MacBook Neo cooling modification dramatically lowers temperatures

And it dramatically lowers temperatures

The MacBook Neo proved to be a reasonably powerful laptop, although it has an overheating issue: its chip can reach 100–105°C. ETA PRIME set out to find out what would happen if the computer’s cooling system were improved.

MacBook Neo cooling modification with a copper plate

First, the channel’s author replaced the standard heat-spreading film with a copper plate. In No Man’s Sky, this reduced the temperature from 105°C to 84°C while raising performance from 30–35 to 55–60 fps. The same modification increased Geekbench results by 15.2% in single-core mode and 9.7% in multi-core mode.

Those are remarkably large gains for the simple addition of a copper plate. The No Man’s Sky result also clearly demonstrates how severe thermal throttling can be in the Neo, as well as the chip’s true potential.

Warranty implications and component lifespan

Naturally, this alteration will void the owner’s warranty. However, lowering operating temperatures could potentially extend the computer’s lifespan significantly in some situations.

External thermoelectric liquid cooling test

ETA PRIME also tested a compact external thermoelectric liquid-cooling system.

This brought temperatures down further, to 74–76°C. Gaming performance did not improve because GPU throttling had already been eliminated, at least, during the previous stage. Geekbench figures, however, rose even more: by 17–19% compared with the original results. It is worth remembering that these tests were performed with the copper plate already fitted inside, so the outcome reflects the combined effect of both modifications.