MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

That's quite strange as I do not experience that in FCP unless I am doing something very processor intensive like filtering multiple streams of 4K video.

I do occasionally hear the fan spin up but it's far from objectionable, it's just a light whirr.

I had an Acer Ferrari laptop at one point that sounded like this; now this was annoying. 😮

https://youtu.be/n9dlwebb04Y?t=357

Thank you for your advice but that is not an option for me, as I do market research and require a number of screens available simultaneously.

This has been a very frustrating experience for many of us, I check back in occasionally to see if any progress has been made, and I see the same advice is being dispensed by you William. You are consistent!

I have a MacBook Pro 16 with 64GB RAM, i9 processors and the AMD Radeon Pro 5500 8GB and when connecting an external display (even not a 4K one) fans are indeed starting continuously whatever I do or not. Even with minimal use, fans are running while I see a CPU charge of less than 4% and a GPU charge under average.

This is rather curious as I can fee the heat of the computer on the display side (thus above the keyboard) while the trackpad side stays at normal temperature.

This is an incredible machine but this issue is an annoying one.

I have this issue as well. I purchased my (same model) MacBook Pro in late December 2019. Right now, fan is on, at varying speeds and volume, while load is low and cover is closed. I am using LG monitor.

Greg

I have found one solution to this.

I had been having the same problem for several days now. The fans were spinning to the max 100% of the time. At the time I was running Chrome and I had around 20 tabs open.

I decided to turn off the "Use hardware acceleration when available" setting that is enabled by default. As soon as I did that, not a minute went by that I literally started hearing the fans spin down all the way to where they are barely audible.

Thus, it seems obvious the culprit here was the constant use of the graphics card.

From reading other comments here related to the number of screens, I want to point out that I am also running two external monitors, one at 4K and another at UHD. Three of the four connections are taken. So I can say (at least in my case), that had nothing to do with it.

Hope this helped!

lframirez89 wrote:

From reading other comments here related to the number of screens, I want to point out that I am also running two external monitors, one at 4K and another at UHD. Three of the four connections are taken. So I can say (at least in my case), that had nothing to do with it.

Having 2 or more screens doesn't seem to matter much, I see an extra 0.5 watt per screen active, regardless of the resolution.

What seems to matter is the right combo of resolution and refresh rate for one external screen in clamshell to get the ideal ~5W usage. Having more than one screen at the same time always result in the added 18W. (17W when monitors are sleeping)

I'm pretty sure having the Chrome's hardware acceleration option enabled was just your treshold on the total wattage for hearing the fans for casual usage, just like the CPU turbo boost was for others.

Like others here I'm also experiencing these issues. I have a fully maxed out 2019 16" MBP (except for the HD) and an XDR Pro Display. When using the XDR and doing simple tasks like watching a youtube video or listening to music on soundcloud the CPU and fan speeds goes through the roof. Sometimes to 100%. It gets very loud and very hot.

When watching a youtube video full screen there is a very noticeable drop in framerate. The video looks choppy. Not super slow but noticeable lag when compared to not full screen. Just opening an application like Ableton Live and the fans and CPU goes up almost instantly.

Never had any of these issues with my 2018 MBP or previous models. This machine is struggling with simple tasks. I believe it has something to do with the GPU. I'm curious to try if an eGPU helps but the only one that I know of that works with the XDR display is the Blackmagic eGPU and eGPU Pro. Both of which are almost impossible to find right now even used. The standard version is a 10-12 week wait time from Apple and the Pro is discontinued.

Something is definitely wrong with these machines. This is $5,000+ machine we're talking about and no solutions or even acknowledgement from Apple so far. Very disappointing

Need more time to completely confirm that, but looks like Catalina 10.15.5 fixed the issue to some extent. I've been running a 4K display for 3+ hours with a lid open and so far so good. GPU still draws 20W of power, but temperatures are under control and fans are running below 2500 RPM, which is perfectly fine. Up until yesterday fans had gone up to over 3500 RPM the moment I'd plugged in a display.

Can anyone confirm that on their machine?

Can't confirm.

I have a brand new 16 inch, connected to two monitors 1080 and when i'm barely using the machine (two tabs on Chrome + Spotify) the machine heats up like crazy and fans goes through the roof.

I bought mine a few days ago and already hate it.

[Edited by Moderator]

Not sure if anyone else has mentioned it, but Turbo Boost Switcher has helped me. Free version is great but I bought pro so it enables turbo boost for certain apps (e.g. video rendering). Seems OSX likes to do every calculation at max possible speed, even when it's totally unnecessary, so being able to say "woah there maccy boy, take a breath..." is quite useful.

That's bad too hear :( I've had mine for half a year now and it's a love–hate relationship. Love it when I travel or work from my studio, hate it when I try to work at home with monitor and peripherals connected.

People will argue that the machine is doing what it's supposed to and that the smoking hot video ram and the power of the machine is why it behaves differently than the previous MBP's and why you can't compare them to this new one.

Tim, as for your fan issue, someone presented a curious solution, they said every professional photographer they know plays very loud music, perhaps you can get some fan drowning specific playlists out to your clients.

Does anyone know if there has been another update after 10.15.5? I could have sworn there was a supplemental update yesterday that I installed. I wonder if that addressed any of these issues...

Also, it's not surprising that the machine behaves the same way with the XDR display.

With 10.15.5 there has been some improvement. With the dual monitor I found a decrease in the absorption of the Radeon card. From about 33-35W to 18W on average. The average temperature is still high, which is 61°-63°C compared to the Retina Mid 2015 which, under the same conditions, is around 37°C. This is worrying because with the high temperatures the life of the components is dramatically shortened, but it is already an improvement. There are some "bizarre" that are not the subject of this post, such as at least three flashes every time you reactivate the screen with the dual monitor, Music which is incomprehensibly hateful, the Touchbar which is "untouchable" for how hot it is, the keyboard that turns on the computer every time you try to clean it, the processing speed drops dramatically after a few seconds if you are rendering video because the temperature is too high, and so on ...

I should add that I am still using Turbo Boost Switcher to avoid too high temperatures, for most of the time of use.

I see no improvement with the latest update.. I am pretty sure this is a software issue, because in Bootcamp the system consumes 20W and it is dead silent with; in MacOS it consumes >30W and noisy, even after login with no app's loaded.. In windows CPU is at 42C-45C at 22C room temperature.. In MacOS it is 62C at 65C in idle.. I don't care who says what, in 2020 65C in idle is not acceptable..

The sad thing is as this is a software/driver issue and Apple does not address it.. For them it looks like adding silly emoticons are the most important thing.. I've never used one of them though, even didn't care to look..