MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

I could see a situation where the GPU actually has to work harder to drive a 60 Hz monitor than a 160 Hz monitor if 160 Hz is closer to the native speed at which its clock drives the VRAM and the slower 60 Hz rate requires multiple refresh cycles to be sent to the VRAM so the image can render properly.

I could also see the situation where that could happen, but you are stating that this is expected behavior. And your whole communication is based on the fact that it's the expected path even though you yourself admit that it's an edge case. Furthermore, you expect everyone to take your WORD for it, because you can't provide any evidence that it was designed that way and operates as expected.

If it's drawing content, I don't care if it takes 1w or 100w, if it displays what it is supposed to.

And here we go again - you openly admit that you simply ignore the fact that it's less energy efficient (aka worse in that regard) so that you can keep saying "it's not broken" when it clearly is. No one here says that it's not displaying something (except people who see GPU artifacts), but the whole point of the thread is that it's inefficient (compared to both older hardware and itself if ran in high FPS modes) which causes excessive heat and therefore fans kicking in. Fans are expected to kick in at certain temp and that system works as it was designed, but the fact that computer gets to those temps while doing no work is clear evidence of it being inefficient and broken.

@brycesteiner - it totally makes sense :) Moving drone forward = reduce power to at least 1 of the motors while increasing power to the others. It's probably non-linear power to rpm curve of the motor. Meaning that to get from 0 rpm to 1000rpm it might take x amount of watts, but to go from 1000 rpm to 2000 rpm it might take half of that. This mac does not exhibit same behavior - it uses least amount of power when idling compared to when it's doing some work. It's just that on low refresh and idling it uses 4x more power than on high refresh + running video game.

raimiss wrote:

I could also see the situation where that could happen, but you are stating that this is expected behavior. And your whole communication is based on the fact that it's the expected path even though you yourself admit that it's an edge case. Furthermore, you expect everyone to take your WORD for it, because you can't provide any evidence that it was designed that way and operates as expected.

You can't provide any evidence that is isn't, and that's the key.

You keep saying because it is using power the way it does, it's broken.

All I have been saying is you have no proof of that.

I don't have proof that it is designed to operate that way, but you are the one making the assertion that it is "clearly broken" because it's working in a manner contrary to how you expect it to while it's not working in a manner contrary to what it was advertised to do nor is it failing to meet its specifications in any way.

It's as simple as that, I'm not asking you to accept anything.

And here we go again - you openly admit that you simply ignore the fact that it's less energy efficient (aka worse in that regard) so that you can keep saying "it's not broken" when it clearly is.

Again.

Based upon what?

Please tell me where it's listed that the AMD Radeon Pro 5000M series will always under every circumstance draw less power than its predecessors did under the same circumstances.

It does have a lower TGP than its predecessors, so in that way, it is more "efficient," but that doesn't mean it draws less power all the time.

…but the whole point of the thread is that it's inefficient (compared to both older hardware and itself if ran in high FPS modes) which causes excessive heat and therefore fans kicking in. Fans are expected to kick in at certain temp and that system works as it was designed, but the fact that computer gets to those temps while doing no work is clear evidence of it being inefficient and broken.

It's a much more powerful GPU than ever before that so you can't say that it's broken. I have used the example before that if you are going 20 MPH a large V12 engine will consume more fuel than a tiny four cylinder turbocharged engine will for that particular task, however if hauling 3,000 lbs of payload up a hill the turbocharged engine may in fact use more fuel in that circumstance than the V12, making the V12 more efficient for that task.

I don't get where "inefficiency" compared to what you expect, not what was advertised, in any way means "broken."

And here we go again. So you ask evidence for expected behavior (clearly 1000+ people expected that) and you won't provide any to support opinion based on the possibility of edge cases and supported by 10 or so users on this board? Logic.

Let's just all agree to ignore common sense and accept that:

1) GPU is expected to draw 4x more energy when doing 2.5x less work.

2) GPU that can output much better performance at 50w compared is EXPECTED to use reach 50% of its power rating when idling. All previous generations of same manufacturer would use 5-10% of that.

Based upon what?

The fact that it can perform 2.5x more work while drawing 4x less energy.

