MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

davidbenda wrote:

I'm assuming that you probably don't realize how severe a 20-watt power consumption is. From the first second on which the external monitor has connected the power consumption is 20 watts. That is, if every day the GPU power consumption goes up to 20 watts for 8-10 hours of daily work, that means that in the long run the wear and tear will be much faster than usual, in stark contrast to previous models that have proven their reliability. Such energy consumption is legitimate for a few seconds or at most for a few minutes during an intense process.

Not at all true; deskside PC GPUs use over 100w of power whenever they are on without issue.

Further, if the thermal design of the machine was designed for a 20w or higher load, there is no adverse wear and tear.

The point is the machine has to be designed to deal with the heat, and we have no evidence the MBP 16 isn't doing just that.

Apple removed my first post "because it contained rants or complaints that weren’t constructive".

Apple removed my second post "because it contained link(s) that weren’t directly related to the original poster’s question."

Here, again, are the facts written out in a calm and descriptive way:

I bought this machine with the 5500M. Since I couldn't hook it up to an external monitor without the Radeon High Side going immediately to 20W with the lid open I returned it. The 20W caused the machine to heat up very quickly, which caused the fans to run at over 3000rpm when the machine was idle - no apps open. The machine would then get very hot. The high temperatures cause the machine to turn down CPU performance. This machine can very obviously not correctly drive a single Dell U2719DX at 2560x1440 at 59.88Hz - the resolution I am using now on my 2020 13".

The 2020 13" I replaced it with can drive the exact same monitor with the exact same cable at the exact same resolution with the total system wattage at 7W. That is what I expect from the 16". Apple keeps telling people the fans and heating on the 16" is "expected behavior". If this is "expected behavior" I would like to know why the exact same machine can be booted via bootcamp into Windows and run at 5W via the 5500M drivers on Windows.

There is a very obvious driver problem with the 5300M and 5500M GPUs in the 16" Macbook Pros. Apple should acknowledge this problem and provide a fix since users have been complaining here and over at MacRumors since November 2019.

The link I previously posted at this paragraph is not only related to the original poster's question - it is exactly the same problem as the original posters question. I've read all 204 pages here. I've read all 2407 posts over at MacRumors in the thread entitled "16" is HOT & NOISY with an external monitor! :(", which I invite everyone to look up. Both threads describe the exact problem where connecting the Macbook Pro 16" to an external monitor causes it to overheat, which causes the fans to run very high and loud. This is caused by the drivers for the Radeon discrete GPU in these machines not operating correctly.

You are missing the point.

MacBook Pro 13 - open lid drives 4k external screen with no issues with temperature whatsoever

MacBook Pro 16 - open lid cannot drive 4k external screen without the laptop fans spinning crazy (while doing nothing on the laptop) and the metal chassis under the whole laptop and above the touchbar area gets so hot you cannot keep your finger there, I am not speaking hyperbolically, it's literally that hot.

This laptop is unusable with an external display and laptop screen on (not-clamshell).

Thank you Leo, you are completely correct with certain persons not being productive in getting a solution

Amen, to that.

Now let's all contact apple about these issues.

Currently apple engineers are saying the fan noise is working as expected, which is actually not expected behaviour for previous MacBooks pro 15", additionally the 5600m doesn't have this problem and pulls 5watts on gpu during external usage,where the 5300 5500 pull 18watts

Just to put yet another case on the table…

…so I called in as well after spending multiple days trying to find and willingly test fixes for a 8k 16 (5500M) table-toaster once connected to an external display with it's greedy kitten card soaking my outlet breast like crazy in the 20 W area…

…having invested ~50k over the years in the garden of eden… observing the decline on all the latest and full spec'ed MacBook Pros there were/are on my very desk and the answer I received my dear fellow hardware vegetarians:

"It's not a problem every MacBook Pro 16 has, as otherwise we would have called them back. It's a very individual software or hardware problem … we need to check your hardware …

Yeah - this is what we are facing these days…marketing sells "Mars", production can't deliver "Moon" and customer service is happy to inform you about your warranty period and respective standard procedures on planet earth …

Steve would have fried an egg on this hardware and told them to only come back once they would let their kids work with it…

sa(i)d enough…

William Kucharski wrote:

There's no design defect here, it was the technology necessary to get the performance it delivers.

You still repeat the same "performance" claim.. What performance are you talking about? In Windows graphics performance is much much higher than it is in MacOS, and it is silent..

Really, AMD consumes 20W for what performance? Driving a 1080/1440 panel? You talk about DRAM, however, when you activate dGPU without connecting external monitor, AMD consumes only 5W.. SO: This is TOTALLY a fault.. 15W for driving external monitor is bad hardware/software design.. Who knows? Apple is the most closed company..

denizcan wrote:

You still repeat the same "performance" claim.. What performance are you talking about? In Windows graphics performance is much much higher than it is in MacOS, and it is silent..

What is your proof of that? What are you comparing?

Really, AMD consumes 20W for what performance? Driving a 1080/1440 panel? You talk about DRAM, however, when you activate dGPU without connecting external monitor, AMD consumes only 5W.. SO: This is TOTALLY a fault.. 15W for driving external monitor is bad hardware/software design.. Who knows? Apple is the most closed company..

