MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

For those wondering why the history is not showing anything it's because you have to leave it sit open and it creates a history.

@MB

Something not right there. I think the driver and/or hardware could be causing that. Are you completely up-to-date with MacOS?

In the picture above I have both Safari and Chrome playing that page at the same time. You can see it does test the graphics out a little more but still not at 100% and the fans are still not ramping up. As soon as I scrolled away (or closed the tab) the GPU usage went right back down to pretty much nothing as expected.

OK i see you need to leave it open and then it starts recording. So i'm seeing spikes to 100% when on the Apple-16 page video section, yours is more of a consistent ramp up and doesn't seem to go above 50%, yes? I guess the question is why is it doing that.

I have just tested on the viewing of pages in Chrome and noticed that if the page has any animation or DOM renderer, the peaks are 0-100. There is no half-value or otherwise. And as soon as this happens, the fans are gradually gaining momentum. In addition, the CPU time does not correspond to the GPU time.

I tried your suggestion and the drivers seem to handle the video loop better since the GPU is not going 100% just for a video loop but unfortunately the machine still gets hot and after a few minutes the fans go up (you can see in the image that the fans were at 2800 RPM and going up), I don't think a simple video loop should make this Pro machine that hot. Hopefully it's a driver issue and this is not the final revision.

Then I tried the same with the other version and the GPU goes immediately to 100% when the video loop starts.

I just updated to 10.15.4, unfortunately they didn't fix the issue, the machine was running perfectly fine, the fans were at 1800 RPM until I connected the external monitor, 3 minutes later the machine was going crazy, 4200 RPM and going up just by browsing the web.

Now is running worse than before!

Back on page 87, I mentioned my AMD Radeon Pro 5500M was going from 0 to 100% in a spiking fashion with very little in-between. Both my first and my replacement 16" MBP exhibited this behavior, (as well as by many others on this forum.)

After updating to 10.15.4, my activity monitor is now showing 'normal' behavior! That said, I still get temperatures rising quickly and accelerated fan noise when connected to my LG Ultrafine 5k. At least it feels like a bit of progress to normalize the GPU behavior. (I also noticed that the graphics card driver info hasn't changed since the update. Still at EFI Driver Version: 01.01.190.)

(I'm running a zoom video conference and a few idle chrome tabs during this image capture. System running at 68c according to iStats.)

I attached a screenshot, this was taken 5 minutes ago while I was writing my previous message, as you can see the machine was at 92 degrees and the fans were at 4200 RPM, imagine if I decided to work on something else while I was writing that message (compile a program with Xcode for example.....)

I know many of you are having problems with your MBP. I really think there is a problem with some of these computers.

If you've read the thread you would know that my computer does not experience the issues that others are having. I have done some testing to help, but I don't think it has solved it for everyone.

There is certainly some that do not have the problems. Today I exported an hour long video from FCPx. I pushed the processors and fans as hard as I could for the entire export. It finished the 4k processing in less than 20 minutes. The max temperature half way through the export, when it was running the hardest was 78

The radeon high side stayed at 30Watts+ the entire time. The processors and fans worked properly with external display and dual 4k.

Within 1 minute of finishing exporting the video the temperature dropped to 52 degrees and then the fans quieted down to silent. The system went from 90watts+ down to 27W. Would you consider this normal? I would.

Is it possible there is something installed that's common between all of these computers with problems, causing the fans and trigger unexpectedly? Does this happen on absolutely clean system (no users, no software other than the OS, utilities, apps, etc.)?

If you are experiencing the spikes in the GPU history I think there is a defect on those machines and I think that proves it.

Yesterday I had some extra time so I decided to do a little test, I manually adjusted the fans to stay at minimum speed , I used the computer like I normally do with an external monitor connected to browse the web for 2 hours and the machine never went over 70 degrees. If I do the same without manually adjusting the speed of the fans, the fans will go to 3000 RPM or more and the machine will still get the same temperature, so maybe the problem is that Apple didn't optimize macOS to work with the new MacBook Pro 16-inch and when it sees a high wattage usage the fans start to go fast even if it's not necessary.

You can check the screenshot, the machine was always at 63 degrees while browsing the web with the fans running at minimum speed.

If your car is driving, but your backwards gear doesnt work, i guess its all good, its not defective right, because the car is still moving? So it works good without monitor, but they have a picture with 2x 6k monitors on their webpage, that then is false advertising?

[Edited by Moderator]

HI,

I made some easy tests in idle mode (6 and 4 minutes). The first screenshot is while lid was closed the second one while both screens were working (FHD, HMDI connection). Yesterday I was playing COD MW Warzone mode with MSI Afterburner and OSD on. Average temp. of GPU and CPU were approx. 75 degrees after 10-15 minutes of play (in bootcamp of course). I will make some tests with screenshots also.

Hi @Grant. I have only one 4k external display. It has both HDMI and DisplayPort interfaces. When connected via the CalDigit TS3+, I use the DisplayPort interface. When I am experimenting with the USB-C to HDMI 2.0 cable, I am obviously using the HDMI interface. When using DisplayPort via the CalDigit, I have no reason to believe there is any funny business going on: the monitor shows up in System Information as a DisplayPort device.

For curiosity, I have ordered a TB3 to DisplayPort cable so that I can experiment with a direct connection to the DisplayPort interface to see if it makes any difference. I am not holding my breath for a quick delivery...

For completeness, here is my usual setup. The monitor is an LG 27UD58 (27" UHD LED IPS FREESYNC).

I think I have found an obvious workaround so I can work on my MBP with the lid open and use an external monitor so I can have 2 screens other than sidecar; my AppleTV.

I stole my AppleTV 4K from my family and moved it to my office, set up and now am running with two monitors (my UHD Samsung is at 1080p but it is much better than nothing or the noise) and it is now running at 0.06W for Radeon High Side for the last hour.

Probably going to bite the bullet for another AppleTV; it is irritating but I love not hearing my fans at all and that is where I am with this. I would definitely be using this when recording driving ProTools or Logic in the studio; it looks like I may have more time for my hobbies these days.

TailsDog, not sure if you have an AppleTV, but it works really well. I have turbo boost back on and after an hour of work with the virtual machine on two monitors, the fans are still silent. It is working as it does disconnected from the monitor.

See the screenshot of iStats for Radeon High Side (0.06 Watts) and fans under 2000., which is dead silent.

In my case I was able to get the machine working with an external monitor by going to system preferences -> Displays -> Scaled (when you click on Scaled you need to hold the Option key), then I selected the "Show low resolution modes" and I choose 144 Hertz (I didn't change the resolution just the refresh rate, the resolution is 3840 X 1080).

It was on 60 Hertz by default but as soon as I changed it to 144 Hertz the machine got really quiet (fans at 1850 RPM) and now it stays at 40 degrees most of the time and the Radeon is now using 7 watts. I had an issue when I used Quicktime for a screen recording, the machine immediately went crazy, fans full blast and the Radeon was using almost 35 watts (way more than before). So I think this is definitely a driver/software issue, other than than now I can use the machine like I've been using all my previous MacBook Pro.