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Yes. The aluminum chassis is basically a heat sink. The underside of the M1 Air heats up when the soc is under load. Cooling that spot will help cool the soc.

If the chassis were a heat sink, it would be a serious burn risk.

That's basically why it throttles.

It’s not directly connected to the CPU, but it clearly gets quite hot.

Removing that heat should be beneficial either way.

Sort of. The problem is that the chip is what needs to be cooled, and that is separated from the ice pack by a thermal pad and the laptop case.

both of those are way less efficient than something that cools the chip directly

Iirc, an issue with this and e.g putting it in the fridge is potential for condensation. Probably worth looking into before putting your machine on ice.

Not really, thermal conductivity between CPU and outer layer is not best. M1 is OKish, M2 are really bad.

I think I saw that they added little standoffs on the M3 between the case and the cooling mechanism to help prevent the case from coming into contact and getting too hot.