On the upside, you get better sustained performance and it lasts nearly just as long as the Pro, from what I recall. On the downside, it elevated the temperature of the backside aluminum to a high enough temperature to be able to cause burns (something like 80-90C). Not a huge issue if you always use it on a table or something, but if you truly use it as a 'lap' top, it'll be quite unpleasant.
The bottom doesn't get that hot (90C would cause serious problems) but the additional heat is a downside to consider. Too many people are missing the point that Apple deliberately chose not to create a thermal bridge between the CPU and the case for this reason.
Apple made the right choice. The Air is designed for minimum size, maximum portability, and fanless operation. If you have use cases that benefit from extended 100% CPU load, get a larger MacBook Pro that has a cooling solution designed to sustain these thermal loads.
Looks like the actual point where you start to get problems is quite low, somewhere around ~38C, so if the mod elevated temperatures even to 40-50C, you'd be in heavy discomfort or possible burn territory. This paper talks about skin lesions and burns happening around there: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3853603/
Never felt it, because it wasn’t hot enough to register as harmful.
Yes, it throttles less and things like renders and exports take less time but this machine already has about 10 minutes of "buffer" before it throttles and as a result you don't see the benefits before pushing the device beyond what's reasonable for an ultraportable laptop.
I would rarely do anything that lasts more than 10 minutes of full CPU/GPU load and when I do it would be something like half an hour and the thermal pad mod will give me back 5 minutes.
If I'm going to render something that takes hours, I would not do it on my machine that I use for everything. I would do it on some desktop with Nvidia graphics or I will rent a machine build for the task.
I don't think it's necessary.
On the other hand, I also modded my girlfriends 2020 Air with Core i5 and the improvements were much more noticeable. Unexpectedly, the battery life improved too.
Is this because the fan isn't used as much? I generally assume that anything involving moving parts uses lots of energy, comparatively speaking.
The fans were not spinning up to full blast at that use case bore the mod too, so I don't know how much the fans are responsible for the difference. My speculation is that the CPU is using less power when cooler due to the relationship between temperature and conductivity.
This is particularly noticeable in burst-y workloads like web browsing or software development.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e_JGTbAg2U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIB6npHBL2M
However I did not follow a tutorial, I wasn't planning to mod that one but since I had leftover thermal pad, decided to give it a try.
Remember how YouTubers made a big deal about the "heat sink is not connected to a fan"? Well, they simply didn't know what they are talking about. The air flows from that heatsink even if the fan is at the other end of the laptop. Which means, you should be careful not to block the airflow when doing the mod. I put a thermal pad that is about half of the size of the heatsink.
There are also services that rent Macs or PCs with serious GPUs but I have no experience with those. AFAIK, for people who render 3D stuff there are render farms but I also don't have experience since it's not something I do professionally. When I render something that will take hours, I would ask for a remote desktop connection to my friends gaming PC.
as this will raise the overall operating temperature of the laptop's battery which is located adjacent in the chassis, I would consider this to be a very bad idea if you value:
a) longevity and cycle life of the battery
b) battery lifespan/runtime
c) lower likelihood of the battery catching on fire and going into thermal runaway on your lap or desk.
d) lower likelihood of the battery swelling up into something that looks like a pillow
there are very likely a number of solid reasons why the apple design engineers chose not to allow it to get this hot.
very solid physics/thermodynamics based science says that the hotter you run a lithium ion or similar battery, and for any extended periods of time, the more dangerous it is, and the worse it will be for the battery's overall lifespan and cycle depth/cycle life.
Their motherboard is so small. I wonder why they don't put it on the screen side. Benefits would be:
* The back of the monitor could be used as a giant heat spreader
* Lap would remain cool, and no heat below the keyboard
* Maybe some increased commonality with iPad parts?
You think IT can fix the software?
No.
But if its antivirus or patching program. Come audit time:
"Hey IT, why isent software X installed on all computers?"
"Engineering dept found a way to disable it due to bugs in it!"
"rah rah unacceptable, you neeed to ensure this is installed, rah rah fix now etc etc"
If the head of IT doesn't want to do that, the department is dysfunctionally managed and does not have my sympathy.
Beyond that, I don't really care what policy is. While I generally don't care about company nannyware - after all, it's your machine - the line is drawn when you are literally burning my body. If you want me to use the device, it can't cause me physical harm.
Imagine unironically defending this behavior.
Directors aren't directly producing value, usually the software/sales/service is.
Sounds not too different from Intel MBP's. I could never use my MBP as a "lap" top due to how hot it got.