For those of you who cut the copper shims to size, did you find that a scissor and patience were the way to go? I think DanSilov mentioned to be careful so you don't warp the edges too much, but curious how others have proceeded. I do have a Dremel somewhere, too...

i cut mine to size with some kitchen scissors and then lightly hammered the cut edge flat on tile. np

 

[Jays1022]

I use Chrome almost exclusively. Stock, 12 tabs would run fine, excluding Facebook (their new UI is buggy AF) or YouTube. Modded, I can literally run anything without issue. (Sans Facebook bugs, of course.) I realized the other day that I was accidentally streaming 4K on YouTube and still didn't have any thermal issues.

Did you do the full mod? Shim/paste/pad? Im just worried if I do the full mod, it won’t be good for Apple care...or is it recommended to not get apple care lol

 

[ctjack]

Did you do the full mod? Shim/paste/pad? Im just worried if I do the full mod, it won’t be good for Apple care...or is it recommended to not get apple care lol

I would say not to do non reversible mod to your Air for a few reasons:
1) Do thermal pad mod, because it can be reverted and hidden easily.
2) If you do shim mod, and later during your first covered year or following years with Apple Care, you may have regular issues like dropping and cracking, battery quick dying or any other problem, which will lead to free repair under warranty. In this case you may be not granted free repair because of your mod.
3) Or you have enough cash to risk with $1000, so if something from state 2 occurs, then you will lose money. But you shouldn't care about it, since $1000 is not a big deal for you if you have done mod before of warranty expiration.

Usual consumer rule is that do whatever you want after your warranty expires.

 

[kazune_karin]

I would say not to do non reversible mod to your Air for a few reasons:
1) Do thermal pad mod, because it can be reverted and hidden easily.
2) If you do shim mod, and later during your first covered year or following years with Apple Care, you may have regular issues like dropping and cracking, battery quick dying or any other problem, which will lead to free repair under warranty. In this case you may be not granted free repair because of your mod.
3) Or you have enough cash to risk with $1000, so if something from state 2 occurs, then you will lose money. But you shouldn't care about it, since $1000 is not a big deal for you if you have done mod before of warranty expiration.

Usual consumer rule is that do whatever you want after your warranty expires.

Add a tiny comment. Yes, it will likely ruin your 1-/3-year Apple Care paid warranty.
But if you do shim mod properly, I believe the MBA will last longer and more stable than a non-modded PC.
In case there is a design flaw like faulty screen, anti-reflective coating, poor keyboard or poor battery, the replacement program does not do anything with AppleCare.

 

[Jays1022]

I would say not to do non reversible mod to your Air for a few reasons:
1) Do thermal pad mod, because it can be reverted and hidden easily.
2) If you do shim mod, and later during your first covered year or following years with Apple Care, you may have regular issues like dropping and cracking, battery quick dying or any other problem, which will lead to free repair under warranty. In this case you may be not granted free repair because of your mod.
3) Or you have enough cash to risk with $1000, so if something from state 2 occurs, then you will lose money. But you shouldn't care about it, since $1000 is not a big deal for you if you have done mod before of warranty expiration.

Usual consumer rule is that do whatever you want after your warranty expires.

I guess I’ll try out my air when it gets here in July lol...and see if i get a good machine. I’ll most likely stick with pad since I don’t have money for repairs ?
[automerge]1592552569[/automerge]

Add a tiny comment. Yes, it will likely ruin your 1-/3-year Apple Care paid warranty.
But if you do shim mod properly, I believe the MBA will last longer and more stable than a non-modded PC.
In case there is a design flaw like faulty screen, anti-reflective coating, poor keyboard or poor battery, the replacement program does not do anything with AppleCare.

Oh. So if it’s factory or hardware issue, I can get it replaced with or without Apple care?

 

[DanSilov]

2) If you do shim mod, and later during your first covered year or following years with Apple Care, you may have regular issues like dropping and cracking, battery quick dying or any other problem, which will lead to free repair under warranty. In this case you may be not granted free repair because of your mod.

