MacBook Air 2020 - thermal pad, great results

[kinchee87]

I tried the CPU -> Thermal pad -> Heatsink -> Thermal pad and unfortunately it didn't change anything. My temp is still 100C... while idling.

I used 0.5mm Thermal Grizzly pads.

Maybe I did something wrong? Maybe try thicker pads? Maybe I overtightened the screws? I don't know exactly what that means, but I stopped tightening as soon as they stopped turning.

What temperature was your Air idling at before you tried the mod?

 

[julianomnunes]

What temperature was your Air idling at before you tried the mod?

At stock, it was idling at around 70C. Bad. As soon as I opened anything it went straight to 100C and stayed there. Bad.

I tried the mod and it's still like that.

I'm thinking of trying thicker pads, as certainly there's no decent contact between the die and the heatsink.

 

[kinchee87]

Sounds like there was already something wrong with the heat dissipation before the mod. I wouldn't use pads much thicker than 0.5mm, otherwise the pad would act like an insulator than a conductor.

And you don't have any background tasks that are chewing up the CPU?

 

[julianomnunes]

Sounds like there was already something wrong with the heat dissipation before the mod. I wouldn't use pads much thicker than 0.5mm, otherwise the pad would act like an insulator than a conductor.

And you don't have any background tasks that are chewing up the CPU?

Not really. I first started noticing the high temps a few months ago, when I installed Windows 10 on Bootcamp, ran HWiNFO and saw the CPU between 90C and 100C with normal CPU usage -- browsing the web, watching videos, no intensive or CPU-chewing tasks. And idling at around 70C.

Then I checked the temps on MacOS and they were the same. I already did a clean MacOS install, every system update and no other sofware. Temps were still around 70C when idling and 90-100C when using Safari, for example.

That's when I guessed it should be hardware-related and found this thread. But now, after no change with the 0.5mm pads and thicker pads possibly complicating things further, I don't know what to do. Maybe replacing the heatsink?