MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

From what I have read here and elsewhere it seems that the 13” is not a safe bet.

The 16” with the 5600 looks promising from the few that have it but I have not seen a big enough sample yet to be confident in going for it.

I'm back in the office and found a new Monitor next to my Desk and gave it a try.

Its a LG34GN850 34" 144hz Gaming Monitor with 3440x1440 Resolution.

I'm now working since 3 hours and my Macbook 16" with 5300M with is still silent. I'm using 100hz instead of 144hz. When I switch to 144hz the fans are going faster.

so guys here's my setup and how I managed to get this laptop always below 70C and with a healthy battery

1. installed turbo boost switcher (with a mod that prevents it from asking the password every time) and turned off turbo boost (I don't really see a difference, if I hit 100% cpu on an Ableton project which is the only pro app I use then I will re-enable it)

2. bought a stand to have a better airflow when docked

3. installed mac fan control and setted fans to run at 2.5k rpm every time I connect the laptop to an external monitor (the laptop isn't so close to me so I don't even hear anything plus I'm with headphones the majority of the time)

4. installed SwitchResX and with some custom settings managed to get the radeon at 5watts when idle in clamshell

5. installed charge limiter which is an app that allows you to limit the max charge of the laptop (I stetted mine to 80%) since I use the laptop plugged in 95% of the time, this resulted in still 98% battery health in 7 months of usage, and if I know that I'm gonna need a 100% charge for the day I can disable this limit in a matter of seconds

with all this "tricks" I get an idle temperature of about 45C, 50C when watching a YouTube video and from 60C to max 68C when doing pro stuff (in my case music production with Ableton Live). Consider also it's July, I live in italy (very hot in this time of the year) and I don't have AC in my room. If I'll ever hit 100% cpu I will re-enable turboboost but for now I'm happy like this. Yeah not being able to use the laptop monitor while plugged to an external is a bummer but I got used to it and lost any hope in a fix at this point

I have decided finally to install switch res x (again) and make my external screen run 55hz instead of 60

And it seems thermal levels got lower... So far. Instead continuous 5400 RPM I get around 4000 or a bit more.

I also have TG pro app to control fans depending on CPU/GPU temperature and made a more aggressive profile than system one. (the system controls fan speed depending on some hidden 'thermal level' settings, not just temperatures).

These measures helped keep MacBook quieter and even a bit cooler. Unfortunately I can't see power consumption levels since setapp trial ended.

Hey, time for an Update.

I am on this threat since December - i have this issue too. (MacBook Pro 16" – 2,3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9,AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB, 64GB RAM). And Fans are going crazy after Plug In an external Monitor. Every time, and without using the MacBook Pro…

And have different Monitors from 24" and just 1080p to 34" with 3440 x 1440 - makes not different.

Since one week i updated to 10.15.6 - and fans go wild, but if i throttle with Endurance to 2,3Ghz they not going creazy.

So 3600 / 3900 rpm, which is still not good - but not so creazy like before when it was every time 5400rpm / 5600.

Before the Update i use the external Monitor often in Clam Shell Mode or with Noice Chanceling Head Phones - which was anyoing - and a lot of hours for trying to gigure out what exactly makes the fans going creazy.

So Clam Shell Mode isn't working for VideoCalls in times like this and the noicy fan are although distracting on Conferences.

Looking forward. I have iStat Menu - but on 30 Days Cycle it's not that clear image, because before i often turn off the external Monitor.

And Energy Consumation without Power and external Monitor looks also better.

Is this only in my head/wishes or have somone also this exprience?

This is how it is.. Radeon GPU will stay at 18+watt with external monitors connected, for me even in clamshell it will do this.

We are now on page 209 HAHA, I was here since the beginning, have put these mails on a filter to smack into a different folder in my email client..

Once in a while I read the latest.. and it's new people or old people complaining about the same thing. I know it may seem daunting to read any previous replies.. but this thread has been going in circles forever :)

I've been trough apple support.

They have done some pointless logging (twice).

They have escalated to engineers..

They have told me that its expected behaviour..

I have tested on about 20 different displays in the office, no difference.

I have tested with different cables, docks etc, no difference.

I have done OS reinstalls, SMC reset, NVRAM reset etc, no difference.

It is as Apple engineers now say.. "expected behaviour" because there is no way around it.

Putting CPU crippling apps and disabling stuff will of course work to an extend to not kick on the fans in jet mode.

But in general the issue is 15-20watt of heat is being used to keep the Radeon GPU in a state it's not needed to be in.

It runs at 3-5watt on idle if used directly on the laptop display.

It should be able to do the same with external monitors..

Another fun thing is, that if you lock your laptop in clamshell mode, with the displays still plugged in, it will stay at a toasty 60 degrees idling doing nothing with the external displays turned off and the laptop in "sleep" mode..

If this design was intended, then I have little faith in any future Apple products..