You are technically correct, it is a risk. But you can just as easily remove the shim before sending it out for warranty and putting slightly more thermal paste (thicker if you can find one) in its place. This won't remove the risk of loosing the warranty, but will minimize it for sure.

 

[ctjack]

You are technically correct, it is a risk. But you can just as easily remove the shim before sending it out for warranty and putting slightly more thermal paste (thicker if you can find one) in its place. This won't remove the risk of loosing the warranty, but will minimize it for sure.

I would even try hard to restore that "black goo" again.?
But it really depends on Apple technicians out there - easy to notice that heatsink was unscrewed under the microscope.

 

[Zaft]

It’s apples “budget” laptop. I’m not surprised you can’t do crazy tasks on it. My wife has the 2019 model and browsing, checking email, messaging it’s whisper quiet. The only time I hear it rev up is during zoom sessions.
Get the pro if you use your laptop for a lot more then just browsing.

 

[kazune_karin]

I guess I’ll try out my air when it gets here in July lol...and see if i get a good machine. I’ll most likely stick with pad since I don’t have money for repairs ?
[automerge]1592552569[/automerge]

Oh. So if it’s factory or hardware issue, I can get it replaced with or without Apple care?

If it is a widespread issue, there will be a replacement program. That will be independent of Apple Care. For small incidence, there will not.

 

[PhightinPhils26]

I just chickened out. I had the screws off the heat sink... did an about face. To be fair, my cousin in stopping over for a social distance visit in about 15 mins. LOL!

EDIT: Just completed the copper shim mod. Very nervous, but the machine powered on, and WOW... What a difference in the Geekbench right off the bat! Not only did my multicore score jump to 3458 (Best with just thermal pad was 3179)... but the most impressive part was that the peak temperature was 88, and the fans never kicked on.

 

[DanSilov]

EDIT: Just completed the copper shim mod. Very nervous, but the machine powered on, and WOW... What a difference in the Geekbench right off the bat! Not only did my multicore score jump to 3458 (Best with just thermal pad was 3179)... but the most impressive part was that the peak temperature was 88, and the fans never kicked on.

The whole idea of removing the heatsink and adding a shim might sound scary, but in fact it is a very easy mod. Congratulations!

 

[Loog]

I just chickened out. I had the screws off the heat sink... did an about face. To be fair, my cousin in stopping over for a social distance visit in about 15 mins. LOL!

EDIT: Just completed the copper shim mod. Very nervous, but the machine powered on, and WOW... What a difference in the Geekbench right off the bat! Not only did my multicore score jump to 3458 (Best with just thermal pad was 3179)... but the most impressive part was that the peak temperature was 88, and the fans never kicked on.

@PhightinPhils26 ... Welcome to the 'cool' shim club !!!

 

[fcracer]

The Arctic pad arrives on Friday so I'll do another set of before/after and report the results here. I'm hoping to get 3,800 multi-core using the same test method as the above, which would represent a 24% increase in sustained performance; this would bring it mighty close to my 2018 13" MBP i7 which gets ~4,100.

As promised, here are the before/after benchmarks for my MacBook Air 2020 i7/16gb/1TB with the Arctic pad installed. These results are for a 45mm x 35mm x 1.5mm pad (cut it to size) applied so that it's equidistant across the heatsink with the four screws as the reference point. The reasons I chose to do it this way are as follows:

1. From my racing days, I recall that metal does not like to expand and contract from heating/cooling at different rates across its surface, so by placing the pad centred where the CPU is, the goal is that the heat transfers to the pad evenly.
2. I assume the Apple engineers made that air path around and above the heat sink for a reason, so I wanted to ensure there was still some way for air to travel over the heat sink in case other components besides the CPU require cooling from the fan.
3. I'm OCD so having it equal distance made me feel better.

