MacBook Neo Thermal Throttling Fixed? This Mod Unlocked Almost 2x Gaming Performance
What Happens When You Actually Cool the MacBook Neo Properly?
So recently I came across a video by ETA PRIME where he tries to fix one of the biggest limitations of the new MacBook Neo with the A18 Pro chip.
Thermal throttling.
On paper the A18 Pro is a very capable chip. We have already seen how strong it is in single core performance and even decent in GPU workloads. But the moment you push it a bit, the performance drops off quickly.
And the reason is pretty simple.
There is no active cooling.
The MacBook Neo relies on a very basic passive cooling setup with a graphene pad, which means the chip heats up quickly and starts throttling almost immediately.
So the question was what happens if you actually cool it properly?
Phase 1: Copper Heatsink Mod
The first step was fairly simple.
The laptop was opened up, the stock graphene pad was removed and a custom copper heatsink was placed directly on the A18 Pro chip using thermal paste. A thermal pad was then used to transfer heat to the aluminum chassis.
Even this simple passive mod made a huge difference.
Gaming performance in No Man's Sky jumped from around 30 FPS to 58 FPS. That is nearly double just from better heat dissipation.
Benchmark Improvements
On the benchmark side
- Geekbench 6 multicore improved by around 9.7%
- Single core improved by around 15%
- Cinebench multicore saw roughly a 9% gain
And this is still without any active cooling.
Phase 2: Liquid Peltier Cooling
Things got even more interesting in the second phase.
An external thermoelectric Peltier liquid cooler was magnetically attached to the back of the laptop. This setup actively cools the heatsink and can even bring temperatures below ambient in some cases.
Idle temperatures dropped to around 23°C, which is crazy for a passively cooled laptop.
Performance Under Load
Now under load
- No Man's Sky was able to sustain around 58 to 59 FPS consistently
- Temperatures averaged around 74°C
Benchmark Results with Active Cooling
And the benchmark improvements were even more significant
- Geekbench 6 multicore improved by 18.6% over stock
- Single core improved by 17.5%
- Cinebench multicore increased by 19%
- Cinebench single core increased by over 23%
What This Actually Means
The most interesting takeaway here is that the A18 Pro itself is not the limitation.
The real bottleneck is thermals.
With proper cooling the chip can sustain much higher performance levels and even push significantly better benchmark numbers.
Which raises a bigger question.
Why is Apple shipping a machine like this without adequate cooling when clearly there is a lot more performance left on the table?
Yes this mod is not practical for everyday users. No one is going to attach a liquid cooler to their laptop just to play games.
But it clearly shows the untapped potential of the hardware.
Final Thoughts
The MacBook Neo feels like a machine that is heavily constrained by its design choices.
With better thermal management it could have been a much more capable device, especially for sustained workloads and gaming.
Instead what we get is great peak performance, followed by aggressive throttling.
Makes you wonder how much performance we are sacrificing just to keep things thin and simple.
Would You Try This?
What do you guys think on this?
Would you ever try something like this or just accept the throttling as part of the experience?
