Phone SoC struggles in a laptop chassis, simple cooling mods greatly improve performance
A new MacBook Neo modding test shows how much the fanless A18 Pro system depends on better cooling. In stock form, the laptop relies on a small graphite thermal pad over the chip, and the video shows it quickly reaching 105°C in No Man’s Sky. At that point, performance drops to around 30 to 31 FPS as the SoC throttles.
ETA Prime decided to give this laptop a quick and easy mod. The stock thermal path was replaced with a custom copper plate, thermal paste, and a thermal pad that transfers heat into the bottom aluminum shell. That alone pushed No Man’s Sky to around 58 FPS, almost double the stock result, while average CPU temperature dropped to about 83 to 84°C.
© ETA Prime 
© ETA Prime 
© ETA Prime Source: ETA Prime
Geekbench 6 improved from 3094 to 3563 in single-core and from 7921 to 8692 in multi-core. Cinebench went from 502 to 531 in single-core and from 1462 to 1597 in multi-core. Across those four results, the copper cooling mod averages almost exactly a 10% uplift over stock.
Source: ETA Prime
The second step added an external liquid-cooled thermoelectric unit attached to the bottom of the chassis. That pushed Geekbench 6 to 3636 single-core and 9394 multi-core, while Cinebench reached 620 single-core and 1741 multi-core. Those gains translate to +17.52%, +18.60%, +23.51%, and +19.08% over stock, depending on the test.
Source: ETA Prime
Power throttling is normal for phone-class SoCs, because they are designed around tight thermal and battery limits. In this case, though, the MacBook Neo appears to be held back more by thermals than by the chip itself. The test suggests Apple could have invested more in the cooling design, especially for a laptop that will often be used while plugged in, where sustained performance matters more than saving every watt.
Source:
