MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-macbook-pro-ghosting-smearing.2212842/page-33?post=28542216#post-28542216

35 Page thread on ghosting issues due to the 45ms black to white pixel response time, causing trailing.

Hardware design issue, which makes design work with animations, movement etc drastically more difficult.

+ Technical document as to why is the display is ghosting worse then 2003 LCD screens.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2019-Laptop-Review-A-convincing-Core-i9-9880H-and-Radeon-Pro-5500M-powered-multimedia-laptop.445902.0.html

and a 78 page thread on the fan noise with external.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-is-hot-noisy-with-an-external-monitor.2211747/

PinStudios wrote:

This is so fuuuunny :D. Even after Apple has acknowledged an issue with MBP 16" William and DPJ still keep claiming their macbooks are not affected by this :D

Laugh all you want, it's the truth for the particular configurations at least I tested.

Remember, just because it's an issue does not mean it happens to everyone in every situation, just that a subset of people are experiencing a certain issue.

For example, many people had no issue with the butterfly keyboards on Mac laptops of the past few years, but many more did.

William Kucharski wrote:

OK, I've been running a full screen HD video on the Dell screen for the past thirty minutes:

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/edf6e544-0cc8-4a39-bb75-a0472fcabdd8

The output from powermetrics:

**** SMC sensors ****

CPU Thermal level: 54

GPU Thermal level: 4

IO Thermal level: 4

Fan: 2126.82 rpm

CPU die temperature: 71.31 C

GPU die temperature: 70.00 C

CPU Plimit: 0.00

GPU Plimit (Int): 0.00 

Number of prochots: 0

Other info:

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/8b25b2fa-f08c-4c29-b4d3-224843f4a8fd

Shall I give you my 5 year old machines numbers? After 5 years of development we returned back to 20 years temperature wise.. If you are old enough you might remember computers creating constant heat at idle..

denizcan wrote:

What I want from my laptop is not that simple.. What I want is:

Being dead silent.. I moved all the noise creating systems outside of my room, and I want to concentrate on my job, not a hair dryer.. This so called "computer" is the only thing that creates noise in my room..

2. Nice keyboard (check)

3. Nice enough display (check)

If #1 is not there, I do not care the rest.. Really I DO NOT CARE!

Then you'd best investigate other brands of laptop that promise that, right in their specifications; the MacBook Pro does not and never has. Even the new Mac Pro is not completely silent in operation, and the fans in my iMac are always whirring perceptibly but softly.

The situation you describe with fans ramping up and the machine resetting is not thermal shutdown; that sounds like a kernel panic and is something you should discuss further with Apple Support directly as it may be a hardware issue with your machine.

Contact - Official Apple Support

jc_9 wrote:

Previous Macbook Pro 15" didn't have this issue.

I've been lurking in this thread for the last week or so because my 2018 15" MacBook Pro cannot handle having an external monitor connected without the fans blasting.

What's worse for me (with my 15") is that my device likes to clock itself down to somewhere between 800MHz-1.1GHz when it's doing something "taxing" like doing a video call on Google Meet or simply idling with OBS open. See:

And the CPU usage at around that time:

The kernel seems to enjoy downclocking my CPU to ~1GHz while simultaneously flooding it with its own processing (presumably this). In the Intel Power Gadget screenshot above you'll see that there is a discontinuity in the graph. That's due to the kernel taking up 100% of all available processing for a long enough time that the Intel app wasn't able to capture a sample at those timestamps (see: the sudden red spike in the CPU history).

The fun part? Whenever this happens the CPU is typically somewhere between 60-75ºC, which is well within the general safe operational margins, as far as I'm aware.

For what it's worth, I'm on Mojave (10.14.6) and can't currently upgrade because I have dependencies on 32-bit apps. I am also working with Apple Support on trying to track down what's going on.

While I'm still on a 2018 15" MacBook Pro that has the fans constantly spinning between 5500-6000rpm, I completely commiserate with you all and hope that Apple determines a fix for the issue soon.

ryunokokoro wrote:

is a dark day when my mid-2012 MacBook Pro Retina (no external monitors) is able to outperform my 2018 MacBook Pro when the only real difference is that a single external monitor is connected. (I should point out that I ran a few tests with Handbrake and saw that simply forcing the 2018 MBP to run the discreet GPU [no external monitors] caused it to take ~40% longer to render a short video.)

I’m sorry I don’t understand what you mean by discreet GPU. Do you mean that when you disconnect the external display(s) handbrake takes longer than with an external display connected? Handbrake is not using the dedicated GPU is it?

and no worries about chiming in with a 2018 15”. I welcome your input.

Edit: okay I looked it up. The “discrete” GPU is the powerful extra GPU and the “integrated” is the low power standard GPU. So you somehow activated the discrete GPU without external displays connected. How did you do that?

i now understand that handbrake had less power available because the discrete GPU was consuming power as well.

Hi ryunokokoro, I just wanted to mention that I am also experiencing this on my Late 2013 15" rMBP.

If my memory is correct, it was working fine with an external 4K monitor until a major OS update, and then whenever the GPU was being stressed it caused the CPU to throttle down to 800MHz.

I am not aware of any concrete solutions, but you might want to check out this thread if you haven't already:

MacOS Sierra / kernel_task problem

I explicitly said I was not trying to tell anyone they were wrong (unless it's to state that all MBP's do this with all external displays, which is not true.)

Feel free to send your MBP 16 back, that's why Apple has a 14 day return policy, they're not for everyone.

Hi Tim,

Yep sorry was a late night and I forgot what year I was living in.

I agree 100%, the cost of the updated GPU is ridiculous and the price differential is basically 2x the price of the standalone GPU so clearly there is some healthy margins at play here.

However as a working professional who needs this machine for the job and also unfortunately do teleconferencing I would rather give in to Apples prices than keep apologising to clients for the loud fans (not to mention the performance degradation due to the well documented thermal throttling and my own mental health hearing the funs blasting all the time).

I am only using one external display at a time.

Using either results in no fan and no unusual heating.

I am not changing any settings and have the laptop screen on, so I am not in clamshell.

The “about” info shows both displays being driven by the 5500m.

• RHS drawing 0.7 W without a monitor, and drawing 21.86W with your U2717D
• Your laptop is almost ready to explode with those temps

In addition to that, which is essentially the problem that we're all reporting into this thread, for some reason your fans won't turn up to higher RPM to cool down your VERY HOT (based on the temps we're seeing in those screenshots) Macbook, which makes your laptop's condition & performance more worrisome, LOL.

[Edited by Moderator]

Thank you William, at least we see that your machine's discrete GPU behaves just like the rest. What's remarkable (to say the least) is that your fans stay below 2000 RPM. Your cpu temp is 167 F eq. 75 deg Celcius, which doesn't sound alarmingly high, but still quite high. I'd expect the fans to be around 3000-4000 at least at this temp. My MBP late 2013 15" has average 3000-3300 RPM at 65 degrees CPU temp.

Did you use any other 3rd party software to override the fans? Do blow ice cold air in your vent inlets? Never mind, I know you don't. But then how?

mcnuggetswithcheese wrote:

Hi ryunokokoro, I just wanted to mention that I am also experiencing this on my Late 2013 15" rMBP.

If my memory is correct, it was working fine with an external 4K monitor until a major OS update, and then whenever the GPU was being stressed it caused the CPU to throttle down to 800MHz.

If this "massive throttling with external monitors connected" issue isn't a bug that Apple plans to fix, then it feels as though they should stop advertising full support for external monitors. What's the point of connecting an external monitor if the second a core component of the device starts to act up, the machine grinds itself to a screeching halt?

mcnuggetswithcheese wrote:

I am not aware of any concrete solutions, but you might want to check out this thread if you haven't already:

MacOS Sierra / kernel_task problem

Looked into it but there was nothing there for me. Thanks for the reference, though!

You are da man. Thanks for sharing!

1 What happens when not in clamshell mode?

2 How does the system hold up during sustained / longer sessions?

3 how is Radeon High Side reading developing when actually using GPU intensive loads?

thanks!

I noticed on another thread that in some instances, the 59.xx Hz refresh rate is accompanied by the words (NTSC) [Broadcast Standard].

That suggests that a display running at EXACTLY that rate may be a "Reference" display or "Final Output" display intended to be absolutely perfect, with no possible display drop-outs. That in itself may be enough to set the RAM refresh rate to maximum, and boost the consumed power. So if you are seeing 59.xx Hz rate, and change it to ANYTHING else, your power consumption may be different.