Fix Thermal Throttling on Your Mac?! 

I think you already proved that putting the Mac in the freezer can easily boost your rendering times... So moving to Antarctica could be a viable alternative?

I love that you quote Linus Tech Tips; what I prefer of youtube is the connetion between yotubers, while in television rival channels act like they don't know each other, in youtbe there are no rivals, but friends. Really really like

So I ordered Grizzly Kryonaut (I live in Germany and it is a German product, so it is actually cheaper here) and replaced my thermal paste on my mid-2013 MacbookAir. I also Geek-Benched my Mac before and after, and for good measure, I also used third party software to control the fan speed. First, I tested it with the fan set to auto and the 2nd time with the fan speed set to max. The results were really interesting. Before replacing the thermal paste, I got 2617 (auto fan) and 2963 (max fan). After cleaning out all of the dust in my MacbookAir, including the fan and replacing the dry and cracked thermal paste, my scores improved but changing the fan speed NO LONGER HAD ANY EFFECT, I got 2972 (both with the fan set to auto and to max). I didn't believe that thermal paste would make such a difference, but it did! More interestingly, increasing the fan speed only had an effect on the old, dry OEM thermal paste. A~10% improvement for $7-$8 USD is not bad. Color me amazed. Definitely recommended!

Please stop stylzing your bar graphs to the point that they are difficult to understand without pausing the video. Top to bottom, left to right. Don't do this weird folding thing anymore please.

Hmmm...this is tempting to try

Waiting for apple to take your idea and the inevitable "new MacBook pro 2018! Using a revolutionary engineering process, our product is now 9% cooler and 20% more expensive"

They advertised this thing as having an “Advanced Thermal Architecture” lol

Apple be like: want to edit 4K videos on that? Go North of the Wall

spend money on a premium product you would think they would use premium thermal paste...

I dare anyone to give me an excuse that Apple couldn't have spent an extra 5 cents per computer on better thermal paste. Great video.

Quinn you should put this on another level like building your own heatsink for the macbook.

Tell us something what we can do normally without taking my macbook apart.

I sit my entire macbook on a Sonnet pcie thunderbolt chassis, which has a fan cooling it. It makes a massive difference to the performance. When I'm working away I often just grab a kitchen pot and sit the computer on it to help dissipate heat from the chassis. Be interesting to see an actual comparison of this kind of thing.

Props on the dis-assembling your mac twice. On another note I suppose I'll have to keep my i7 PC to render stuff. :)

I replaced the thermal paste on my late 2013 MBP. I used Gelid Extreme and it helped improve overall CPU performance. I noticed this mostly in Serato DJ Pro software when analysing audio for critical data to aid mixing.

your graphs gave me a headache, dont use those again pls

This really works! I changed stock thermal paste to Thermal Grizzly around 2 months ago and my Late 2013 15 Inch MBP works fine now. Before that it was always overheating even when watching youtube videos in high res.

was gonna dislike for "cool dog," but I like your videos too much...

I have tried that on my Asus Q551L a month ago with a Noctua thermal paste. No temperature difference. Turns out Asus already uses a good thermal dissipation solution.

Wow.. that's a lot of work, and like you said, it's not for everybody to strip down their mac. There are a lot of connectors and screws and things can go wrong very easily. I am impressed that you took the time to do all this work and document your results. Thank you !!!

I just did this on my 2012 15" non-Retina MacBook Pro, two days ago. Removed the stock - and totally dried, for the mention - thermal paste and applied a new one; an ordinary, non-special compound? Yeah, but at least it's brand new. Any difference? For me... none at all. Now I'm ordering a decent compound like the ones shown on the vid and I'll repeat the process on my machine, see if I get any improvement this time.

Good job Snazzy! Kryonaut is the best paste for low wattage CPU's in my testing. IC Diamond follows second. Liquid metal is great too but most of todays laptops have their fans curve scale with temps ultimately nullifying Liquid Metal. Plus the prep work is more than the average Joe would attempt.

