MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

iTech23 it is possible to steer the power consumption. Defective an/or very poor designed software in steering the GPU results in that consumption. Try SwitchResX to define the optimal usage of power. Said that it is obvious that the design of the combination of the components with the implemented drivers is not recommended for external displays. In particular not for external displays when in battery mode as with the unnecessarily high power consumption will limit the presentation significantly. I recommend to switch to an eGPU $$, an USB to HDMI or USB to DP adapter $ or to wait and hope for the presentation next week. However, I do not see signals the defects are going to be fixed from Apple for this type.

AMD believes that avoiding flicker is more important than power consumption and has designed their drivers accordingly. You disagree but that doesn't make their design "poor."

Nor does design criteria other than what you consider important make them a "defect."

I won’t be able to convince those here who believe it’s a defect or poor design.

All I can do is provide details as to why design decisions were made from other sources and data showing that “all” machines do not in fact do what is claimed “just by connecting an external monitor.”

The MBP 16 is still a wonderful machine and I would have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone who wanted one (in a qualified manner, I would consider getting the Radeon Pro 5600M a no-brainer now because of its performance alone), pending any announcements coming next week.

In this thread Geekbench results without power consumption / fan speed / heat is not of real use. No one complains about the performance. It is about the noise produced by the fans when external displays are attached. I do not even speak about the battery performance when used with external displays in presentations.

The two things that bothers me about the Pro model - Apple you need to listen to this - is lack of USB ports. First, Due to space being locked in at purchase I edit video on an external SSD. If I'm plugged into power, and mostly likely you are if you are editing video, you use one port for that and one port for the SSD. Where do you plug in your dongle for reading the camera card? You would have to be constantly switching.

The second concern is lack of displays.

https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-13/specs/

The video section says we are limited to one external display:

• "One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz"

That is a problem for many pro users. You may as well stick with the Air and save the money if you are limited to one.

davidsadowski wrote:

...

I've looked at specs and must say am a bit disappointed how little differences is between the new Air and Pro such as both have only two USB-C ports (not a very pro thing), same native and external screen resolutions, no difference really in cores if one upgrades Air to 512GB SSD plus other not very insignificant to me improvements to sound and battery.

...

We don't have units to test, but many have been complaining on this thread, Apple uses TWO methods to control temperatures:

The first is speeding up the fans, and in some cases this will move them from 'silent', through 'audible' and on to 'annoying' and beyond.

The second is by controlling clock speed and using software measures such as forcing it to stay in kernel_task, doing very little that generates additional heat.

Punchline:

My guess is that the difference in the M1 MacBook Air will be that it will use All the well-known software methods to slow down and generate less heat when it starts to get hot. So it will APPEAR as less capable, but only when stressed. Whether Geekbench and similar testing is sophisticated enough to notice the difference remains to be seen.

Of course guys. It's a HARDWARE problem. The graphic card generates too much heat when used.

If it was a software issue, Apple would have solved the problem easily in weeks.

Whenever there is a software issue, Apple solves it very quickly...

Nomatter Big Sur, or whatever, it will stay the same.

I think the only software fix apple could do, is under clocking the graphic card to makes it use less power ? We can always dream, they will probably never do it either...

romain89 wrote:

Of course guys. It's a HARDWARE problem. The graphic card generates too much heat when used.

I know that software can’t generate heat. But since some people had success by slightly adjusting the refresh frequency of their display (using software, not hardware) I was hoping that this is a driver issue that could have been fixed with the new OS.

silvann wrote:

Same here. No change, still ~19W for the GPU under macOS Big Sur.

I and others have explained why this is typically the case; AMD requires the GDDR6 VRAM to be driven at full speed by default to avoid possible flicker, and that takes a lot of power.

It's not surprising it hasn't changed because that fundamental fact hasn't gone away.

However, depending upon the connection methodology, that 19w apparently does not necessarily induce high fan speeds.

Just bringing some awareness to the community that the new M1 Air and 13" Pro can drive the internal monitor and

"One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz" [1, 2].

[1] https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/

[2] https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-13/specs/

Thanks for posting that.

this is the one that makes that picture even more interesting:

https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs/

Because the M1 Mini also supports a second display up to 4K over its built-in HDMI port (but maybe Not over ThunderBolt?)

The Big Question was whether you could close the clamshell on the M1 MacBook Air or the M1 MacBook Pro 13 and connect a second display (in place of the built-in).

My current guess is NO, because there is not enough ThunderBolt bandwidth to support it, and those models have no direct HDMI out.

Apple's specs are pretty clear that it only supports one external display at a resolution of up to 6K.

No, it doesn't specify what speed the fans will be running at while doing so.

I can't imagine the fanless MacBook Air would do as well in that same scenario.

Whatever software or driver changes they made on Big Sure is horrible for the Macbook Pro 16-inch, now the fans run at 5000 RPM with a single program open, same program using 10.15.4 fans were running at 2000 RPM, (2500 RPM worst case scenario).

The new Logic Pro X 10.6 update has a similar problem. Now no matter what I do, any combination of external display connected and the fans go to full blast. I’m still on Catalina 10.15.7 so it’s not only Big Sur.

Totally unacceptable for a professional audio machine.

I'm getting seriously loud fans on my MBP 16" and I'm not even using an external monitor. Is this normal?

Honestly if I'd have known about these fans I would've sent it back but it's too late now. My missus looks at me like I'm an idiot for spending £4k on a laptop that can't even browse the internet without sounding like it's going to take off. Absolute joke, not happy.