MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

romain89 wrote:

Hey guys, I've found an hilarious thing that stops the fan noise, temporarily though.

Which makes complete sense; when activating Siri, the Mac momentarily spins down the fans so it can hear you better.

Having the same problem; I have got no intention and possibility to update to 5600/M1 model. There is even no Apple Store in my country, closest one in thousands of kms. I can't use my external monitor most of the times, usual tasks doesn't require much power, so drawing it, with dGPU turned in, just to draw a bunch of pixels is not an option for me. There are people here that don't believe that problem is present, but it is. May Apple do a single decent thing, regarding this question, and Mail the 16-inch owners when the problem is resolved, if ever, and not make us check those threads every time, filling ourselves with disappointment again and again.

itunestux wrote:

And shows the level of noise of the fans is too high. Still no defect fixing. We‘re all still waiting.

Enjoy that wait; it's pretty clear at this point it's probably working as designed.

Whether you want to try alternative display adapters and such is up to you.

Accepting the missing design or software defect is not the right way. However, maybe there wont be a fix provided - it remains a defect. As long as it is not proven working right a bug can be assumed.

itunestux wrote:

As long as it is not proven working right a bug can be assumed.

It is working right. If it wasn't it would be quiet, overheating, and shutting down. Does this not make sense? this is why Apple came up with the M1. There is no other way around it when using the latest and greatest from Intel. People were upset that Apple was always up with the latest generation of Intel CPU, but then they did and now their upset because the fans work harder. The same thing is happening on the Windows side too. I see all kinds of Youtube videos showing the loudness of fans on windows trying to keep the temperature down on laptops.

estebani wrote:

The overheating issue in the MBP 16 is caused by the eGPU. At least read the thread before going full fanboy.

dGPU, not eGPU.

If you're going to attack others to try to belittle them, at least get the terms right.

urs112 wrote:

Yes. Bought it in 2019, with 64 GB of memory and 4TB HD. As I am not doing any graphics intensive work, I decided against the 5500 and hey, the Apple 30" Cinema HDs worked fine for me all the while

How are you connected to your 30" Cinema Display?

When I connected to my 30" Cinema Display using a TB to MDP adapter, my fans didn't even spin up.

I bet so many people on this thread would love to have an option to order that special edition computer that you got William. While everyone else's 16" macs spin up fans when opening browser, your never does even when performing demanding tasks. Definitely doesn't sound sketchy. Well but it doesn't seem that apple will be fixing this defect. The best case scenario is their statement 2 years later that "a small percentage of people were suffering an issue" lol.

Despite your admonitions, others have been able to reproduce the same results using a TB to MDP adapter, because HDMI requires the VRAM to be driven at full speed to avoid flicker even if it wouldn't otherwise need to be.

Oh, and this "special edition" computer wasn't even ordered from Apple's web site, it was bought off the shelf at an Apple retail store.

So who wants to try that TB to MDP adapter (difficult to find by the way) and finally see that it seems to work with one screen, then buying another adapter to try the second screen and finally see that the same effect happens, that's to say fans ramping up max?

I recommend to try the USB to HDMI or DP adapter also used to compensate the lack of possible external displays for the M1 MacBook Air. These USB to HDMI act like graphic cards and work for usual stuff - and are completely silent. MacBook does not start the dGPU and the fans remain silent.

Please, may you elaborate, you seem the have the right solution for me. Do you mean USB-C to HDMI/DP adapter or what? I have a USB-C hub that includes HDMI, but when I plug external monitor through it, dGPU still turns on and consumes much more power on idle than it should have

romain89 wrote:

So who wants to try that TB to MDP adapter (difficult to find by the way)

There are literally dozens available on Amazon.

This is the one I use, a whole $18.99; I'm sure many others would work just as well as would various USB-C docks.

Yes, the system reports the dGPU is using 19w, but despite that my fans never went above 2500 RPM even after playing full screen HD video on the external monitor for an hour while surfing this forum on the built-in screen.

I saw the same behavior on a Dell U2717D and an Apple 30" Cinema Display (when connected to the Cinema Display using a MDP to Dual-Link DVI adapter.)

Good Day, William.

Do you believe that drawing 19w of power just to draw a bunch of pixels is okay for a laptop?

Don't you think that is just HAS to be okay to be able use the external monitor without drawing so much power to be transferred into heat? Yeah, some people would say that the laptop is designed in such a way, ant it acts as it suppose to act. However, if it is true, then why can't one blame the company for a poor design and lack of prudence?

The user above (itunestux) seems to have a real solution, in which external monitor doesn't invoke the activation of a dGPU.

Yes - it's using the amount of power it needs to for the dGPU to drive VRAM at a rate AMD feels is necessary to avoid flicker.

Note the dGPU may draw up to 50w.

GDDR6 VRAM is known to draw a fair amount of power, but it's less expensive to implement; this is one of the reasons AMD went with HBM2 VRAM on the 5600M GPU, which allows that GPU to use less power but it's more expensive.

There's always a cost/power trade-off with high-end GPUs, and the 5300M and 5500M were the fastest AMD Radeon Pro GPUs available when the MBP 16 first shipped.