[Fix] Macbook Pro 16" VRM Throttling

Only if you are planning to cool the bottom of you laptop and you should consider removing the insulating layer on your backplate which will of course void your warranty. Also be aware that because it will do some pressure it will bend a little bit which aesthetically is not gonna be pleasant and it might case some damages to your mainboard on the long run.

What about this is a bad idea? The batteries are physically on the lower base of the laptop. In fact, using the backplate as heatsink will help a ton to reduce heat on the inclosure as you are moving the heat of passive cooled componentes to the exterior. It is totally true that the backplate gets very hot on cpu intensive applications, though I’ve never, ever, been uncomfortable when doing basic stuff like surfing or watching a movie.

Despite this, do not remove the insulation layer from the backplate, the pads work fairly ok with the insulator attached and you can easily remove the pads if you need to do go to an Apple store.

To be honest, I’ve just seen positive stuff from doing this mod. It is easy, cheap, fans do not get incredibly loud on macOS that much, it can be used on the lap for simple stuff, and when using a cooling base with a fan, there is no throttle whatsoever.

I was super worried about the battery as well, but after monitoring it, coconut does not get that much crazy after a play sesión. Before, health would jump down from 95% to 85%, recovering in a couple of cicles. Now it never does it, even after long gaming sessions. Do not worry that much.

I mean before the mod, health would jump over and over after a play sesión, I really think it was because of high temps inside the enclosure. As correctly pointed out here, batteries degrade faster on high, and specially, low temps, so now that heat is sent to the backplate, I “feel” battery is behaving way better overall.

I did it yesterday and it worked super well for me, gaming-wise. My GPU frequency can sustain at 1000-1300mhz for at least an hour and a half in Death Stranding in 85-90C. Before the mod, it was 600mhz for the beginning 20 mins and then dropped to 300 after. CPU temperature is better, around 70-80c with a locked base frequency. The same high-performance stats showed in Forza 4 for 3 hours. It feels like a got a brand new laptop!

And just by feeling it with my hand, I don't think the back cover was significantly hotter than before. Maybe it's because the laptop stand I used helped too. For normal tasks in macOS, there's no difference at all, I still use it on my lap.

And a tip for doing the mod, one pack ok thermal pad may not be enough. I only got one pack and there's still some room left can be padded. But still, I got some pretty good outcomes from it. Aside from doing the mod I also cleaned the dust out, never thought it could be that much dust in it so prepare an air blower or a canned air.

For longer term gaming, the only real downside to doing this mod is that it does get very hot to the touch - so wouldnt be suitable for gaming on your lap for extended periods of time.