The newly released M3 MacBook Air has been found to reach unusually high temperatures during demanding workloads, according to recent tests. Despite this, the new MacBook Air models have received generally positive reviews for their performance improvements. The M3 SoC in the new models is said to offer up to 60 percent more performance compared to the M1 models and are claimed to be up to “13 times faster” than older Intel-based MacBook Airs.
Tests conducted by Max Tech revealed that the M3 MacBook Air can reach extreme temperatures during heavy use. The laptop, which features passive cooling without any fans, reached temperatures as high as 114 degrees Celsius on the hottest core of the M3 SoC. The CPU and GPU units in the chip also reached temperatures of up to 107 and 103 degrees Celsius, respectively. The external chassis of the laptop reached a temperature of 46 degrees at its peak.
While laptop processors can generally operate at higher temperatures under stress, maintaining temperatures significantly above the boiling point of water is not practical. The M3 MacBook Air did experience thermal throttling during the tests, which reduced frequency and power consumption to bring the temperature down to around 100 degrees Celsius.
Although previous MacBook Air models based on the M2 SoC also had overheating issues, there is no evidence to suggest they reached the extreme temperatures recorded on the M3 system. A comparison of the MacBook Air with an M3-based MacBook Pro, which features active cooling, showed a significant decline in graphics performance (27 percent) on 3DMark Wild Life Extreme due to thermal throttling.
Despite these findings, there have been no widespread reports of overheating issues with the new M3 MacBook Air models. It is important to note that the MacBook Air is designed for light computing tasks and may not be suitable for heavy workloads.
