Using a Laptop Cooling Stand with my 2020 M1 MacBook Air - Will It Work?! By Created Tech

In, this video I'll be testing two of the most popular laptop coolers from Amazon to see if they have any effect on the thermals of the base. M1 MacBook Air. Now the results were somewhat inconclusive. I couldn't see a clear, distinct improvement in thermal performance, even when using the cooler pad with five fans at most you'll likely only see an improvement of around two to three degrees Celsius, because the reality is the chassis and the heat sink on the MacBook Air is designed exceptionally well and is almost entirely isolated from the outside temperature. So there's not much. You can do externally to decrease the internal temperature.

Additionally, temperature monitoring software is limited at this stage, since the m1s are still so new. So the testing involved a lot of visual confirmations on my part rather than data, which I could then ideally transform into a graph and get some concrete results. So should you even bother with a laptop cooler for your m1 MacBook Air? Well, actually, yes, but you'll only see an advantage in certain circumstances. Now, funnily enough, the two cooling pads in this video actually have different pros and cons. So make sure you watch until the end of the video to see why, but first, let's unbox these bad boys.

Okay guys. So here are the laptop cooling fans that we are going to be testing out today. So the first one here is from thermal take. It is the massive v20. Now this is the large 200 millimeter fans just a single fan and this cost around.

I think it was about 24 us dollars I'll, have all the links in the description by the way to Amazon. So this is the cheapest and then underneath we have the slim cyclone which, as you can see, there has five lights, and the actual footprint of this is quite a bit larger than the v20. It also is a little louder as well. So what we'll do is we'll unbox this one first, okay, so that's what you get in the box. You can see just a standard, laptop cooler, it's about the size of a 15-inch MacBook there, and it has an USB cable on the back.

Now this just plugs into one end, and then this plugs into your computer or your dock or wherever and that actually powers the fans but yeah, as you can see, there are five fans, a'd say: that's a 120 millimeter fan in the middle and then some smaller ones on the exterior, so going to be very interesting to see how this works so moving on to the thermal take massive v20. This is an interesting one, and I also like this one a little better because first, it's got a smaller footprint and, second of all, well I'll. Leave that for a little later in the video now, as you can see again, footprint is just a little smaller than the slim version, and you can see they're just a single 20, centimeter or 200 millimeter fan right in the middle there. Quite large, you do get quite a bit of clearance off the ground. As you can see there, I can almost fit my entire hand underneath that, and this just connects again via an USB cable, and you can see, there's actually a pass-through at the end.

So if you want to charge something else, you can do that while also running the fan, and what else do we get in the package? Well, not much just a sheet of paper with some instructions, but again guys. This is the cheapest one. This only cost around 20 us dollars so very, very budget. So let's put these two bad boys to the test and see if they reduce the temperature in the MacBook Air. For my initial testing, I ran the MacBook through some thermal benchmarks, and you can see these in my.

How hot does the MacBook Air get video linked in the top right-hand corner? I tested rendering videos, gaming, blender, rendering and after effects to try and see if the cooling pads would make a difference halfway through a render or gaming session, I would place the MacBook on a cooling pad and monitor temperatures for the next 10 minutes in each test. I could not identify a significant change, although I did notice that the MacBook's exterior was a little cooler to the touch and also the internal components' temperature was ever so slightly lower. Furthermore, I decided the best and most accurate method of testing currently available to me was to put the MacBook under a consistent, CPU load for long periods of time, both with and without the cooling pads to see. If I could notice a change in performance, I selected a da Vinci resolve timeline with 8k raw footage shot on a red camera. This render usually takes around 30 minutes and the CPU is completely thermally, throttled at 93 degrees Celsius for the entire time.

So if the laptop cooling pads actually work, theoretically, we should see a decrease in the time taken, for the render to complete, as the CPU will throttle less. I rendered multiple times with each method, without a cooler with a thermal take cooler and also with the climb cooler. The room temperature was the same. The battery level was topped up to the same level in between renders and everything else you could think of was constant as well. You can see the results on the screen now, as you can see when we were using the laptop cooling pads.

The time taken to render is lower, which means the fans do work, although we're only talking a difference of about a minute on a 30-minute render now one quick thing I thought I should mention- have a listen to the noise. Each fan makes one is clearly louder than the other and also has a larger footprint by the way. Both of the fans in these two videos are at full 100 speed. I also tested if the cooling made a difference to idle temperatures, and it did not so in conclusion, the laptop cooling pads certainly do work, but only by a very small amount, which you likely won't ever notice in day-to-day usage. If you're doing a lot of rendering or gaming, for example, where the internal temperature of the MacBook will be very high for hours, you might actually gain some benefit from a cooling pad.

The slim 5 fan pads has better performance, but is larger, louder and more expensive than the thermal take massive v20. So I'll leave that choice up to you. It's also important to note that I actually do recommend a laptop cooling pad if you're working in hot environments without much airflow, for example, a locked room during summer, and you're, going to be thrashing the MacBook with rendering or gaming having a fan directly underneath the chassis in the form of a laptop cooling pad is not essential, but it certainly won't hurt anyway guys. Thank you for watching hope. You found this video interesting.

If you have any comments or questions, please leave them below in the comment section, I try to respond to all of them, but apart from that, I will catch you guys in the next one.

Source : Created Tech