MacBook Air (early 2020) configuration: i7/16GB/1TB
Date of original mod: 3 June 2020
MacRumors:
Post 1,675
I did my final mod by replacing the homemade tinfoil thermal pad with an
EC360 GOLD (thermal conductance of 14.5W/mK). Other modders on MacRumors seem to have been able to get good (better?) performance with thermal pads of lower conductance. The thickness is 1.5mm -- it is thicker than necessary for the area near the edge of the case, but a good fit closer to the battery.
The thermal pad wasn't long enough so I used the off-cut to cover the right edge. I peeled the blue protective sheet prior to putting the back cover back on. For fun, I created a heat spreader from a disposable tin tray that sits between the fan and on top of the thermal pad. I coloured it black for some extra black-body radiation. I have no idea how helpful or detrimental it is!
Results
To evaluate the success of the combined wind channel + heat sink + heat pad modifications, I ran the tests in
Intel Power Gadget 3.7.0,
Geekbench 5.1.1,
Cinebench R20,
Unigine Heaven 4.0, and
Unigine Valley 1.0. I used the
same set up as before, but also waited for the CPU to cool down to around 40℃ before running the next benchmark. Each benchmark was executed at least three times and I report the average.
Intel Power Gadget 3.7.0
| Test Type |
Original (GHz) |
Mod (GHz) |
Improvement |
| CPU (All Thread Frequency, Scalar) |
2.25 |
2.80 |
24.4% |
| CPU (All Thread Frequency, AVX-256) |
2.12 |
2.70 |
27.4% |
| CPU (All Thread Frequency, AVX-512) |
2.00 |
2.50 |
25.0% |
| Intel Graphics Test (Max Frequency) |
0.90 |
1.10 |
22.2% |
Geekbench 5
| Test Type |
Original (Points) |
Mod (Points) |
Improvement |
| CPU (Single-core) |
1,214 |
1,288 |
6.2% |
| CPU (Multi-core) |
2,992 |
4,043 |
35.1% |
| Compute (OpenCL) |
3,825 |
8,931 |
133.5% |
| Compute (Metal) |
4,285 |
10,461 |
144.1% |
Cinebench R20
| Test Type |
Original (Points) |
Mod (Points) |
Improvement |
| CPU (Single-core) |
353 |
423 |
19.6% |
| CPU (Multi-core) |
979 |
1,218 |
24.5% |
| MP Ratio |
2.77 |
2.88 |
4.1% |
Unigine Heaven 4.0
| Test Type |
Wind + heat sink mod
(Points / FPS) |
Wind + heat sink + pad mod
(Points / FPS) |
Improvement |
| Custom/Medium |
714 / 28.4 |
764 / 30.4 |
7.0% |
| Custom/Ultra |
NA |
613 / 24.4 |
NA |
Unigine Valley 1.0
| Test Type |
Wind + heat sink + pad mod
(Points / FPS) |
| Custom/Medium |
1,226 / 29.3 |
| Custom/Ultra |
940 / 22.3 |
