MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

I'm definitely experiencing CPU throttling now that it's warmer.

After awhile with an external monitor plugged in, my MBP 16" will turn super sluggish. (Chrome will barely scroll smoothly)

kernel_task will shoot to 500%+ usage and Googling it, it means the fans are struggling to keep up so it is last ditch effort to keep things cool.

Apple quality control is really falling apart :(

Actually the fact that those things are happening (high fan speeds and kernel task managing temperature) are indicative of excellent quality control, as the system is taking steps to manage the thermal load rather than just go into thermal shutdown.

I am a Pro and I am a human sir, and I do get a lot of work done, and I do not want it to get warm and noisy when I am not doing all that work... which is the problem here. And these are laptops are designed for human use directly on its interface, not to be closed as a clamshell. If you need high computing power, buy a server. Enjoy your only machine that works well!

William, to keep this discussion productive, you need to broaden your definition of what constitutes poor thermal design. As you rightly say, a system that goes into thermal shutdown is one that has poor thermal design. But in addition, a system that engages thermal throttling is also one displaying poor thermal design.

A system that costs as much as this one, complete with the "Pro" moniker, really does need to be able to handle any load thrown at it without thermal throttling.

ntompson wrote:

William, to keep this discussion productive, you need to broaden your definition of what constitutes poor thermal design. As you rightly say, a system that goes into thermal shutdown is one that has poor thermal design. But in addition, a system that engages thermal throttling is also one displaying poor thermal design.

A system that costs as much as this one, complete with the "Pro" moniker, really does need to be able to handle any load thrown at it without thermal throttling.

That is both impractical and is not how modern Intel CPUs are designed.

They are literally designed to operate at a very high speed until they generate so much heat that their speed needs to be throttled; this is the concept of "turbo boost."

You can read more about it here:

Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0

A brief summary:

Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.01 accelerates processor and graphics performance for peak loads, automatically allowing processor cores to run faster than the rated operating frequency if they’re operating below power, current, and temperature specification limits. Whether the processor enters into Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 and the amount of time the processor spends in that state depends on the workload and operating environment.

So the processor speed is boosted beyond its normal rated speed until the heat generated/power draw cannot be sustained and the CPU is then throttled to a level that allows the system to reestablish thermal equilibrium.

This is not a bug, it's how Intel designed the processor to operate.

You can debate whether this is smart, and it in fact may be one of the many reasons Apple is moving to their own silicon, but as it stands now it is expected behavior for any Intel Turbo Boost CPU whether in an Apple product or a PC.

Can we get back please to the „main problem“ in this Thread ?

the loud Fan Problem is also when you’re not working with an external Monitor.

i can not record Vovals with my fully loaded MBP because of the Fan Noise, even with Turboboost off.

My CPU Load in ProTools is around 20 % an the fans go crazy even with TB Boost off.

that’s not normal

we have now 3 MBPś with the same Problem, just ordered a new one last week with the new GPU Update. Let’s see if is an upgrade.

@ Willam with all the respect. We professionals need a silent Laptop even when we’re working normal like FaceTiming or cutting/editing on location. Last week we had a Photo shooting and the camera guy had the same problem With his Mac and he was also upset, because when he is showing the Photos to the clients they look at him and ask why this Laptop is so loud.

there is no alternative to this MBP, please don’t tell us that we should not buy it. BTW Apple didn’t told us, that this Mac is loud as **** while working.

The same workload with the same Software on the 13 Inch Version is working

sorry for bad english

I can tell you your photographer will be upset with any other laptop because PCs do this too.

I'll once again mention that just setting up an HP Spectre x360 resulted in more fan noise than any other laptop I've used this side of the Acer Ferrari 3400, and when live-streaming video the Dells a venue I am familiar with use are in high speed fan mode starting five minutes into a 2.5 hour broadcast.

That's not an excuse, but it's just sort of the nature of the current leading edge of Intel CPU laptops; the HP I mentioned had an Intel i7-10750H, 2.8 GHz with Turbo Boost to 5 GHz and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti GPU.

I've not read complaints here about fans spooling up without an external monitor; that may be more a consequence of the app being used than anything else. I've mentioned before Chrome is a good example of an application that is known to use a lot more CPU than other browsers do.

