The MacBook Neo is an incredibly affordable laptop with a seriously powerful A18 Pro chip inside. But here’s the catch: Apple thermally throttles that chip to keep temps in check, and it slows it down significantly. Today I’m going to show you how to fix that with a simple $10 mod that can improve performance by 10 to 20%.
Baseline Performance Before the Mod
Before touching anything, let’s establish what the Neo can do out of the box.
Video export test: Exporting a 10-minute video in DaVinci Resolve at 4K, 50 Mb/s takes 11 minutes and 30 seconds. The performance cores hover around 2.2 GHz because the MacBook immediately throttles once it hits 100°C.
Gaming test (3DMark Solar Bay Extreme): This benchmark tests graphics performance for higher-end games with ray tracing. The Neo scored a “Good” rating with an average frame rate of 8.8fps and a max of 11fps.
Dropping the ray tracing and running the regular Solar Bay (not extreme) gave a “Great” rating with a much better average of 28.7fps and a max around 35fps. Worth noting: the Neo has an A18 Pro, not the newer A19 with improved ray tracing.
The Neo isn’t slow by any means, but if you’re doing pro work or gaming on this thing, it’s leaving performance on the table. Let’s fix that.
What You Need
This mod costs about $10 in materials. Here’s what you’ll need:
- 1.5mm thick thermal pad at Amazon
- Pentalobe screwdriver at Amazon (for the bottom screws on the MacBook)
How to Do the Thermal Mod
Flip the Neo over with the trackpad facing you. Unscrew all the bottom screws, keeping in mind that the 2 screws near the trackpad in the bottom middle are slightly longer than the rest. Set those aside separately so you know exactly where they go back.
To remove the bottom panel, just slide it backwards away from you and it pops right off. No drama.
Here’s the good news: you don’t need to remove anything else. Look at the strip along the top of the interior and that’s your entire motherboard. The CPU and GPU are located on a chip roughly in the center of that strip.
Cut a piece of thermal pad approximately 3 to 4 inches long by 2 inches wide. The thermal pad already has adhesive on it, so peel the backing and stick it directly onto the motherboard over the chip.
That’s literally it. Pop the bottom panel back on, screw everything back in, and you’re done.
Why This Works
By adding this thermal pad, you’re dramatically increasing the cooling surface area of the laptop. The CPU is now essentially in contact with the aluminum case of the laptop, turning that aluminum body into a giant heat sink.
Yes, the bottom of your laptop will run warmer. But in all of my testing, it’s not uncomfortably warm and won’t damage anything. All you’re doing is warming up a chunk of metal.
Performance Results After the Mod
Here’s where things get interesting.
Video export test: That same 10-minute 4K DaVinci Resolve export now takes 10 minutes and 31 seconds, with performance cores holding a higher 3 GHz thanks to reduced thermal throttling. That’s about a 10% speed improvement for $10 in materials.
Gaming test (3DMark Solar Bay Extreme): The modded Neo jumped to an “Excellent” rating with an average of 9.9fps and a max of 25fps. That’s roughly a 20% performance improvement in graphics.
Regular Solar Bay: Also scored “Excellent” with an average of 31.3fps and a max around 38fps.
A 10 to 20% performance boost for $10 is genuinely awesome. I’m a big fan of this mod.
What About the Warranty?
If you’re worried about voiding your warranty, I wouldn’t stress too much. If you ever have an issue and need to bring it into an Apple Store, just open the Neo back up and remove the thermal pad before you go. No harm done.
Want to Get More Out of Your MacBook?
If you want to know which MacBooks I actually recommend for creative work like video editing, check out my M5 MacBook Buyer’s Guide for Video Editing and my M5 MacBook Pro review for video editors.
And if you want to level up your actual editing skills, grab my Edit Videos Like a Pro guide. It’s completely free and covers the biggest rules I follow to create better videos.