MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

William Kucharski wrote:

1. You have unrealistic expectations as to how interactions with Apple Engineering will go.

Basically it's usually:

Apple Engineering reaches out to ask for more data.

2. You provide the data.

You will be thanked and will hear nothing more1. until a fix is announced at some future date.

Apple will not keep you informed, tell you what they are thinking or otherwise reach out to provide updates except maybe to ask you to test a possible fix. That's simply Apple's culture; even other groups within Apple aren't always updated as to what other groups are working on except on a need-to-know basis.

What you call "going MIA" is the way interactions with Apple Engineering work.

Particularly if it's something they can reproduce in-house, there's no need on their part for further interaction.

Thank you for elucidating the way ENGINEERING (in contrast with Apple Support) collects and uses information they collect in VERY UNUSUAL contacts with end-Users. When a User is contacted by Engineering to collect information in this way, it is because users seem to have a unique problem never seen before, and the Engineers do not understand why it should be happening.

Those Engineers (possibly even the original board designers) will now go back to Engineering labs and attempt to reproduce the problems under similar conditions, with half-a-million-dollars worth of instruments and multiple high-powered experts on hand to measure exactly what is happening, and figure out WHY. They may make field trip or ask for additional samples from current production. They may pry the tops off chips and look at them under a microscope. Whatever it takes to find out WHY.

Then the Engineers will need to determine a fix or work-around, and test it thoroughly. This is an open-ended activity, and Users will NOT be notified of its progress.

In cases like this, Users who provided information DO NOT generally hear back directly, EVER. When the Engineers find the problem, the fixes/work-arounds could be anything. These fixes will be integrated into production in ways determined by standard procedures for changes.

The most obscure would be to introduce changes into the design in current production, and possibly issue a silent "Technical Bulletin" such that Users whose Macs exhibit this problem AND are presented for service are to have boards swapped. If all units that exhibit these symptoms are currently user warranty, there may be no separate program at all.

One of the least obscure would that be a software update is issued so that Users whose Macs are kept up-to-date would find their problems lessen after some (unspecified) update.

Occasionally, the only thing that is changed are specifications or instructions, such that certain activities are no longer supported, or must be done is a certain way in future.

Less than a week old 16-in MacBook 8-core i9 here. Fan is on a full speed when I'm not working on anything and the laptop is cool to touch. Did 1+ hour of trouble shoot with apple customer care and now I'm returning the machine for a new one.... I guess this is a common issue with this new laptop.... shame

After my MacBook Pro 16 arrived, I was plagued with loud fans for nearly six minutes after startup, with a subsequent gradual reduction in the noise. The fans then revved up with minimal CPU usage, like just using Safari. Final Cut was max fan noise. This occurred when I had an external monitor attached. It did not happen when operating the laptop without an external display, at least not to a level that attracted my attention.

I also had a problem with daily multiple spontaneous restarts. I received an error message: BAD MAGIC! (flag set in iBoot panic header), no macOS panic log available. When I spoke with Apple Support about this, the rep said that I could have a “corrupt installation” (his exact words) and suggested that I reinstall OS 10.15.2—but using Internet Recovery, rather than the MacBook’s recovery partition.

So I did the following:

I installed Temperature Gauge Pro so I could follow the CPU temps and fan speeds. (iStat X did not work.) I noticed that my login items (DropBox, OneDrive, Creative Cloud) set off the fans. I turned off “login at startup” for them and the initial period of loud fan noise was tremendously improved.

I reset the SMC.

I reinstalled the OS using Internet Recovery. I did not reformat. It took around 45 minutes. My files, passwords, etc. were unaffected.

I have not had a spontaneous restart since reinstalling the OS on 12/24. The fan noise has improved greatly. Even after allowing DropBox, OneDrive and Creative Cloud to load at startup again, I get maybe 15 seconds of soft 3500 RPM noise rather than the loud several minutes of over 5200 RPM noise that I got previously at startup. There is no fan noise surfing or watching YouTube in Safari. When transcoding a 4.5 minute clip in FCP, I can hear the fans after approximately two minutes but they never reach max level—they briefly hit 5000 out of 5600 and then subside. If I eliminate DropBox, OneDrive and Creative Cloud at startup again, the max fan speed while transcoding in FCP is around 4000.