Stop blaiming HP Spectre x360 without cleaning up the software.. MBP fans run crazy as well if a background task is consuming CPU.. There are noisy PC laptops I agree, however today most of them are silent.. You can buy a silent and powerful PC laptop less then $1000..

Also stop blaiming VRAM's.. They are under tin can, and are even not cooled actively.. K4Z80325BC-HC14 chips are state of the art. They are fast, but they can be driven slow. If AMD says "tries to drive them fast", I think they are hiding a major defect..

Even if reported… is it a problem?

Bugs are, by definition, when something doesn't operate as intended or designed to.

If this aspect of operation was indeed how things needed to operate for the performance levels intended, it would have been closed as "not a bug."

Apparently for Apple, it is not a problem.. Wrt 200 something pages, it is problem for the buyers..

So you say consuming 20W for driving a lores display is withing the specs.. Why are you bringing up the spec argument? Who cares whether it is withing the specs or not? You like car anology. Let's go with it.. It's like buying a car advertised as "family car", but it consumes like a truck, creates noise like a truck, creates heat like a truck, while it works like a Fiat 126 Bis.. Really, don't you get that 20W is shared between real work? It has thermal budget of 60W and 20W of it already consumed for "driving a display".. This thing thermal throttles badly when connected to external monitor..

What was the Apple's priority? Wasn't it the experience over specs? For many years people said "who cares how many GB of RAM iPhone has, the important thing is the experience".. The same here, the experience is unbearable..

denizcan wrote:

Stop blaiming HP Spectre x360 without cleaning up the software.. MBP fans run crazy as well if a background task is consuming CPU.. There are noisy PC laptops I agree, however today most of them are silent.. You can buy a silent and powerful PC laptop less then $1000..

This was straight out of the box from Best Buy.

A user shouldn't need to go in and twiddle things, and 99% of users will run the computer the way it comes out of the box.

That's what I did with the results reported, and to use the argument many make here, this was a $2000 PC laptop, just a little less than the price of an MBP 13.

Also stop blaiming VRAM's.. They are under tin can, and are even not cooled actively.. K4Z80325BC-HC14 chips are state of the art. They are fast, but they can be driven slow. If AMD says "tries to drive them fast", I think they are hiding a major defect..

Then take it up with AMD. VRAM generates a lot of heat, it doesn't matter where it is, if it's in the case, that heat needs to be accounted for and dissipated.

I presume you read AMD's quote on the issue; if you think their engineers are wrong/clueless, that's your call.

denizcan wrote:

Apparently for Apple, it is not a problem.. Wrt 200 something pages, it is problem for the buyers..

Yet tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of MBP 16s have been sold and continue to be. Certainly Apple tracks return numbers so only they know if it's an actual issue for them or not.

So you say consuming 20W for driving a lores display is withing the specs.. Why are you bringing up the spec argument? Who cares whether it is withing the specs or not? You like car anology. Let's go with it.. It's like buying a car advertised as "family car", but it consumes like a truck, creates noise like a truck, creates heat like a truck, while it works like a Fiat 126 Bis.. Really, don't you get that 20W is shared between real work? It has thermal budget of 60W and 20W of it already consumed for "driving a display".. This thing thermal throttles badly when connected to external monitor..

When connected to your external monitor, not to any of the ones I own.

It's literally not doing anything it was spec'ed to do, and ultimately that's the only thing you can go on.

I don't know where you get a thermal budget of 60w from; the 5500M is speced to draw up to 50W of power by itself and the CPU up to 45w, so I certainly hope the thermal budget isn't just 60w, but ultimately I've never seen a number published.

What was the Apple's priority? Wasn't it the experience over specs? For many years people said "who cares how many GB of RAM iPhone has, the important thing is the experience".. The same here, the experience is unbearable..

Unbearable for you; for most customers it's one of the best laptops they've ever owned.

Once again, try an out of the box premium PC laptop if you want to hear fans.

This was straight out of the box from Best Buy.

A user shouldn't need to go in and twiddle things, and 99% of users will run the computer the way it comes out of the box.