You can't provide any evidence that is isn't, and that's the key.

Oh it's physics. I guess that no longer counts for anything ;)

It's as simple as that, I'm not asking you to accept anything.

Of course you arn't :). You just keep posting that it's not broken "for fun", not expecting anyone to accept that as truth :)

I won't post anything more on this thread ;)

[Edited by Moderator]

"I am more than happy to accept that if you provide some evidence. If not, i'll just stick to basic physics and call that broken. "

How about you providing some facts for the blanket statement you made saying, "no modern cpu will shut itself down because of heat even if ran without the fan. "

See you want me to prove my personal experience with my own Macintosh, I don't have to do that here. But I would gladly do it as soon as ALL of these people popping up with new forum accounts spewing words saying, "My 16" is OVERHEATING, yada yada yada". You don't ask them for proof and neither do I. You seem to gladly trust what they say. But it's different when you're making industry-wide technical statements that are 100% factually untrue.

jc_9 wrote:

• Once upon a time, the Macbook Pro 16" was released announcing better thermals than previous generation

Which indeed, it has:

Apple Insider: Putting the 16-inch MacBook Pro's thermal management to the test

It would be really nice if someone with a computer hardware engineering background would chime in answering these 2 questions:

Is this a bug and can it be software-fixed?

There are precisely two groups of people who can answer that:

1. Apple engineers, who are not allowed to tell you
2. AMD engineers, who are not allowed to tell you

Also, as much as I want to know what comes out of this thread, is there a way to unsubscribe to the emails?

There is a bug at present where you cannot easily unfollow a thread.

If you really want to invest some time, this approach (written for Safari) does work, but it may take several minutes:

1. At the top of this page, click on the black check-marked "Following" box and it will change to white and will read "Follow"
2. Press ⌘-R to Reload the page
3. If "Following" is in black, repeat starting at step 1; if it remains a white box reading "Follow" you have successfully unsubscribed from this thread

"I tried William's suggestion to unsubscribe but I'm caught in a infinite loop trying to!"

You can try a couple of other options. You can also unsubscribe at the bottom of your emails so you no longer receive emails from Apple that you're not expecting or you can simply train the junk mail filter to move them to junk.

I will have to disagree with you, a product definition by the Oxford English Dictionary is: “a thing or person that is the result of an action or process”, it’s definitely an Apple product since Apple developed the website, is not a product for sale, but still a product from Apple.

Have a good day.

Ok, you win. It is a product.

However, the resources available for repairs and enhancements are limited. There is a long list of things senior contributors have already suggested for repairs and improvements, and I am pretty sure that one has already been nominated for fixing.

I feel like as a software engineer by profession who moonlights in video editing I am an ideal cross section for your typical MacBook Pro user and my number 1 issue bar none has been the sheer loudness of the fans.

If what you say is true I'm genuinely surprised Apple has not found it to be the absoloute top priority falling under an absolote top priority, it is the only glaring fault in an otherwise superb machine but it sours every aspect of it all on its own.

I remember returning my gigabyte aero 15 from some years back for having loud fans when connected to external displays and it wasn't this loud.

denizcan wrote:

It's so annoying that my 2015 gaming laptop creates a lot less noise than MBP16.. Does Apple use their products in house?

By the hundreds of thousands, including many tens of thousands of MBP16s, most of them connected to external monitors during the day.

I have always hypothesized that DisplayPort displays (and cousins Thunderbolt-display and USB-C-display) had the potential for improvement, while HDMI displays, not so much.

I was fishing for more information for any different behavior in MacOS 10.15.5 released Tuesday, 26 May 2020.

One thing that I have noticed with 10.15.5 is when i put the computer to sleep it continues to use power.

I will pull my MBP out of my backpack at 8 pm after leaving work at 5pm and it will be warm. The battery will be down to 79% when it was 100% at 5pm. By morning it would be at 50%. I did not have this issue with 10.15.4 and earlier. I tried the first stage of SMC reset but it didn't seem to do much for that issue.

I saw this video as well but decided to try it nevertheless. I don't mind if the device is using its fans when it's busy like in the video, but the noise with low or medium workloads is something I cannot tolerate.

@tchino in April