MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

Steve wasn’t editing multiple streams of 4K video, either.

If you want a fanless laptop, Apple offers those as well.

If you want the most powerful laptop Apple has ever sold, the MBP 16 is available, and once again, unless it shuts down due to heat, the thermal design is working properly.

"It’s like saying a 1993 Corvette and a 2020 Corvette should behave the same way."

You're right they shouldn't! The new machine should behave much better than the previous!

The point is that the Apple blurb is telling us all about new thermal design and increased efficiencies, so people have expectations that follow this and its not something we are experiencing here.

Considering your analogy, the 1993 Corvette should be louder and less powerful.

Isn't that what anyone would expect? To get better performance without lowering exhaust pressure?

When these machines are not taxed, they should make less noise than their predecessors. I understand that if I run the machine at redline (if I am racing in a Corvette or rendering video on a computer) it should be louder, but not if I am just browsing the web, plugging in an external monitor, or if it is just in screen saver mode with an external monitor attached.

The 2020 Corvette should be quieter than the 1993, especially around town, and have much better power.

If you think this issue is expected behavior, then why are you here? If you think this is expected behavior, then why are you disagreeing with us?

Don't be that guy.

The fact is that this new 16in Macbook pro has a lot of good stuff going for it but there are issues that a lot of people are complaining about for good reason and hopefully we will get to the bottom of it at some point soon.

[Edited by Moderator]

I don't expect they would work the same, it should work much BETTER, especially when advertised about new thermal design, which by the look looks more or less the same with that 20% more surface.

Editing 4k video? I didnt get to that yet at all, that's the problem. I do1080p screencast, I was looking forward to not be needing removing background noise from the fans, but it's actually about the same if not worse. Or you are telling me this computers are not meant for this?

I'm having an overheating problem just by browsing the web!!! not editing or compiling anything!!

I still think it's a software issue, because doing exactly the same thing sometimes the machine works fine for 1 hour before starting to overheat and sometimes is just 30 minutes or less, so hopefully is something in the code that triggers this issue, maybe is just a bug or maybe is what Grant Bennet mentioned about removing throttling in these Macs, whatever the problem is I really hope they fix it soon.

[Edited by Moderator]

Yes - let's all be hopeful. :) Wasn't it just the 2018 that launched with power management issues? Apparently, it wasn't happening on the laptops the engineers had, so they had to rely on a customer's laptop to solve the issue, which turned out to be software interacting with the latest Intel chip's power management features.

iTech23 wrote:

I'm having an overheating problem just by browsing the web!!!

Using an external monitor?

I use mine with the internal display to browse the web, do compiles and edit photos and I never hear a fan.

I don't check the temperatures on it because I don't care.

krisbal wrote:

I was looking forward to not be needing removing background noise from the fans, but it's actually about the same if not worse. Or you are telling me this computers are not meant for this?

I'm not aware that these were advertised as "silent" machines.

There's nothing stopping these computers from doing whatever you want them to, people are not happy that the fans are running while they do it.

That's pretty much par for the course for super powerful laptops.

dcristof wrote:

but not if I am just browsing the web, plugging in an external monitor, or if it is just in screen saver mode with an external monitor attached.

It rather depends on the external monitor; if it's a resolution that is anything over HD I would expect it to take a lot of horsepower to repaint the monitor in 4K or 5K mode.

There's also the fact that the CPU is running at full speed while you're browsing the web, and let's not pretend that browsing the web isn't one of the more processor intensive tasks a computer can do today, given most web pages have animation and video embedded on them.

Regardless, unless the CPU idles down several power states, it's still throwing off heat whether it's calculating a 3D model or just "idle."

TailsDog wrote:

The point is that the Apple blurb is telling us all about new thermal design and increased efficiencies, so people have expectations that follow this and its not something we are experiencing here.

New thermal design to handle all the extra heat the new processor and GPU release while doing normal things.

William Kucharski wrote:

New thermal design to handle all the extra heat the new processor and GPU release while doing normal things.

Why would it produce extra heat, more than before doing normal things? The point is these new GPUs are meant to be more efficient and consume less power than before but they aren't so somewhere, hardware or software, there is a fault and that should be fixed somehow.

6 years ago I could plug a macbook pro in to an external monitor, watch some video and do some normal tasks and there was no issues if I did some rendering or complex CPU or GPU intensive tasks the unit would get hot fans spin and at some point there would be throttling and that was understandable and it's still acceptable today.

If you're not bringing anything helpful to this thread why are you even bothering?

Faster processors, faster GPUs generate more heat.

Perhaps less than prior generations but still a substantial amount.

If you feel I am not being helpful that’s your prerogative, but certainly most people realize as speeds and capabilities go up, more heat is generated.

For example, a CPU may be more power efficient running at the same speed as an older, slower processor, but running at top speed, not so much.

A GPU may not draw as much power as an older one when painting a 1920x1080 screen but will likely draw more when repainting in 4K or 5K.

Finally I would rather a computer always run at top speed and run the fans as fast as possible to cool the machine than throttle, ever, but that’s my priority; yours may be different.

TailsDog wrote:

Why would it produce extra heat, more than before doing normal things?

6 years ago I could plug a macbook pro in to an external monitor, watch some video and do some normal tasks and there was no issues

Extra Heat:

These are not the same processor used before. These utilize a separate massively fast-and-hot Memory/IO-controller part that is required to decode memory addresses larger than 16GB, the previous MacBook Pro limit. This heat is generated at all times, even when idle. And More RAM memory than ever before generates more heat as well, even when idle.

The other issue is that Apple Engineers have boldly removed Thermal Throttling. Any background task that worked too hard doing un-needed things (like anti-Virus scanners or DropBox file syncing USED to get throttled by having its priority lowered. Without throttling, that does not happen any more, so "ordinary" background things that used to be "no worries" now are free to go crazy, and crank up the fans. These sorts of processes are slightly throttled by their need to do I/O, but the SSD drives are faster than ever as well.

suggested experiments: run a plain vanilla MacOS image with no third-party add-ons, or run in Safe Mode, so that only Apple processes (and few of them)are launched automatically. ¿Fans still too loud?

6 years ago external displays:

At that time it was impossible to run a display as large as the 4K displays we now take for granted. Each doubling of the screen size quadruples the number of pixels required. If you are also using "32-bit color", the number of bits for each pixel pixels grows from 8-8-8 to 10-10-1, a six bits per pixel increase times the number of pixels on the screen.

If you use "legacy" interfaces like HDMI, the entire screen is refreshed every 60th or 30th second, generating still more heat, because it all has to be fetched and rasterized again for each interval.

suggested experiments: set the resolution of your external display to HD 1920 by 1080, and be certain that you are using only 24-bit color and DisplayPort family connections. ¿Fans still too loud?

You are giving misinformation.

This is a thread regarding abnormal heat produced in certain conditions when using an external monitor.

I believe you have no experience with this issue because as you have mentioned yourself you do not use an external monitor.