hardwaremacbook properformancetemperature
Macbook Air gets hot near its processor and gets sluggish for a while, whenever I make "heavy" tasks at the same time. I wonder if a fan under its base would make any difference since mac has no ventilation. In any case, would it help at all?
Edit: I consider the cases when the speed of the internal fan is quite normal but the area near the processor gets hot, since I can understand whenever fan speed is high, producing all that noise (e.g. when installing an OS).
Fan speeds are related to the temperature of your laptop. If you're just interested in monitoring the temps, iStat Menus ($16) has an excellent temperature monitor that sits in your menu bar and can track any of the dozen temperature sensors built into your MBP.
There are a few apps which purport to allow you to control your Apple laptop fan speeds.
EDIT: Updated Aug 2018
I've found that the best solution to keeping my computer cool and the fans off, even when really tasking the processor, is to put it on a little stand to allow plenty of airflow underneath. The one I swear by is a Podium Pad from 2004 which was discontinued long ago -- but there are many alternatives. If you keep your laptop on your lap, almost any simple lap desk can help a lot, keeping the computer on a firm surface to let the fans do their work without smothering them with fabric/skin. There are also active cooling pads with fans in them, some of which are very well-reviewed.
Finally, I'm not sure what you're recording, but you could try using a directional USB microphone to eliminate extraneous noise from your recording environment. There are many excellent options on Amazon for under $100 (be sure it is Mac-compatible before purchasing).
Even in CPU-intensive tasks, the difference is going to be more of the "noticeable in synthetic benchmarks" variety, rather than "I see it in the real world" variety. I'd save the money and put it first towards an SSD option, then more RAM.
Processor speed is almost flat these days, so minor bumps aren't worth the money.
My very aging MacPro got a new lease on life when I replaced the boot disk with an SSD earlier this year. There's nothing better for improving perceived responsiveness.
Best Answer
It could help if you see kernel_task soaking CPU cycles.
From https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203184
So if your case is more than 10°F / 5°C warmer than the ambient temperature and you are seeing high CPU/kernel task usage, cooling the bottom case or increasing airflow significantly might actually speed up your Air.