disagree, every review site has noctua pretty up there, i have noctua in my mbp for 3 months now and the improvements are showing.
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2020 Air Heatsink Modification Thread
- Thread starter ilikewhey
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Zero objection whatsoever to hearing about your personal experience, and even made a point of saying that if you are happy with yours as-is, then that is great. Really.
Don't agree with the terms like 'Most', 'not the majority of users', 'Typically, everyday users work on...', and 'I think the base 2020 MBA is ideal for most college students, home, and office use' as these are generalisations on use cases that are refuted over the last 90 pages. That's all.
Life is too short, pandemic is a b*******. Wish you and everyone a good day, stay safe and enjoy your tech, whoever makes it.
Hey there! I know, your post is already a few months old, but I've been looking for a set of replacement screws for the 2020 MBA heatsink for a while now and you seem to have found a solution by using the MBP screws instead. I wore my original ones out because I used a T4 instead of a T3 screwdriver (and at this point I'm not even sure if I'll be able to unscrew them again, soft as they are)
I was wondering if you could let me know where exactly you found them and whether they were used or new screws? I've done a quick search through these forums and in the iFixit store for replacement parts, but all I found in the MBP section were these kinds of all-in-one screw sets which do not even specify whether they contain the 3mm heatsink screws you mentioned in your post. What would be the best online resource to look for the screws, in your experience? Would it be eBay perhaps?
Pretty sure those reviews are conducted on desktop CPUs, once. On my laptop the paste would pump out very quickly.
The issue seems to be worse for some i5/i7 users, i3 seems to be better. My 2018 i5 behaves most of the time but gets upset when on some video calls, made worse if time machine is running in the background. The mod have helped here to provide some additional overhead. It really depends on what your workload is (and I don't mean being a pro user)
i don't think lifespan will be an issue unless you accidentally install something that locks the cpu load high enough for it to sit at 100c forever. the main reason i modded was because it hits that 100c mark so easily, i couldn't watch >1080p24 youtube videos without the fans maxing out. and when it hits 100c, it'll downclock to the base of 1.1-1.2GHz which dramatically reduces its capabilities
My workload is honestly just a couple of ms word files every now and then. I'm also finished with uni, so I'm mostly just on youtube, netflix and maybe a bit of web browsing if my work requires. Being in health care most of my work is well not on the web. I'm just wondering about how bad the heat issue is and if these simple tasks are an issue in terms of heat
I purchased the Air i5 256 a week after release. I was really pleased with it and never noticed any issues with heat or excess fan noise. My use is very similar to yours, plus a bit of light photo editing. I did the heatsink shim and thermal pod mod simply because I wanted it to be the best that it was capable of being, and I'm an inveterate tinkerer,
I'd be interested to see the Geekbench scores from any similar specced Airs that have been supplied more recently.
My device was fine so long as I didn't use programs like Zoom or MSTeams, a little difficult when you are in lockdown. You could make these better by dropping off the incoming video feed, other than that I only really saw a spike when TimeMachine was running or using an external monitor + other basic tasks. I sent my i7 2020 MBA back as it ran on balance 10deg hotter than my 2018 with no significant performance benefits (other than synthetic test results). I modded my 2018 and keep this which is running sweet with around 15% additional power. (syntectic) and runs around 40-45deg (-10deg) through normal use with no fans present. For me ARM is where its going to be in 2021 but once I see the MB and MBP released.
Now i understood the point of right tools for the job - bought lenovo legion laptop, zoom is showing 6hr battery life and 39C degrees of CPU, no fan.
Spent exactly the money of the base Air dual-core.
Definitely Air on Arm will be good, as a second portable device.
Spent exactly the money of the base Air dual-core.
Definitely Air on Arm will be good, as a second portable device.
Pleased got something to make you happy.
Is 6 Hours is a bit down than what you had before? - I'm getting about 7-8 hours on zoom (it maybe longer that's just when I look for a charger) on the Air but typically I'm not speaking or demonstrating a lot in that time.
No fan - but facebook video does cause the fan to come on! Perhaps because it is browser-based? Teams does the same.