Perfect! Where do I send mine for you to give it similar treatment? 👀🌬🌨

I found your videos a few days ago looking for MacBook Pro 2017 reviews and man I have to tell you that it's such a pity I haven't discovered your videos earlier. Dynamic, interesting and well explained you've won a new subscriber :) Really good job :D

That's an awesome way to do bar charts. May steal for my work reports. Only improvement would to be to make the bars connect (aka the upper category is left bar and bottom category is the right-most bar).

I would differ on this not being something one can do, even if this seems trepidatious for most users. From the looks of it, that thermal paste of a 2017 15" MacBook Pro matched the look of my 2010 15" MacBook AFTER I changed the thermal paste on my Mac in 2016. Six years worth of use and the original factory paste looked about the same as yours did in less than a years worth of use. Let that sink in. .

I did this to my 2010 Macbook Pro. Fan used to be running 100% most of the time, and it probably was thermal throttling. Now the fan only kicks in when it's doing intensive work.

snazzy labs: tells us clever techniques for cooling down system me: just moves to antarctica

You can undervolt your macbook with a program called Volta. As long as you don't undervolt so much that you system gets unstable, undervolting will make the cpu produce less heat. I have mine at -90 mV, and it definitely throttles way less, especially with longer usage

You've been making such great content for quite some time now - well done mate!

Laser cutting in the bottom shell an air vent for the fan would've been too much? Even test it without the bottom pannel would've been nice just to see if intake fresh air directly helps. Also, for that thing, liquid metal can only save it.

Another good video sir. Considering the age and use my older MacBook Pro gets. This may actually be a worthwhile move. But, of course results will vary. LOL

Another thing you could try is undervolting the cpu to reduce the heat out put

I'm not sure if you'd be interested in doing this, but there is a method for de-lidding (removing the metal cap above the cpu) and replacing the compound with liquid metal compound). This makes a dramatic difference on overclocking 7700k to 5.1ghz. And lowers temps by 20+C. It's much more difficult/risky to do, but I'd be very interested to see the results! 😁

What about laptop cooling platforms? Those USB powered stands that contain as many as 6 fans that constantly blow air into the underside of the laptop? Would that make a noticeable difference?

@Quinn It is still thermalthrottling...Can you please take the Backcover off and check temps again. Or go Hardwcore and drill a bit hole into the backcover and cover it with some sort of grill like a speakermetalmesh.

This summer I sit in front of a window air conditioner, I have an older Mac, the cool air blows right on my computer. I suddenly noticed that my Mac doesn't even get warm to the touch! At times only slightly warm to the touch. I know they use air conditioners on the really big computers. Maybe you could use it on these new Macs.

i know some people will even add paste or thermal pads in between the chassis and the heatpipe for slightly better cooling

After i saw few videos of snazzy labs i am not planing to buy apple computer no more, you are proving the oposite what i thought. I thought they are crazy super special detailist professionals, but now i understand it's just overpricer marketing tool, i gonna miss the os. My MBA air CTO13 2016 is getting worst and worst, first year of warranty they changed whole logic board..

Thank you for the short video. I just bought a 2018 base macbook pro 15 for XCode development, hopefully I won't this issue.

I render a lot of video with Handbrake on my 2017 MacBook Pro 13" with Touch Bar (the $1,799 model), and the CPU stays at 90C (not changing fan speed). CPU freq also stays at 3.50GHz, which is the max turbo boost frequency. All measured using Intel Power Gadget.

Man, love these! Favorite tech reviewer on YT!

i switched to windows..after 9 years as an apple fan girl and being a snazzy fan. Just bought an hp spectre x360. i love it. (but this also has a quite a bit of heat)

I couldn't comment below the follow on video. So I am here. In the follow on video Snazzy uses liquid metal instead of thermal paste. You can go beyond liquid metal on the CPU. From the options on a laptop I'm interested in: Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut on CPU + GPU, and Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads on heat sensitive surfaces

My 13" 2019/2017 Macbook Pro used to throttle and fans would kick in when browsing the news online. I went ahead and repasted it. Paste wasn't the worst application I've ever seen but it was a little crusty already. Now the fans rarely come on.

