M2 MacBook Air’s Overheating Problems Get Solved With a Little Modding That Only Costs $15

Unlike the M2 MacBook Pro, the M2 MacBook Air features no cooling fan and relies on a single heatsink for dissipation. Unfortunately, this cooling solution has struggled immensely in bringing down temperatures, and it can be worse for the user if he or she lives in a country that has a hot and humid climate. Fortunately, one YouTuber resolves these thermal issues with a bit of modding, as you will soon see.

Bringing the M2 MacBook Air Temperatures Only Involves Some Thermal Pads That Make Additional Contact With the Heatsink

Despite the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro featuring the same M2, it is the MacBook Air that suffers from severe thermal throttling that causes its multi-core performance to drop drastically. Thankfully, Max Tech manages to solve this little problem with a $15 solution called thermal pads. Prior to the modding process, the temperatures of the M2 MacBook Air were reaching a jaw-dropping 108 degrees Celsius in a few seconds.

Removing the back panel of the M2 MacBook Air is simple, as it only involves removing four screws, then you can use a guitar pick to pry off that aluminum casing. Afterward, the video shows placing the thermal pads on top of the heatsink. You can also remove the logic board to apply a coat of thermal paste on the M2 SoC to get better thermals, though that process will take longer to complete.

Next, Adobe Lightroom Classic was fired up, and thanks to the additional pads, the test involving the export of 50 images was completed faster than the M2 MacBook Pro did with its active cooling fan, as shown in the video. When running the multi-core test of Cinebench R23, the M2 continues to get hot, but thanks to the thermal pad mod, temperatures reached 108 degrees Celsius in one minute, 23 seconds, compared to just 28 seconds without the pads, so that is impressive.

Also, the new MacBook Air obtained a higher score since it managed its temperatures a little better. The last test with the modded M2 MacBook Air was 3DMark Wild Life Gaming, and the GPU is able to maintain its performance for seven minutes before it throttles, and the score drops. Before the thermal pads were used, the score started to drop after just four minutes, so it took nearly twice the time for the machine’s performance to tank.

If you own or will own the M2 MacBook Air and continue experiencing these temperatures, we have provided a link to those thermal pads. By watching the video below, you can educate yourself on how to open the back panel, install those thermal pads and welcome the new temperature drops and performance gains.