MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

stefanosky wrote:

In addition, I have a guarantee and Apple is bound to find a solution.

:-)

Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that with Apple. We saw before with the keyboard problems it took several years to acknowledge that and fix it properly in the current gen MBP.

Nevroze wrote:

...

I don't mind the clam-shell mode but

we loose the True Tone on the external monitor in this way, which is a pity.

That sounds like a BUG.

Have you reported that loss to Apple support?

Those settings should be very similar to using:

System Preferences > energy saver ...

[_] Enable graphics switching ... (i.e, use Discrete graphics processor under load and when it seems necessary)

And as you observed, an External display REQUIRES discrete graphics processor.

William Kucharski wrote:

First, if the external display is a 4K or higher resolution device, it is a lot of work.

Second, the other part of my analogy still applies:

If you drive at 25 MPH in an economy car or a 750 HP supercar, which is going to use a lot more gas doing so, despite the fact "all" you are doing is driving 25 MPH down a street? The supercar, by far.

A supercar is inefficient - A MBP 16'' is advertised as being more efficient that the previous generation, not just more powerful! Likewise with the GPU.

Following your vehicle analogy - If a new 2020 RS3 is said to be more efficient than my current 2018 RS3, and I upgraded, and found it used more Petroleum, I would not be happy about it.

This is surprising how different this community is from every other online community - usually people with most rank points provide most useful information. In this thread these are the people who keep repeating that the problem doesn't exist whereas people who are new to the community keep posting possible temporary workarounds to the problem.

I myself was finally able to keep my macbook silent after following some of the advices on this thread: I either stick to 1920x1080 over HDMI or use higher than default refresh over DP. That combined with turboboost off gives me a 45C temp when doing basic stuff. It never goes above 60 even when I play world of tanks.

This is something that I will never understand - how someone can claim that for a powerhouse that has 1920x1200 monitor attached to run fans at 5500rpm while browsing facebook and be 15C cooler and silent while running 3d game on 144hz 2560x1440 is expected behavior. Don't even get me started on 'very helpful' v8 analogies :D

EDIT: Especially when Apple themselves have confirmed this to some of the participants of this thread that they are looking into the ISSUE. Furthermore, at least a handful of members got their computers replaced under WARRANTY. This didn't help, but Apple themselves DO NOT consider this as NORMAL behavior because they wouldn't proceed with warranty claims.

A small ray of sunshine...

I've been emailing CalDigit customer support around two issues related to the 10.15.4 update. They are: CalDigit's firmware update tool no longer works as of 10.15.4, and frequent kernel panics on wake when connected to the CalDigit TS3+ (which only started in 10.15.4). CalDigit recently provided the following update (in relation to the kernel panic):

We just got reminded by our engineer that we have seen this behaviour with several customers on the 16” MacBook Pro which is caused by Apple’s GPU driver. We have contacted Apple regarding this and a fix is in the works. However, due to the COVID-19 situation, this might be a bit delayed. We would recommend to stay updated with macOS as this should be resolved with a new macOS update.

This gives me some cause for hope that Apple is indeed addressing GPU driver issues.

Hooray.

It really is unbelievable how this issue could not be resolved after all this time. From what I read from this thread and others, I first thought that it was an issue regarding tuning of fans in software. However, I also think that if it was fixable in terms of software, Apple would easily embed the fix in one of the Catalina updates, but they just did not... well, which makes me think that, it may not be a pure software issue, but might also be related to hardware also.

The moral of the story is: I am among the people which want to upgrade their Macbook Pro's, but just because of this problem, can't pull the trigger.

I think people love macs because of their ability to stay quiet even in moderate loads, and being virtually silent while casual web browsing. Even my oldish 2015 13 inch Mbp can do it with an external 4K monitor attached, running in scaled resolution.

raimiss wrote:

What happens if you set all your external screens to be 1920x1080 @ 60hz? Maybe for now it would give you slightly stretched view on all of them but 5w power usage and therefore 50C temp. I noticed that fans kick in hard at 70C, so you have like 5C buffer now.

I just tried and it's about the same results, a little bit higher. 65-70°C and 20.5W.

DPJ wrote:

If you're not experiencing such issues with 3 screens plus the MacBook Pro screen open and getting low temps then what is there for you to be annoyed about? I often wonder why you guys read these forums and still buy such a product and then still complain?

I bought the Macbook before finding these threads. There is still too much power draw from the GPU for no good reason and there is still no response from Apple since the issue was reported back 6 months ago.

"I bought the Macbook before finding these threads. There is still too much power draw from the GPU for no good reason and there is still no response from Apple since the issue was reported back 6 months ago."

Then at this point I would highly recommend for you to return it. No reason to keep a product you see as faulty, especially since Apple has not acknowledged such a problem after 6 months. You're certainly not stuck with it since you just received it so you should definitely get a refund and wait for the next model, or find a similarly equipped Windows machine to get the job done.

I'm still testing if this is a real permanent fix, but I think I managed to fix the issue for my setup.

I used to connect my TB3 hub and display port monitor all via one TB3 USB-C cable on the left side of the MacBook Pro.

The hub is still connected that port, but I also connected the original MacBook power adapter to the right side of the MacBook.

This seems to fix temperature issues.

Also I noticed that the temperature went up because of a faulty TimeMachine Backup, which couldn't finish.

I deleted my backup and started a new Time Machine Backup that was able to complete and is now backing up every hour as expected.

Now my idle temperature is at around 67°C and fans at around 2350 rpm or even lower.

Disabling TurboBoost helps keeping the temp low, but is not needed. After temp spikes the fans slow down now and don't stay high.

"My neck is killing me. Apple, get this fixed or pay for my future chiropractor. Such an expensive computer and yet this? Please hurry up and fix this. No problems until I attach it to an external monitor and then the fans go nuts and it heats up greatly)."

If you want to be heard this is the wrong place. This is a community-based forum made up of Mac users only. In a way you're preaching to the choir. Not sure how using an external monitor with your 16" MBP with fan noise is causing you neck strain? Please reach out to Apple Support and voice your concerns. Contact - Official Apple Supportsupport.apple.com › contact

If I can't use the monitor (because when I do, the computer noise is bad, and the heat is bad for the computer), then I'm looking down and not straight ahead at the monitor. That, if you understand English and ergonomics, should have been very clear. Apple support looks at these threads when making decisions. They sometimes even offer ideas on how to fix problems that are brought up on such threads. Hence, yes, preaching to the choir but also to the choir "masters" (using that term lightly of late). And yes, I have been in contact with support.

"If I can't use the monitor (because when I do, the computer noise is bad, and the heat is bad for the computer), then I'm looking down and not straight ahead at the monitor. "

"Apple support looks at these threads when making decisions. "

Looking down at laptops is how everyone uses a laptop by itself. I'm sorry that you're incorrect about Apple Support lurking these forums. They do not. It may appear that way since this is the "Apple Discussions" but it's not a place that Apple lurks to address issues and make decisions from. Please take a look at the forum rules and terms of use. https://discussions.apple.com/terms