The laptop cooling system does not provide for the presence of a fan, and this can “kill” performance
iFixit specialists got to the latest 15-inch MacBook Air. By tradition, they opened the device and shared their thoughts on maintainability. Alas, in this part the novelty does not shine at all. A score of 3 for repairability means that repairing anything on a large MacBook Air is not an easy task.
In fact, there is nothing to repair in the MacBook Air, since absolutely all components are soldered to one very small motherboard. And to get to it, you need to almost completely disassemble the entire laptop. But this is also not an easy task – because of the abundance of various connectors and a huge number of screws. Actually, it is for this reason that the device, following the results of disassembly, received only 3 points for maintainability.
iFixit takes apart the latest 15-inch MacBook Air
Of the interesting things noticed during disassembly: the battery has a U-shape, and its capacity is 66.5 W (25% more than the 13-inch MacBook Air). But in terms of autonomy, these models are equal, which is understandable: a larger diagonal screen consumes more, and the increased battery capacity just compensates for the increased power consumption.
Also, the motherboard of the 15-inch MacBook Air was smaller than the motherboard of the 13-inch model. This is due to the fact that more space was required for the speakers.
And finally, one more thing. The 15-inch MacBook Air is passively cooled, but the platform heats up decently under load – up to 37 ° C, and this is clearly not the limit. It is possible that in applications that intensively load the CPU and GPU, users of this laptop will encounter throttling.
