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Turning Intel 13" MacBook Pro into M1 / M2 MacBook Air
- Thread starter Zest28
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No, I just manually disable the fans through software.
Based on testing so far, the temperates stay quite low and it works fine as a fanless laptops doing "light tasks".
I'm still afraid to do anything that pushes the CPU and GPU to 100% as I am waiting for feedback from other people who tried this before.
The fans on that machine run constantly and disabling them entirely would cause the machine to throttle very quickly. I had one that unfortunately died an early death and never heard the fans at their base speed (around 2000 RPM). A compromise could be to use a fan controller to lock them at their base speed. I don't think that you can fully disable the fans with software, but you could disconnect them I guess. But the performance without any active cooling would probably be pretty poor. I'm sure though that the throttling would protect the machine from damage.
No indeed. I have the fans spinning locked at 1200rpm. But it's as good as fanless as I don't hear the fans spinning.
So you are saying Intel chips that rely on passive cooling will die very fast? This is interesting, because Apple allows their M2 chip to get very hot (104 degrees).
No, I didn't say that. Mine died because of a motherboard issue. But the Intel chip in that machine runs significantly hotter than an M1 or M2, so it will throttle with a relatively light load compared to the Apple chips. Some of the Intel MacBooks and MacBook Airs had minimal cooling but they also ran much slower.
I have that machine too. The fans don't run constantly, they are even off (0rpm) some of the time. You should put it into Low Power Mode all the time, that will help fan noise without taking any risks. The laptop will be almost as zippy in daily tasks as before (2.4 GHz single-core and 2.0 Ghz all-core speeds).
I see, thanks for confirming it was not due to heat issues that it died.
Well, those older MacBook Air were using the older 14nm Intel chips, and not the more efficient 10nm Intel chip that the 13" Intel 2020 MBP has.
With the fans locked at 1200rpm, the temperates are actually not bad at "light load" so far. But later I will try to push this machine more and see what happens.
The 12" MacBook used a 4.5W TDP Intel chip, the 13" Retina MacBook Air's used 7-9W chips, and your 13" MacBook Pro uses a 28W chip. That's why your machine has two largish fans. If you ran it without a fan it would have to throttle to somewhere less than 10W or so.
The CPU of the M2 chip can pull 20W according to measurements from Notebookcheck. And it's fair to say that a MacBook Pro has better passive cooling than a 13" MacBook Air (and 12" MacBook). So it's fair to say that thermal throttling would happen higher than 10W.
If the MBA can handle 20W from the M2, than the MBP can handle 20W too as a minimum.
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This is the most confusing thread I have read in a while. Title should be something like: "Disabling fans on old laptop because it is too loud."
The hardware will force the fan speed up to prevent excessive heat, this cannot be disabled, so whatever you are trying to do won't work through software and I would not recommend removing the fans. To keep fan noise down the best strategy in my opinion is setting the minimum fan speed as high as you can without noticing fan noise (somewhere between 2k rpm and 2.5k rpm in a moderately quiet environment) through 3rd party fan control software. That means the Mac will always stay as cool as possible but in summer or with demanding software the Mac will force the fan speed to maximum once it exceeds 90 degrees C or so.
And if you remove the fans entirely the Mac will throttle with noticable performance impacts even under light tasks constantly, the Intel CPU simply gives off too much heat to be handled passively at all.
In addition to forcing the default fan speed as high as possible you should also use Turboboostswitcher (free for this purpose): https://github.com/rugarciap/Turbo-Boost-Switcher
By disabling turboboost on the Intel CPU heat output will be lowered considerably without any major performance impacts.
This will achieve what you want, but the performance will be lowered compared to stock configuration and the Mac will at times lag noticably, performance will never be as good as on a passively cooled M1 Air.
And if you remove the fans entirely the Mac will throttle with noticable performance impacts even under light tasks constantly, the Intel CPU simply gives off too much heat to be handled passively at all.
In addition to forcing the default fan speed as high as possible you should also use Turboboostswitcher (free for this purpose): https://github.com/rugarciap/Turbo-Boost-Switcher
By disabling turboboost on the Intel CPU heat output will be lowered considerably without any major performance impacts.
This will achieve what you want, but the performance will be lowered compared to stock configuration and the Mac will at times lag noticably, performance will never be as good as on a passively cooled M1 Air.