Maybe this is effective only if you received the Bad Magic error code. But it only took 50 minutes to turn off the login items, reset the SMC and reinstall the OS, and there was no downside. Maybe it’s worth a try. My MacBook Pro 16 is now the machine I hoped it would be. Good luck.

C.

Today I received a response from the support service after providing the program data " Capture_Data.dmg". Apple engineers didn't see a problem in my situation. Fans running at 3500 speed with minimal load (Safari tab playing youtube videos, advertising macbook pro 16) for them was within normal limits. Apple will not make any corrections to the current situation today. This makes me very sad, I return my MBP tomorrow.

Hello,

just like others I have had issues with loud fans while MacBook was connected to 4K external screen (it also gets loud while I do my work - frontend development 😀).

My configuration is base model:

2,6 GHz 6-core Intel Core i7

16 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

AMD Radeon Pro 5300M 4 GB

Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

I tried to swith off True tone and suddenly I can watch Youtube without that loud fans. Now it is dead silent (except while I do something else), but before it got loud while only browsing the web.

It is so much better now. You can hear them now and then, but it is much better.

Hope it helps you too.

Just bought the base i7 16' partly because of this thread (seems like the i9s are worse), but I'm hoping that the fans on this one is fine.

There has been a steady decline in the polish of Apple's products (software and hardware) imo. Catalina was not ready when it was shipped, and it's like nobody at Apple really cares.... Also, I bemoan the inability to downgrade these MacBooks to a previous version of the OS. Thats not good Apple.

Thanks

[Edited by Moderator]

I have the same problem but only when I have an external monitor connected to my new MacBook Pro 16 i9 with AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB, I also have an 2018 and 2019 MacBook Pro 15-inch with similar specs and I have no problem with those machines, it seems to be a problem related to the MacBook Pro 2019 16-inch with i9, I think it's a software issue and not a hardware issue but we'll have to wait until Apple acknowledges the issue. I called Apple support yesterday and they told me they don't know about this issue and they told me to reinstall MacOS (it didn't fix the problem). I hope they come out with a solution soon because I really like this new MacBook Pro but if they don't fix it soon I will return it and I will have to go back to the MacBook Pro 15-inch.

Does anyone who is having the noise problem uses combination of the process Core i9 & AMD Radeon Pro 5300M with 4GB of GDDR6 memory graphics?

Just want to double check if this graphic setting makes no difference

yes, this is also the one I tried on three machines and they all have the issue. However, I read a comment on in a similar conversation like the one we are having here, and he claims that when he downgraded the graphic card to "AMD Radeon Pro 5300M" he is having better experience; so I am trying to see if his case is an outlier or it is really the graphic card we have is the culprit

Undoubtedly the higher performance graphics card generates more heat, and it generates more when driving an external monitor.

Driving an external monitor is also what would sometimes cause MacBook (not Pro) laptops to go into thermal shutdown when performing heavy graphics operations.

Yes they can generate more heat but not when they are closed and in sleep mode, my MacBook Pro 16-inch was closed and in sleep mode with the external monitor cable connected and when I came back after a few hours the fans were running at 3500 RPM and the machine was really hot. I also have a MacBook Pro 15-inch 2019 with the Vega 20 and I never had that problem before and I also had the MacBook Pro 15-inch 2018 and I never had that problem either so it's definitely a problem with the new MacBook Pro 16-inch, so it's either the i9 processor or the AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB, hopefully it's just a software issue that they can fix soon. So far the only solution I found (it's a pain in the as.....) is to disconnect the monitor cable every time I put the machine to sleep.

Same here, the problem is when you have an external monitor connected to the new MacBook Pro 16-inch, if you disconnect the cable the machine will cool down and the fans will go back to normal operation.