Unlike the M2 MacBook Pro, the M2 MacBook Air does not have a cooling fan and relies entirely on a heatsink for cooling. This cooling solution can’t handle the M2’s surge in performance, which can shrink by up to 25 percent under high load. Luckily, one of the tube hosts said it would only cost $15 to alleviate this cooling problem.
Max Tech, a tubing channel, solved this problem using “thermal pads” in their latest video. A before and after comparison shows how the temperature of the M2 MacBook Air drops in just a few seconds.
First, the rear panel of the MacBook Air can be removed using the pads by simply turning 4 screws. Then in the video he places a heat-conducting spacer on top of the heatsink. You can also remove the logic motherboard and replace the M2 SoC’s thermal silicone for better heat dissipation.
The video uses Adobe Lightroom Classic to export 50 images for comparison and finds that the actual export time is faster than the M2 MacBook Pro thanks to the additional heat sink. In Cinebench R23’s multi-core test runs, the M2 continues to get hot, taking 1 minute and 23 seconds to reach 108 degrees Celsius, compared to 23 seconds without the thermal spacer.