That's what I did with the results reported, and to use the argument many make here, this was a $2000 PC laptop, just a little less than the price of an MBP 13.

At least you have option to do a clean install, which is very easy.. Disable Chrome's snooping etc.. Do you have the same option with MBP16? Do I have to use 3th party application and fiddle with the resolution, refresh rate settings?

Then take it up with AMD. VRAM generates a lot of heat, it doesn't matter where it is, if it's in the case, that heat needs to be accounted for and dissipated.

I presume you read AMD's quote on the issue; if you think their engineers are wrong/clueless, that's your call.

4GB VRAM cannot generate 20W of heat.. Don't you get it? If it generated 20W, it would be actively cooled.. Those chips are plastic cased small footprints.. The case is not designed for 5W per chip cooling.. 4GB GDDR6 VRAM would consume 2.5W at most..

AMD learned "reality distorsion" from Apple.. Especially their GPU department has been claiming something that they cannot deliver for years.. They always throw the ball around..

I don't care what AMD claims.. If it is difficult for them to drive 20 years old technology that's their problem, and Apple's as they choose a chip that requires 20W to drive a 10 year old monitor.. I am a consumer and it's not my job to find a correct display, find a settings that reduces power usage. That's why I am paying twice the money to Apple..

I want to connect my >$2000 device to an external monitor without loosing 20W thermal budged and annoying fan noise.. PERIOD!..

When I use bootcamp it works cool enough. Looks like Apple cannot deliver this.. Because of this I'll avoid Apple devices at all cost unless necessarry, and will not recommend any..

denizcan wrote:

At least you have option to do a clean install, which is very easy.. Disable Chrome's snooping etc.. Do you have the same option with MBP16? Do I have to use 3th party application and fiddle with the resolution, refresh rate settings?

You can do a clean install on an MBP too, it's actually trivial.

You often have to use third party utilities to change settings, but you have to do the same with PCs as well.

4GB VRAM cannot generate 20W of heat.. Don't you get it? If it generated 20W, it would be actively cooled.. Those chips are plastic cased small footprints.. The case is not designed for 5W per chip cooling.. 4GB GDDR6 VRAM would consume 2.5W at most..

No, but driving it at full clock speed does generate heat, both from the VRAM and the GPU horsepower needed to do so.

Again, AMD had this to say when asked about GPU power consumption in a PC:

Multiple displays with different resolutions, refresh rates, timings and or using different display adapters/connections requires more resources from the GPU, this can move the GPU up into the next memory clock state to compensate and avoid issues such as flickering or corruption.

If all displays are identical, using the same resolution, refresh rates, timings and using identical display adapters/connections then the GPU may be able to run two or more without moving up into the next clock state. It can vary from Bios to Bios and GPU to GPU, but the expected behaviour is increased clock speeds so this is not something we can change.

https://community.amd.com/thread/214891?commentID=2793350

AMD learned "reality distorsion" from Apple.. Especially their GPU department has been claiming something that they cannot deliver for years.. They always throw the ball around..

Then I guess you made the error in purchasing something with an AMD GPU if you have such distaste for their engineering capabilities.

I don't care what AMD claims.. If it is difficult for them to drive 20 years old technology that's their problem, and Apple's as they choose a chip that requires 20W to drive a 10 year old monitor.. I am a consumer and it's not my job to find a correct display, find a settings that reduces power usage. That's why I am paying twice the money to Apple..

So you're not going to listen to facts, just claim products are defective because you know what's possible and companies aren't serving your needs, no matter the technical reasons for not meeting your criteria.

I want to connect my >$2000 device to an external monitor without loosing 20W thermal budged and annoying fan noise.. PERIOD!..

Then we know neither the MBP 16 nor the HP Spectre x360 would meet your needs, considering that $2000 PC laptop didn't even need to be connected to an external monitor to rev its fans up… opening the Windows 10 Settings page. Ah well, good times.

When I use bootcamp it works cool enough. Looks like Apple cannot deliver this.. Because of this I'll avoid Apple devices at all cost unless necessarry, and will not recommend any..

Your choice as a consumer, that's why a marketplace is great. Companies that meet customer needs grow and thrive, those that don't… don't.

