YouTuber makes minor tweaks in 2020 MacBook Air’s thermal design, gets 14% better performance

The YouTuber tested the 2020 MacBook Air in four conditions, all of which resulted in better Cinebench scores than what the stock build achieved

MacBook Air liquid cooling. (Linus Tech Tips/YouTube)

If there's anything Apple's MacBook Air laptop is known for in the industry, it's for the thin profile and staying under room temperature almost all the time. However, a popular YouTuber Linus Tech Tips may have found a ‘flaw' in the MacBook Air 2020, fixing which will increase the performance by 14%. This was demoed in the video using different tricks to keep the laptop cooled down while running Cinebench benchmark testing.

As per the YouTuber, the major flaw in Apple's 2020 MacBook Air is regarding the fan's placement. The cooling fan is placed slightly far from the CPU, where the most heat is generated, instead of being placed next to it. Placing the cooling fan next to the CPU would've possibly resulted in better thermal management and increase in the overall performance.

The YouTuber tested the 2020 MacBook Air in four conditions, all of which resulted in better Cinebench scores than what the stock build achieved. With stock build, the Air was able to reach 1016 score while with a laptop stand and a fan it reached 1034. MacBook Air with fan and no bottom lid stretched the performance score to 1088, while milling and adding a new thermal compound achieved 1051 scores. The test that included a thermal pad on chassis and water cooled bottom resulted in 1155 scores.

While this seems like a valid way to increase the performance scores of the 2020 MacBook Air, some of the methods used here would also result in Apple sacrificing the slim profile of the laptop and the internal design ethics, only if it ever considers doing this.

For now, the only major bump we are expecting to see in future MacBooks is due to the inclusion of ARM processors. As per the analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, using ARM chipset may result in MacBooks delivering almost 50%-100% performance improvement over their current-gen Intel counterparts. And the first ARM-based Mac devices are expected to arrive later this year.