Why is it bad software design? Once again, if you are driving memory at its highest possible clock speed to speed access, I don't see how that's ever a bad thing.

I don't care about heat, I care about maximum performance with the apps I use; I understand others have other preferences.

"I don't care about heat, I care about maximum performance with the apps I use; I understand others have other preferences."

I agree with you. You start a app like Logic and you need performance, the MacBook delivers, power usage is high but expected.

Then again, you are literally looking at the screen with NO APPS open and connect a second monitor and you can clearly see temperatures raise beyond comfortable while touching above Touch Bar and you can clearly hear fans go to around 3k rpm from original 1.8k, this is with NOTHING running. Now imagine you actually run ANY app that requires performance? You will get throttled to extinction because all the thermal headroom the laptop had is already gone due to the high mem speeds while idling for whatever reason.

If you don't see that as bad design, then I'm not really sure how I can convince you.

I also care about maximum performance when using my apps, but that is not what is in question here, the problem here is that by connecting an external monitor with no apps running or a process taking more than 3% of CPU usage the fans will go from running at 1700 RPM to more than 3500 RPM (sometimes even to 5000 RPM), that is a 200 to 350 % increase in fan speed just by connecting an external monitor when the CPU and GPU usage is below 5%. So something is definitely wrong here, either design , hardware or software.

iTech23 wrote:

I also care about maximum performance when using my apps, but that is not what is in question here, the problem here is that by connecting an external monitor with no apps running or a process taking more than 3% of CPU usage the fans will go from running at 1700 RPM to more than 3500 RPM (sometimes even to 5000 RPM), that is a 200 to 350 % increase in fan speed just by connecting an external monitor when the CPU and GPU usage is below 5%.

In some cases, yes, in other cases not as I have shown here.

For example to just "show nothing" on a 4K monitor doesn't mean that it doesn't need to be repainted at full VRAM speed.

I don't know what causes the issue with some monitors, but the fan ramp up definitely doesn't happen with all, even if the second monitor is actively being used.

I folks, I have the same issue..

My Setup:

MBP 16 /i9/64GB/5500 AMD/1TB 

And an Curved LG 37” Screen USB-C & one old  27” TFT Screen.

-I found out: I run some Bot tools & Chrome-Browser with only open 4-6 Tabs some extensions and the MPB becomes very slow and laggy.

-Some times the vans are howling to max I receive a black screen and then it restarts.

-Also some times the MBP was froozn nothing helped I had to make a power reset 

-I never tried the clamshell , cause I think the MPB generates a lot of heat and if i close the cover then the heat goes directly to the screen , I’m not a heating technician but I think in the long run that’s not god for the display , or wat are u thinking?

In the past, I was on some Beta‘s but never on a productive machine .. and this is feeling worse.

I mean bought a machine for my business and I spend around 4K€ and sometimes I can’t work that’s not nice , that’s worse 👀

Are there any solutions known ?

Wish u a nice day!

Wbr Warng

Also the 5600m fixes this btw, so how isn’t it an issue if the lower end Units are pulling 4x the power driving a monitor.

I called Apple and explained this difference.

keep on it guys :)

[Edited by Moderator]

What is your proof of that? What are you comparing?

Simple: 3D performance.. The same game plays faster, the same 3D operation finishes quicker.. So what's the deal? Windows gets higher 3D benchmark scores.. What do you thin dGPU do? Produce heat?

Why is it bad software design? Once again, if you are driving memory at its highest possible clock speed to speed access, I don't see how that's ever a bad thing.

Very simple. If you use dGPU without external monitor, it consumes 5W. If you use it with external monitor it consumes 20W.. With respect to your assertion, with internal monitor it works at low performance. To have a higher performance you should connect 1080p panel.. One user reported that AMD starts consuming 5W with 144 Hz panel.. Poor him, he lost the performance.. You call this a good software practice, I call it bad design.. In 10 minutes the problem raises, it is even a bad test practice.. It looks like they have never tested this device for the full extent..

BTW: We get you don't care the noise, heat etc, but performance.. One another point we could not make you understand is: System's performance drops if you connect external monitor.. It heats up, and the CPU enters into thermal throttle earlier than the normal working conditions.. Think about this, the CPU is at 45C and you place a job.. The CPU is at 65C and you place a job.. 20C difference DOES make a difference.. Intel changes single core, multiple core frequencies wrt current package temperature..

So, as a performance lover you, should be first in the line for Apple solving this problem.. Don't you get it? Unnecessary heat reduces the performance. C'mon, you loose performance..

The thing is, for me there really isn't all that much heat; my fans are only spinning at 2400 RPM or so at most even when the GPU is cranked up.

I don't necessarily think a comparison between a game on Windows and on macOS is a fair comparison as games are tweaked for Windows and also make all sorts of shortcuts through the OS that increase performance at the cost of OS stability.

I'm quite sure if there was a way to increase performance and decrease heat, Apple would implement it as I suspect the MBP 16 is their most popular model in use internally.

5600M uses HBM display memory instead of DDR6 display RAM. At low speed, low power, even the DDR6 RAM uses very little power.

When the collection of displays attached requires full RAM speed, the power consumed by the DDR6 display RAM goes up by more that 10 Watts to the higher numbers quoted by many users in this thread.