Nice vid. I don't think I would do that because my MacBook Pro has hardly any slowdowns or heat issues in all of the tasks I do on a daily basis.(1080p editing, web browsing, etc )

mac users: this cooler physically can't cool my computer also mac users: surely if I replace the thermal paste my laptop will run cooler

A few months ago, i owned a macBook, and i watched star Wars TFA in FullHD on it. I kept the macBook sitting on my legs. As the movie was done my legs were red and turned back normal 6 days later :P

I'd love to get some feedback on what I do. I have thin freezer packs that people freeze and put in coolers, say in between layers of drink cans. I have two of them and when the Macbook Pro 2017 gets hot, I simply set it on top of one of the freezer packs on my desk. Within 5-7 minutes the entire Macbook is cold. I have two of them and I just rotate them. The added bonus is that the freezer pack, even when thawed, continues to conduct heat. By the time I stick this thing back in the freezer, it's HOT. Is there any reason I shouldn't be doing this? I've done it every day for two years now with no issues.

bro the graphs are awesome

Personally I have replaced my thermal paste with PROLIMATECH PK1, put a drop of fine machine oil on my fans centre pin and I run 4 different options through SMC Fan control. I've been using Apple laptops since 2007 so definitely know that MacBooks can and do get pretty heated. with these simple 'hacks' I've never had any real issues. Using SMC I have set: 'Default' = 2,000RPM 'Medium' = 3,200 'Higher' = 4,400 & 'Max' = 6,000RPM When working, depending what I will be doing, I will set it accordingly.

i love your non biased videos. you sir have earned a sub 👍

Quinn, what about undervolting? Surely the combination of new thermal paste and undervolting your cpu would yield some noticeable difference.

Awesome work! I love the videos like this. Keep them coming!

Hey Snazzy and everyone willing to do this. While you are in there, you should apply some thermal transfer tape (thick stuff 3mm) to the back side of the heat pipe on the fan side. The idea is to get the heat pipe in contact with the LARGE ALUMINUM BOTTOM plate of the Macbook. Effectively increasing the size of the heatsink. You will have to trim some stickers that Apple installed in order to get the thermal transfer tape to directly contact the aluminum but hey, its added cooling too. Downside? the bottom of your MacBook is going to get hotter faster.... upside? it will take longer to hit thermal throttling.

Would you mind trying out a gallium based TIM? Like coollabratory liquid pro. The heatsink and die will not be damaged by the gallium.

My mbp 2016 was getting so hot i couldn’t even watch RU-vid videos on it. Turned out that the fan couldn’t spin freely because of some dust piece or something got in between fan blade and the base. Was pretty easy fix with ifixit tool set, but yeah i agree its not for the faint of heart

Awesome video, thanks a lot for the tests !

i have the latest 2019 macbook pro 13 inch fully maxed out. I have been using it sence december and during winters, it surprisingly never heated up soooo much as it is now in the summers. suddenly, when i open my mac ( not using any heavu applications) it starts to boot the fans and it heats up like anyyything. i am looking everywhere to find a fix

Glad to see you're back! Also, your graphs look awesome but are kinda confusing

Why not put the MacBook on top of one of those laptop coolers that blows are across the underside of the chassis?

removing heatsink is easier with older macbooks than the new skinny version. I done it many times and to different mac and it always make computer quieter, and run smoothly

quin , would this "Technicaly" void the warranty?

SMC works perfectly for my 2007 iMac,Nice video😀😀😀

What about Apple’s warranty policy? They allow you to poke your nose in the CPU cooling system, specially that the new systems don’t contain any user serviceable parts inside?

Thanks Snazzy Labs, this was a super useful video. 😀

Did this to my Macbook Pro 15" 2015 and it kinda worked but i just use an aggressive fan curve to get them fans going lol

Your video edits are cool, nice graphics, etc :) I like the clean look.

