MacBook Air (Early 2020): Final Results for macOS Catalina

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