I had a dig around and most sponge / foam products seem to be thermally insulating. I did find this on " The Rubber Company " web site:
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M1 Air with Thermal Pad Mod
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I don't believe it is either of those. I have used graphite sheets - they work great but they are very thin a few hundredths of an inch and they tear easily too. The 3M product, like most I've looked at, have 'natural tackiness'. The thing I like about the product Apple uses is that it is not tacky at all.
Guys, I wonder if Macbook Air with thermal pads does its job much better under heavy load than Macbook Pro in the same environment? Anyone of you did some tests on Pro and Air modded unit? If that's a case, I won't purchase Pro and I'll take Air instead.
My thinking is that although the thermal pad mod works exceptionally well in the M1 Air it is still passively cooled. The pad draws the heat away from the Processor heatsink and distributes it into the Aluminium base of the Air which has a greater surface area for the heat to dissipate from.
As an experiment ( detailed in another message ) I used a cold gel pack of the type used to treat muscle injuries/ soreness and placed it in contact with the rear half of the base of the Air. This gave prolonged benchmarks that were as good as / better than those from the M1 Pro. After about 30 minutes, as the gel pack lost it's cooling ability the Air started to throttle.
I would expect the Pro, with it's fan actively moving air out of the system, to perform more consistently.
Have a look on youtube, there are comparrisons. And Yes, I saw a modded air doing a better job than pro in some test. The assumption was, that the mod is a fixed solution without reaction time, while the fan is is software controlled and doesn't kick before it really have to. But flukes happens, and I have also seen a non modded air win out over pro, so not sure how much to put into it.
if the assumption is correct, I will still presume that the pro will be a tiny bit faster on average over longer durations where the fan delay becomes negligible.
Just as an aside to this, I was thinking about the variation in results and wondered about " sample variance " I know that other Processor manufacturers test the processors and those that perform below a certain threshold get "Binned" to a lower spec, be it frequency or number of active cores.
I'm sure that Apple do the same with their M1 Processors. All the chips are from the same die, and those that aren't up to a certain threshold are rejected. With the base M1 Air, that has 7 graphics cores instead of 8 as the only differentiator. My thoughts were that it is perfectly possible for an M1 chip to have passed the majority of tests, even be at the very top margin of specification for all of the cores except for one graphics core that didn't quite meet the spec and so that core was fused off and that processor was used in the Base M1 Air. We've seen the only external difference between the M1 Air 8/8 and the 8/7 processors is the addition of a Thermal Sponge on the 8/8, I believe this is to give the 8/8 an edge in benchmarks. By applying the thermal pad Mod we are simulating what Apple did with the 8/8 M1 Air, but with a larger thermal pad.
Ok, didn't know 8/8 already had a Sponge. I have the 8/8 model, though I could happily live with 8/7, since I don't game or other 3D intensive stuff. But I thought 8/7 was limited to base configuration. When I learned that it was not the case, my machine shipped early and it wasn't worth the hassle and waiting time to try and change anything. So I comfort myself into believing, that I also payed to have a better binned processor on top of the minor gpu increase :-D
I have bought thermal pads, but not yet done the mod yet. The machine is still fairly new and I am not (yet) doing intensive stuff on it.
I would highly recommend anyone doing this thermal pad mod, to use Fujipoly pads.
Those (Thos cheap generic Blue Thermal pads) are like a 1Mk/w conductivity rating if that....
Fujipoly offers much higher thermal rating. Much, Much higher.
Fujipoly is a little expensive. So you can go for the Gelid thermal pads as a 2nd best option.
Hope this helps.
Those (Thos cheap generic Blue Thermal pads) are like a 1Mk/w conductivity rating if that....
Fujipoly offers much higher thermal rating. Much, Much higher.
Fujipoly is a little expensive. So you can go for the Gelid thermal pads as a 2nd best option.
Hope this helps.
I removed because the pads I bought were junk..... I got them off Amazon....
Thermalright Thermal Pad
That is the name of the company. I smelt after doing a 30 min Cinebench test a odd smell. I opened it. They had not melted but were very very soft, and had lifted up along the edges.Did you peel the plastic off before applying them? I would always recommend Fujipoly pads although, Thermalright is very legit. They have a very high Mk/w rating. They make a thermal paste known as (TFX) it outperforms even Thermalgrizzly Kryonaut..