Apple has certainly met every need I have with the MBP 16 and I know of many, many others who feel the same, but we'll agree to disagree.

William Kucharski wrote:

You can do a clean install on an MBP too, it's actually trivial.

You often have to use third party utilities to change settings, but you have to do the same with PCs as well.

Do you really spend a few seconds before you write? If I clean install MBP, does it solve the heating, noise issue? It does solve in PC because you get rid of crapware..

No, but driving it at full clock speed does generate heat, both from the VRAM and the GPU horsepower needed to do so.

Actually it does not.. For default it uses 288MHz clock speed for 1440p panel, when I increase it to ~380, close to internal panel, it generates less heat.. Frequency itself is not the problem.. It looks like GPU somehow locked to internal panel even if you close the lid..

gain, AMD had this to say when asked about GPU power consumption in a PC:

Multiple displays with different resolutions, refresh rates, timings and or using different display adapters/connections requires more resources from the GPU, this can move the GPU up into the next memory clock state to compensate and avoid issues such as flickering or corruption.

If all displays are identical, using the same resolution, refresh rates, timings and using identical display adapters/connections then the GPU may be able to run two or more without moving up into the next clock state. It can vary from Bios to Bios and GPU to GPU, but the expected behaviour is increased clock speeds so this is not something we can change.

https://community.amd.com/thread/214891?commentID=2793350

Very funny though, we are talking about 380 MHz pixel clock, even a microcontroller can scan that.. Amd really is not telling something here, may be something like I mentioned in the previous paragraph, like begin locked to internal panel etc..

hen I guess you made the error in purchasing something with an AMD GPU if you have such distaste for their engineering capabilities.

Finally you said something correct.. Actually I do not need AMD part of this shiny piece of metal.. Intel GPU inside MBP16 is more than enough for me but Apple does not allow me to select that GPU.. 16" device with 6 cores, with proper cooling, even without dGPU would suffice me, however there is not an option. As I said, I have to use this thing because of iOS.. Not because I wanted to use..

So you're not going to listen to facts, just claim products are defective because you know what's possible and companies aren't serving your needs, no matter the technical reasons for not meeting your criteria.

Are we talking about a child that shouts out excuses? Why shall we be insterested in why AMD cannot drive a monitor without causing heating?

Then we know neither the MBP 16 nor the HP Spectre x360 would meet your needs, considering that $2000 PC laptop didn't even need to be connected to an external monitor to rev its fans up… opening the Windows 10 Settings page. Ah well, good times.

No, I have a wide range of selection for my PC related stuff.. Most of the 2019 laptops do not ramp up their fans if you clean install and get rid of crapware.. I am writing this on a 2015 era PC laptop and it does not ramp up the fans unless I push the CPU.. Openning settings page? Never caused a ramp up.. I run VM's, simulation software, compile code etc.. The device is mostly silent..

Your choice as a consumer, that's why a marketplace is great. Companies that meet customer needs grow and thrive, those that don't… don't.

I don't agree with that.. Marketing is a big part of "marketplace".. The need is not that much important.. For instance with iPhone I stopped listening music because of cumbersome synching process.. My 2002 Creative mp3 player was uncomparably better than an iPod/iPhone in this regard.. However, people liked shiny things.. Apple knows how to make the things shinny, but not better.. The similar thing is happening with touchbar.. It really distrupts my usage, but people liked it not because of usefullness, but because ofthe cool factor.. The similar is with the Airpods.. They are cool, the idea is nice however the implementation is buggy.. Most of the time connecting a cable to the phone is much easier than connecting an airpods to the device.. Becuase it takes ages, retries.. etc..

Apple has certainly met every need I have with the MBP 16 and I know of many, many others who feel the same, but we'll agree to disagree.

Lucky you. Why do you bother spending time in this discussion unless you have a solution then?

Apple is well aware of this problem. None of the Apple Stores in my area are open, but I will be finishing my trouble ticket shortly after they open.

It seems this is the wrong time for Apple to have this problem, as they make their transition to an ARM-based version of MacOS which will cause everyone to need new software. Maybe this is a good time to transition to an OS where I can use external monitors without my professional laptop unnecessarily heating up due to a poorly designed GPU integration.

[Edited by Moderator]