~20W is the max TDP of the M2, but it drops to 10W or below when throttling. I wouldn't be too certain that the MacBook Pro has better passive cooling than an Air since it was never designed to passively cool. And an M2 Air cannot sustain a 20W TDP for very long without throttling.
One thing to remember too is that a 10th Gen Intel i5 or i7 at 10 or 20W will perform much worse than an M1 or M2 at that same power. A base M1 is already something like twice as fast than the 2020 MacBook Pro. I ran a Cinebench benchmark on my i5 MBP at the same time as a friend ran it on their M1 and even with the fans at full blast the Intel machine throttled severely causing the M1 to complete the benchmark about 8 times faster than mine. I'm sure that the Intel machine would work okay at simple tasks with passive cooling, but even pushing it a little would slow it down pretty significantly.
Yeah, I recommend it because I've personally used my Intel Macbooks with that particular app and found it to be an effective way to reduce fan noise in the summer. The quadcore in your Macbook is plenty fast for many tasks at lower clockspeeds.
An interesting reference point would be the fanless intel MacBook 12" with passive-only cooling.
Another hint would be to see the performance of an i5 or C2D when speedstepping is activated to accomodate missing or faulty battery pack. That throttling (i.e. running a Penryn or Merom with 1/2 of its full clock speed) results in totally unbearable speeds even for browsing lightweight websites. And fans would still run in that scenario. Take them away and machine will certainly still overheat (coming to a CPU overtemp trigger further reducing the clock speeds and ultimately self shutdown).
Another hint would be to see the performance of an i5 or C2D when speedstepping is activated to accomodate missing or faulty battery pack. That throttling (i.e. running a Penryn or Merom with 1/2 of its full clock speed) results in totally unbearable speeds even for browsing lightweight websites. And fans would still run in that scenario. Take them away and machine will certainly still overheat (coming to a CPU overtemp trigger further reducing the clock speeds and ultimately self shutdown).
You can put lipstick on a pig, it will still be a pig. You can’t convert with out changing the internals.
No. N.O. Not gonna happen. Don't do that, seriously. See, the thing is those Apple ones are not revolutionary (ok there are but without Johny) but rather rational, and reasonable because all previous back and forth movements of transmissions, data, commands are now packed in one surrounding + optimized + used some smart engineering.
Intel chips were designed for various models and to be with active cooling/decent passive colling/coolant. Based on my experience, starting from 7th Gen You can use them sometime. But inevitably they will a)overheart; b) because of "tic" logic, your system could handle well and temps would be ok, but if would struggle in those millisecond peak load,
and would respond in a "jelly" way after some time.
As for me, worth trying would be somehow to insert fans into M* Mac with the ability to turn it/them on or off (No to bottleneck!)
Intel chips were designed for various models and to be with active cooling/decent passive colling/coolant. Based on my experience, starting from 7th Gen You can use them sometime. But inevitably they will a)overheart; b) because of "tic" logic, your system could handle well and temps would be ok, but if would struggle in those millisecond peak load,
and would respond in a "jelly" way after some time.
As for me, worth trying would be somehow to insert fans into M* Mac with the ability to turn it/them on or off (No to bottleneck!)
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Before you try that, open it up and hit it with canned air. It may simply have clogged air intake ports.
Otherwise, you're almost sure to hit thermal throttling - or outright shutdown, especially if you have something that spikes usage unexpectedly (chrome for example). Over time, that thermal load can cause hardware failures.
This is an extremely bad idea. Those CPUs NEED cooling. Most CPUs NEED cooling. The only reason why the M1 and M2 Airs don't need it is that the chips rarely get that hot (and throttling is deemed an acceptable solution for the rare times where it does get that hot). You will not have this mileage on a 4-port 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro.
How about repasting the CPU with new thermal paste? I did this on my 2012 MacBook Pro a few years back and the result was night and day to before. Running much cooler, slower fan speeds and better overall performance.
Can look up the specific brand of paste I used if you are interested. Also agree the @MallardDuck about the cleaning. I did this regularly to the machine, this helped quite a bit.
Can look up the specific brand of paste I used if you are interested. Also agree the @MallardDuck about the cleaning. I did this regularly to the machine, this helped quite a bit.