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Yup I did it all. I wonder if I got a bad batch or something when I cut it (Exacto) it was like cutting warm butter. I have used thermal pads before and they normally have a toughness to them.
hahaha I wish my m1 mbp was capable of getting any warmer. I miss the days when a laptop used to warm your legs if you watched Netflix on it.
Nowadays it's just cold metal all the way til the battery dies.
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this might be my favorite thread I've read in a while. I went with the pro vs air so maybe it's a little tougher for you guys, but the tests are things like watching YouTube/handbrake, aka h.265 video which these CPUs can do with insane efficiency.
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Yeah all of the M1 devices run super cool. My 16GB/1TB M1 Air is always cold to the touch. The one downside to the thermal pad mod, is we are essentially converting the bottom metal plate in to the heatsink. So our once was cold plate is now a part of our cooling system lol.
I haven't installed thermal pads on my M1 Air, honestly my M1 air seems to be just fine. No throttling issues here. I run games for like 4-8 hours straight at times. (Rust uses like 15GB of ram too lol) ( So demanding games at that)
One thing I have noticed with the MacBook Air, and none of the reviews have mentioned this. The 8 core GPU variant is always going to run cooler, and throttle less. Better silicon will always use lower voltage, producing less heat. This is why in certain scenarios the 8 core GPU has pulled ahead by 20% or even more performance over the 7 core GPU model. The 8 core is essentially what is in the pro as (Standard). It'll run cooler, faster, and produce less heat. Now you have a fan, so it just runs super cool. But as for my 8 core gpu MacBook Air, it runs amazingly cool.
I mentioned in a previous post that there’s bound to be sample variance in the chip yields with a base line set for acceptance. All of the M1 Macs use the same processor, the M1 Airs being unique in being fanless. With the 8/8 Air Apple fitted a thermal sponge connecting the heat sink to the base to delay throttling under load. The sponge that is fitted is quite small, and not the most thermally efficient, probably to safely keep the base of the Air below the regulation maximum temperature. This sponge results in a higher benchmark than the 8/7 which doesn’t have the sponge fitted and allows them to differentiate between models.
The M1 Pro has exactly the same processor as the Airs but uses a fan to keep the processor cool, resulting in higher prolonged benchmarks. Doing the thermal pad mod on the fanless Airs results in benchmarks which match the Pro. This equivalence lasts until the base of the Airs reach a temperature equilibrium where throttling begins, usually after about ten minutes. With my 8/7 Air I rested the base on a cold gel pack and ran the Cinebench R23 30 minute stress test which benchmarked the same as, and in some cases higher than the M1 Pro. ( with the fan there is a slight delay between the processor calling for cooling and the fans ramping up becoming effective.)
It’s perfectly possible for a processor to meet the highest test specifications but to fail in one graphics core, this core would be fused off and used in the 8/7 Model.
I have not done the mod either myself not feeling the need for it. Not felt any throttling and always cool to touch (have not been monitering temperatur sensors even though I have istat menu running, but not really felt the need). But summer is coming, so who knows. Maybe not this year og next (2 years warrenty), but down the line and already bought the pads.
But I really would like to see some documentation/links about your 8 gpu vs 7 gpu claims.
I have a 8 gpu myself, since I was blissfull ignorent at the time of ordering, that a 7 gpu model could also be upgraded to 16GB of memory and 1TB.
I agree about the mod not being necessary on the M1 Airs, It's just that I did it on my 2020 i5 Air and was very pleased with the results. The inveterate tinkerer in me finally succumbed and I did the pad mod on my base 8/7/256 Air. I posted the results of an extended Cinebench R23 test that I ran a while back in post #151
Yeah I have a desktop for tinkering. My desktops cpu and gpu both run just over ambient room temp under a full load for hours on end. Considering my GPU alone can pull over 500 watts. And the CPU will hit over 1000+ watts by its self in R20 this is a whole lot of radiators and pumps to hit numbers like this. Other than that, the M1 MacBook seems excellent stock. I am honestly shocked that it doesn't throttle while playing rust. This game really pushes the machine to the absolute limits too.( And it runs it nearly maxed out, which is just astonishing for such a thin and light little machine)
I did my fair share of laptop tinkering in the past though, it is fun for sure. I got in to the DTR space. (Desktop replacement) Laptops with socketed desktop CPU's inside.
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