So am I done with Apple. Their mistakes are way too expensive whilst experimenting on pro customers... or maybe it's an intended behaviour causing shortened life span of new devices thus ensuring future profits like they did by secretly throtling iPhones and got fined for.

So glad i returned all 3 MBP 16 after they all had the same problems that are here posted by some so many users.

Still cant believe Apple didnt fix it until now. Would by it again, but maybe wait till ARM now.

Now I wish I could upgrade to the 5600m model as it seems to consume much less power with lid open. I've used my MacBook Pro's with an external display for years in open lid mode. First with the Apple Thunderbolt Display and then the LG UltraFine 5K, the latter I currently use with my 16" inch with 5500m. With the lid open, the Radeon locks to 18+watts and the laptop quickly heats up and fans pick up - 2k, 2.5k, 3.5k RPMs eventually getting to 4.5k RPMs and higher, all while simply browsing the web and having Outlook open. Close the lid, and within 1 to 2 minutes the temperatures subside and the fans go back down to 1,800RPM and stay there under general use. Radeon power drops to 4 to 5 watts. Really frustrating. I'm not posting anything new, but adding to the list of people who can confirm similar behavior with external display and lid open.

I don't understand why powering the additional laptop display would require 3 times more GPU power. This is what makes me stay optimistic that a software patch could fix this or at least help significantly.

The power consumed, reported as GPU power is a combination of two items:

1) the actual GPU power, nearly the same for 5300, 5500, and 5600

2) the power consumed by the display RAM

This display RAM of the 5300 and 5500 is 4GB or 8GB of hot DDR6 display RAM. Luckily, it can be run at lower than full speeds (under creation conditions) that drop around 10 Watts from the total power consumed.

These conditions include:

• external display using lower than the built-in display's horizontal width,

• using DisplayPort in some cases and especially setting the screen refresh rate lower or far higher than NTSC 59.xx Hz, and

• in some cases, just closing the clamshell

The display RAM of the 5600 is packaged with the GPU itself on a High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) module. This in itself appears to consume lower power under many conditions for the 5600.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Bandwidth_Memory

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The reasons the display RAM may need to be operated at higher power is to produce faster memory speeds for access to screen data for HDMI "heartbeat" re-drawing the display(s). HDMI displays require that each horizontal row of pixel data be supplied to the display with very tight timing constraints. Failure to supply that row data within the right time window results in that line being "blanked" on the display for that refresh period (typically, 60th second). Too many blanking events and the screen will appear to "flicker".

[In theory, DisplayPort displays, which do not use the "heartbeat" refresh, should have vastly lower demands on memory bandwidth and required memory speeds.]

The built-in display is also a "heartbeat" refresh display, so shutting it off sharply reduces the display memory speed required, and is often found to reduce the display memory power consumed.

DisplayPort displays have a screen buffer in the display.

HDMI and other "heartbeat" refresh displays use the same technique used in CRT displays, where the electron beam sweeps across each row of the display with fixed timing. If data are there, they will be displayed. If not, that horizontal row will be blanked out.

These displays are required to store no more than one horizontal row of pixels worth of data. But the data must be supplied within a tight window of time -- the electron beam is scanning...

RonRonnster wrote:

With the lid open, the Radeon locks to 18+watts and the laptop quickly heats up and fans pick up - 2k, 2.5k, 3.5k RPMs eventually getting to 4.5k RPMs and higher, all while simply browsing the web and having Outlook open.

That is the part that is apparently dependent upon the monitor and method of connecting to it.

I posted data showing that though my GPU is using 20w, my fans never climb over 2400 RPM.

Most of us have already tested this and see no benefit from switching cable types in this scenario.

Still hoping for a solution to this, but as of now, not a lick of acknowledgement or real support from Apple.

Plenty of apologists on this board who want to Jedi mind-trick the problem away, but it isn't working because those of us who have been using MBPs for the last 15 years with external monitors know that this isn't normal.

I agree, for me the only partial solution is using 10.15.4 with a refresh rate of 144 hertz, I tried 10.15.5 and it was not good, I still didn’t try 10.15.6 because I’m using my other partition for the other versions (I can’t say which one because it’s now allowed here) that are way worse than any other version I tried by the way, for example using an app on 10.15.4 uses 10/12 watts for the Radeon, same program on the other versions use 15 to 35 watts! And after a minute the fans will go crazy.

dcristof wrote:

Plenty of apologists on this board who want to Jedi mind-trick the problem away, but it isn't working because those of us who have been using MBPs for the last 15 years with external monitors know that this isn't normal.

I still don’t understand why people think what any other MacBook Pro ever released in history did has anything to do with how this one operates.

It doesn’t matter what any previous MacBook Pro did, this is a new design with different characteristics using different processors and a different GPU.

If you don’t like the fans, that’s fine, your call, but complaining your last MBP with a completely different internal design operated differently is specious at best.