I would also see the same test performed on an older mac, where the termal compound might be in a much worse condition, maybe on the 2015 model with i7 (more Watts) it would make bigger difference than 9%, just wondering.

well, given that there exist thermal throttling issues that hold back the hardwares on apple computers, i would say snazzy labs is wrong! it IS absolutely worth it to change the paste....more value for the money, besides its incredibly difficult to actually do something that can damage your mac if you careful in the process.....i assemble stuff all the time and i never have any issues because i know what to do and where to do it, so i dont touch anything else.

I would be interested in seeing you do a custom cooling solution for a Mac laptop or tying out Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut Thermal Grease Paste

i have seen copper shims used/ recommended as a solution to help with the thermal problems was wondering if you could test it.

Dude, I was waiting for this video thanks, I was craving to know if there's any difference and oh boy, I do 3D animation and god I almost kill my 13'' MacBook Pro Late 2013 when I hit 102 C, I​ might give this a shot!

You said you didn't care so I gave it a thumbs down !!! It felt so liberating!!

I put icyhot directly on the CPU. Am I doing it rite

This was one of the first things I did to my 2011 MBP. No difference really or if there was it was negligible. I'm guessing for me its just the cooling couldn;t keep up with the i7 and Radeon GPU. Still, a handy tip to know of though as when I took my MBP apart to change the thermal grease - it was like "dry brick mortar" that had too much sand in the mix - crumbly and falling apart.

hey, silly question; why not use a thermal pad to transfer the heat to the bottom plate? from there a standard laptop cooler pad could wick away more heat

Did you spread the thermal paste or just flatten it with the cooler?

Do you think the process will be the same for the 2018 MacBooks?

Everybody seems to be complaining about the graphs. I personally love them. When I saw them I instantaneously took a screenshot haha

what if you just keep the macbook components open and add a desktop cooler. it will lose mobility but im curious how it performs without temperates that get higher than the average oven.

Try some Coollaboratory liquid pro and you will get even better temperatures.

What clock speeds did this MacBook pro hit using better thermal paste?

Wow, i cant belive this helped such a new computer. This means my 13 year old mac DEFFINETLY needs new paste hahahaha

thanks kids , I tried it and the fan noise has gone but watch out don't set it too low better in between

if undervolting is possible on macbooks try it. it really helps

Another thing that would help alot more is to undervolt the cpu. But right now this doesnt seem possible. It is even locked out in Windows with the intel xtu tool, there is a tool called Volta which does the same and works on MacOS but that would work either. Seems like Apple locked this completely

Is the smc fan control thing improved with the new thermal paste?

Is it still good or did it cause problems ?

Could you please explore external cooling for macbooks and could they be of any use. Your videos are very useful to me as I am considering buying a macbook (I'm a developer). Keep it up! PS. WTF are those graphs.

What app did he use to measure his thermal throttling

why not drill a few small holes on the removeable cover where the fan is at?

Snazzy I did the same, everything ok, except the Touch id... I can see it from preferences but I can't delete or set up new fingertips ... failed, again and again... a new installation of the Os will be a solution? any ideas? whoever knows to help

Okay so i have the new macbook pro 15” with six cores. When I’m editing video it hovers in the high 70s but exporting brings it up to the low 80s, it rarely ever reaches 90 degrees celsius, are these temps okay?

I love that there was a mac in freezer stat bar, hahahahaha, very nice !

can you tell if there is any difference between kaby lake macbook pro 2017 processor and Haswell macbook pro 2015 about thermal throttling?

I have the same model - is there a tear-down guide anywhere? I keep coming up blank.

Please investigate, if Apple's fix is based on crippling the CPU's Turbo mode (one guy mentioned, they just removed Stage2 (47W) power-draw delivery and capped it at Stage1 (37W)).

Ok here's my foolproof, 100% working technique. You go to your mom's freezer and take a freeze pack. Place the freeze pack under your computer right before you start your intense use. You're good to go, for about one to two hours. You can repeat the proccess all day long, just make sure the clean the computer dry when you switch freeze pack.

Put thermal pads on heatpipes and you'd fry your leg, but reduces temps about 10c.