Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
2020 Air Heatsink Modification Thread
- Thread starter ilikewhey
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Bad advice, MX-4 is decent while notcua SUCKS for laptops. MX-4 needs replacement every few months, noctua every few days.
I have an i5 and I’m contemplating this as I’m watching video reviews of thermal paste in 1080p, with temps at 62c, unless I go full screen and then see 80c briefly. I’m idling around 40-43c with no fans (that’s CPU temp not proximity) and beginning to wonder if this is really even necessary at all!
However the tinkerer in me says do it anyway so does this mean if I use the shim method that I’m going to need to tear it all apart every few months just to replace the thermal paste?
However the tinkerer in me says do it anyway so does this mean if I use the shim method that I’m going to need to tear it all apart every few months just to replace the thermal paste?
Last edited:
I don't think that u need to repaste it every 2 months. Most of the time it is a period once in a 2 years - for average work, once in 1 year - for high loads.
U can track it easily by smth like Cinebench R20. Make a video of temps at it and then rerun test every 2-3 months to see if the temps are holding. If your paste is dried out, you will see immediate spikes to 100C in CB20. And overall your laptop will run hotter.
Did 10.15.6 change thermals at all for you guys from .5?
stock laptop, it feels a bit cooler to the touch in my half day experience
stock laptop, it feels a bit cooler to the touch in my half day experience
Yes mine certainly did, by a fair margin too. I didn’t document it before but I’m running at 40-43 most of the time when browsing with Safari. Did some light photoshop work and that only went up to the high 60’s which is no different to my old faithful late 2012 MBP, and that idles mostly in the 50’s.
I use System Monitor to read my temps, and that can integrate readings from Intel Power Gadget so it measures the core rather than using the proximity sensor which is usually a few degrees lower, and does it all from the menu bar. It’s very neat.
Yes that makes sense. If noticing any significant change then it’s likely time to redo. Thanks.
It probaly is just marketing but artic says that mx4 doesnt degreate overtime because of the stuff in it if this is true then wouldnt you not have to replace it unlike the others thermal pastes which would make it better?
It's written in this thread, if you make the effort to read it. T3 for the heatsink, P5 for the case.
So I've done the 0.3 shim, Kryonaut paste and Gelid 1.0mm heat pad mod on my i5 1.1 (as per the excellent tutorial provided by FCRacer) and while my idle temps haven't really changed, the stress temps do stay well under 100c and the requested and actual CPU freq are totally matched throughout the Geekbench test. The real difference is in the Geek score that at best before the mod was a multicore of 2947 which went up to 3695 under the same conditions after the mods. For my usage this is far more performance than I really need so I'm definitely happy with the results.
So I did the mod. copper shim, new thermal paste, and heat pad. I have a 2020 i5 MBA. The weird thing is that it's capped at 1.8 and it's at around 80c when I run a benchmark. This is the blender one I'm running, but it's like this for cinebench too for some reason. When it's not running a benchmark, it does go up to 3.x
Congrats on doing the mod. That is weird, what version of macOS are you on?
That's the "all core" clock speed and the single core speed is much higher
Perfectly normal!
I received my 2020 i3 MBA about a week ago. I have only heard the fan go on once, and that was briefly when I was downloading my music library during set-up. Otherwise, the computer has been completely silent.
So far, I have been very pleased with this machine. I think the base 2020 MBA is ideal for most college students, home, and office use. I am retired, but still work on plenty of documents and spreadsheets for the family real estate business, and the base model 2020 MBA is perfect for these tasks. If I were a college student studying something like Econ, Business, or Social Sciences, the base 2020 MBA would be a great buy at $899 including free Apple AirPods. It should easily last through four years of undergrad.
Most of the YouTube reviews and negative comments are from people who spend their days doing video editing and creation, which is just not the majority of users. Typically, everyday users work on documents/spreadsheets, answer emails, coordinate calendars, search the internet, edit an occasional picture in iPhoto, or making a simple slideshow in iMovie. I think the MBA is perfect for this kind of stuff. At least, I haven't had any problems doing these sort of things on my MBA.
I'm really mystified why someone would post a comment like this after 90 pages of a thread about highly successful modding of heatsinks, repasting and adding thermal pads. If you are happy with yours - great. Don't mess with it. But there are many posters here who were not happy, even doing basic tasks and certainly not doing any video editing.
So, you object to someone posting about their personal experience and opinion about the performance of a particular Apple device on MacRumors. Got it.
Some people might not want to open their computer and modify it. They might be concerned about voiding the warranty. Or maybe they don’t want to be bothered if their use case won’t result in significant issues. Why is that not open for discussion?
If you open up your computer apple cant void your warranty unless you harm the components of the computer or take anything apart past just the bottom panel for that reason I believe that the thermal pad mod is the best you have the least risk and you don't void warranty just take the thermal pad out if you need to bring your computer into apple and they cannot say that you void warranty the thermal pad also gave my computer 10% better performance then a stock i5 air and the fans only turn on when I play Minecraft for a long time at least in my eyes if you get a MacBook air and you are getting the i5 spend the extra 20 dollars to get a thermal pad and screwdriver it is easy doesn't void warranty and makes your computer better
Well I did the shim mod (0.5mm copper) on my base model 2020 MBA. Temps seem slightly better than before and it is able to maintain a higher boost clock even for short tests like Geekbench.
My scores with the fan on max speed.
Geekbench 5 Pre mod: 1040 Single/2107 Multi
After the mod: 1082 Single/2400 Multi
Even running on battery power it was comparable to the Pre mod score on with the fan on max.
1064 single/2162 multi (second run. First run had about 100 points higher on multi.)
Happy with how the mod turned out so far.
My scores with the fan on max speed.
Geekbench 5 Pre mod: 1040 Single/2107 Multi
After the mod: 1082 Single/2400 Multi
Even running on battery power it was comparable to the Pre mod score on with the fan on max.
1064 single/2162 multi (second run. First run had about 100 points higher on multi.)
Happy with how the mod turned out so far.