I don't mind working on windows servers so much, as I can snapshot or take an image, but could not handle a windows as a client! All the best
So, I did the copper shim mod back in June. I'm still having issues with loud fan noise when I'm in a video call via Zoom or Skype, so I decided to add a heatpad, as well, hoping for a performance increase and less fan activity. I used a 30x30x2mm Grizzly Minus Thermal Pad 8, which leaves some space around the corners of the heatsink for airflow.
Here are my results.
Specs: 2020 MacBook Air i3 / 8GB / 256GB
Idle temperatures
Pre-mod: 30°C
Post-copper shim only mod: 27°C (10% decrease)
Post-copper shim and heatpad mod: 26,4°C (12% decrease)
Cinebench 20 scores
Pre-mod: 761 pts and 376 pts (Single Core)
Post-copper shim only mod: 843 pts (10,78% increase) and 380 pts (Single Core)
Post-copper shim and heatpad mod: 871 pts (14.45% increase) and 383 (Single Core)
Not even close to the results some of you have been reporting in this thread but then again, I'm new to this and didn't expect to achieve the best results right away. I guess I'm happy for now.
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!
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Air has 49.9 Whr battery and 9-12W CPU.
Legion has 80 Whr battery and 20-101W intel 6-core CPU + it has to light up 17.3 inch screen. I would definitely choose the Air for business travel purposes, because it lasts longer on the battery.
But for now, i feel better with bigger screen while working on text day and night. Unluckily, i couldn't stand retina screens on MBA/MBP and i had an eye strain.
I can feel you. I almost hated windows for the first 2 days and still ugly UI design makes me uncomfortable. Because i really miss MacOS and its' calendar features.
But for the display and power - win laptop suits me better this time. At least i can play on it with 65C on cpu/gpu for 1 hour/week and don't break my eyes with 17 inch.
Everything about the Mac is true - it is just a tool and it doesn't stay between you and the job. It just makes you free to create.
With windows - if you want to work, you have to solve a lot of problems first, then you can do the job - still not that efficient like on Mac.
Well, the new Apple Silicon MacBook Airs are passively cooled! I wouldn't be surprised if the MBA chassis was originally designed for passive cooling, and the active cooling was shoehorned in when Intel's chips ran hotter than expected.
Very curious to see how the new passive models compare performance-wise to the actively cooled Intel models...
Very curious to see how the new passive models compare performance-wise to the actively cooled Intel models...
M1 will be a lot faster. even the a14 in the iPhone murders the intel MacBook Air in performance.
Are you keeping your intel one or moving this on? Me I'm going to keep my 2018 MBA and pass this down the family with a view to get the MBP and possibly the MM to replace my desktop once all the reviews have been done and the dust settled. Unlike last time when I purchased during pre order, this time I'm going to take it a little slower.
I find it odd that you can still purchase a Intel 13” Pro but M1 is it for the MBA. Excited to see these new performance and battery benchmarks. Hopefully its a smooth transition for software . I returned my i7 2020 MBA and got a 2020 iPP 11” instead. Some lucky refurb buyer got a high end modified MBA that runs a little faster and a little cooler ?..
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Unfortionately i can’t pass it to my wife because she is using and loving windows. So i have to sell it.
That is so kind of you
At least, somebody will save money on all that shims and expensive grizzlys.These were my thoughts exactly! They designed the chassis for the new M1 chip and had to throw in a fan to "try" to cool the intel chips. I purchased 2 2020 i5 MBA's back in May for distance learning. Within 3 months they both had failed logic boards (failed backlights). They were sent in and repaired by Apple. Within 1 month of getting them back, I had another failed backlight again! So between the 2 of them, that's 3 failures so far! Since the 1st one had failed 2 times, they gave me a refund but would not let me return the 2nd one as it was still working. It's just a matter of time before it will fail again. I am almost certain it's the heat that is killing these logic boards. Has anyone else experienced failed backlights yet with the 2020 i5 MBA?
That is because the M1 doesn't support 4 tb3 ports so they had to maintain Intel MBP at the high end. That is another reason why I will be waiting for M2, even if M1 is a zillion times faster than my i5 Intel 10th gen MBA, it will be much more interesting once the MacOS apps are updated for the ARM processors.