How to mod your M2 MacBook Air for better performance [Video] - 9to5Mac

The moment people started to get their hands on the M2 MacBook Air, overheating and thermal throttling were big topics of discussion.

The actual modification itself is easy, and it just involves putting a cheap thermal pad inside the laptop.

This provides thermal conduction between the M2 chip and the metal bottom of the laptop, keeping the chip cooler for longer and allowing it to perform better.

I personally used a 1mm thick thermal pad during my testing and saw decent improvements in performance, but others have used a 1.5mm thermal pad to get even better thermal transfer; that thicker thermal pad makes it a bit more challenging to reattach the bottom panel.

Even with the relatively low-quality and thinner thermal pads I used, the M2 MacBook Air with the thermal pads performed dramatically better than the M2 MacBook Air without thermal pads.

While both laptops reached high enough temperatures to thermal throttle, the modified M2 Air still performed significantly better while throttling than the unmodified M2 Air.

After running these tests and seeing the improvements, I wanted to see if a 1.5mm thermal pad would provide even better contact and performance.

While it took a bit more effort to reattach the bottom panel, with that thicker thermal pad the M2 MacBook Air received an initial Cinebench score of 8535.

That’s 930 points better than an unmodded M2 MacBook Air and almost 500 points higher than the M2 Air modified with the 1mm thermal pad.

None of the installation of the thermal pad requires you to mess about with the battery, but as you have the laptop open, be sure not to apply excessive pressure to or puncture the battery cells.

I have also seen several people worried about degradation to the SSD and battery that could result from the extra heat transfer of the thermal mod?

I plan to keep the thermal pads in my daily-driver M2 Air, but just consider it carefully (and don’t blame me if you break something while opening it up)