The test procedure was as follows for both before and after measurements:

1. Allow computer to reach a stable temperature and CPU activity.
2. Run the benchmark one time to heat up the CPU.
3. Start logging in Intel Power Gadget.
4. Run the benchmark.
5. Stop logging in Intel Power Gadget.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 back to back for five runs to keep the heat in the CPU to get a consistent result.

Cinebench with IPG Logging On (logging barely impacted the scores)

Before:

Run	Score	Stable Power (W)	Stable CPU Core AVG (GHz)	Stable PKG Temp (C)	Power Consumed (J)	Power Consumed (mWh)	Time to Complete (s)
Run 1	1072	10.8	1.7	100	3068	852	278
Run 2	1044	10.6	1.7	100	3085	857	285
Run 3	1035	10.6	1.7	100	3048	847	289
Run 4	1002	10.5	1.7	100	3125	868	298
Run 5	1006	10.5	1.7	100	3118	866	298
Average of five	1032	10.6	1.7	100	3089	858	290

After:

Run	Score	Stable Power (W)	Stable CPU Core AVG (GHz)	Stable PKG Temp (C)	Power Consumed (J)	Power Consumed (mWh)	Time to Complete (s)
Run 1	1175	12.1	1.9	99	3323	923	254
Run 2	1157	12.0	1.9	99	3248	902	258
Run 3	1162	12.1	1.9	100	3283	912	256
Run 4	1162	12.1	1.9	99	3249	902	256
Run 5	1168	12.1	1.9	100	3239	900	255
Average of five	1165	12.1	1.9	99	3268	908	256

Summary:

	Score	Stable Power (W)	Stable CPU Core AVG (GHz)	Stable PKG Temp (C)	Power Consumed (J)	Power Consumed (mWh)	Time to Complete (s)
Average of before	1032	10.6	1.7	100	3089	858	290
Average of after	1165	12.1	1.9	99	3268	908	256
Change	+13%	+14%	+12%	-1%	+6%	+6%	-12%

Geekbench with IPG Logging (logging reduces scores ~100 for Multi-core)

Before:

Run	Single-core	Multi-core	CPU Util %	Avg Frequency (GHz)	Avg Req Frequency (GHz)	Avg Temperature (C)	Average Power (W)	Power Consumed (J)	Power Consumed (mWh)	Time to Complete (s)
Run 1	1231	3043	50.4	2.13	3.05	91.1	8.9	1419	394	159.4
Run 2	1066	2769	52.8	1.96	3.13	95.1	8.4	1449	403	172.7
Run 3	1065	2871	51.7	1.99	3.11	94.6	9.9	1667	463	168.6
Run 4	1150	2895	50.6	2.07	3.08	93.3	8.4	1389	386	165.0
Run 5	1072	2929	50.4	2.03	3.08	94.1	8.3	1387	386	166.9
Average of five	1117	2901	51.2	2.04	3.09	93.6	8.8	1462	406	166.5

After:

Run	Single-core	Multi-core	CPU Util %	Avg Frequency (GHz)	Avg Req Frequency (GHz)	Avg Temperature (C)	Average Power (W)	Power Consumed (J)	Power Consumed (mWh)	Time to Complete (s)
Run 1	1169	3428	47.9	2.27	3.03	90.8	10.5	1566	435	150.2
Run 2	1190	3442	47.3	2.28	3.00	90.5	10.3	1534	426	149.6
Run 3	1193	3518	46.8	2.32	2.99	89.5	10.5	1542	429	147.3
Run 4	1171	3450	47.5	2.26	3.01	90.6	10.4	1546	430	149.8
Run 5	1180	3459	47.7	2.23	3.01	90.5	10.3	1540	428	149.8
Average of five	1181	3459	47.4	2.27	3.01	90.4	10.4	1546	430	149.3

Summary:

Run	Single-core	Multi-core	CPU Util %	Avg Frequency (GHz)	Avg Req Frequency (GHz)	Avg Temperature (C)	Average Power (W)	Power Consumed (J)	Power Consumed (mWh)	Time to Complete (s)
Average of five	1116.8	2901.4	51.18	2.04	3.09	93.6	8.8	1462	406	166.5
Average of five	1181	3459	47.4	2.27	3.01	90.4	10.4	1546	430	149.3
Change	+6%	+19%	-7%	+11%	-3%	-3%	+18%	+6%	+6%	-10%

Conclusion

The pad modification is an easy way to improve your MacBook Air 2020 i7's performance by 15-20% for heavy sustained workloads and it significantly reduces the times when the fan needs to spin to a high RPM.

There are however no free lunches in life and there are some tradeoffs. The heat transferred from the pad to the lower case is noticeable, although it's no worse than my thigh-cooking 13" MacBook Pro 2018 i7; you'll also see an increase in power consumption with the increased performance.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the improvement in performance and I want to thank all the contributors here that came up with the ideas and did all the hard work testing them. Since I know I'll get asked anyway, here are the absolute highest scores the computer obtained from a dead cold start:

Geekbench 5.2.0 from a cold start	Single-Core	Multi-Core
Link to result	1212	3931

Cinebench R20.060 from a cold start	Score
	1233

I'm tempted to try a shim only modification to see if it will reduce the lower case temperature. Has anyone done just the shim modification on the i7 and are able to share the results?

 

[nill1234]

@fcracer it seems that the bad thermal paste is holding your score lower, with the shim mod heat transfer will increase and you will get 4k multi in GB.

Do you guys think a better polished shim would transfer heat better by a significant margin. I grunded it more or less and think that the arctic thermalpaste will fill small scratches in the surface, am i correct?

 

[DanSilov]

Conclusion
The pad modification is an easy way to improve your MacBook Air 2020 i7's performance by 15-20% for heavy sustained workloads and it significantly reduces the times when the fan needs to spin to a high RPM.

Well done, that's one great and extensive testing! Thank you for sharing the detailed analysis!

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the improvement in performance and I want to thank all the contributors here that came up with the ideas and did all the hard work testing them. Since I know I'll get asked anyway, here are the absolute highest scores the computer obtained from a dead cold start:

Geekbench 5.2.0 from a cold start	Single-Core	Multi-Core
Link to result	1212	3931

Cinebench R20.060 from a cold start	Score
	1233

I'm tempted to try a shim only modification to see if it will reduce the lower case temperature. Has anyone done just the shim modification on the i7 and are able to share the results?

I've first tried the shim mod before applying the pad, you can check the post with the results here.

You can get to 1300/4000 in Geekbench with both pad and shim.

 

[Bartłomiej Ławniczak]

Can someone provide hyperlinks or tell me what products for modding should I buy and where? Im from EU. Also could someone tell me how to mod it? Especially the thermal pad, should it go under the heatsink?

 

[DanSilov]

Can someone provide hyperlinks or tell me what products for modding should I buy and where? Im from EU. Also could someone tell me how to mod it? Especially the thermal pad, should it go under the heatsink?

Just go through this thread pages, starting from 45-49. There are plenty of photos and purchase links.

 

[ilikewhey]

Can someone provide hyperlinks or tell me what products for modding should I buy and where? Im from EU. Also could someone tell me how to mod it? Especially the thermal pad, should it go under the heatsink?

i linked couple what to buy on the 1st post in this tread.

 

[Bartłomiej Ławniczak]

Thanks, guys. Can you also tell me what screwdriver(s) should I get? P5 and another one?

 

[Nütztjanix]

Thanks, guys. Can you also tell me what screwdriver(s) should I get? P5 and another one?

This also is to be found in numerous posts in this thread, including the first one.

 

[nill1234]

So I just removed the heatpad and now running only shim mod because it was getting hot on the bottom and I almost get the same scores in Geekbench with shim mod only