MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

So, even if William is not very open to change his mind, I followed his advice and used the following setup :

• Display Port to USB-C cable (this is supported by my AOC 2K monitor)
• It is an "8K" ready version (DP 1.4) - a bit more expansive but preferred the high end one
• Turbo boost switcher to switch off Turbo Boost on CPU
• Display port connection on the right, power on the left

With this, I am currently between 2500 and 3000 RPM on my fans doing standard tasks (not CPU consuming), and even if it is still audible, it remains acceptable. Still need to check how it behaves on Zoom calls or equivalent, but already better than with HDMI cable.

I still think Apple and/or AMD are to blame in this poor integration and temperature handling for a machine at this price, but as I cannot return it anymore (took me too long to discover this issue) this workaround is better than nothing...

There is another possible "issue" going on in these Macs, that may be under-appreciated.

The SSD drive is really fast. Maybe too fast. Read speeds of over 2500 M Bytes/sec, and write speeds of over 2800 M Bytes/sec.

There are many add-ons that users casually add, possibly without thinking about their potential impact when run with a really fast drive. The most egregious is Third-party Virus scanners. These are designed to read your files looking for suspicious patterns. They do so incessantly. In older Macs, that was merely annoying, but with a drive this fast, and no built-in self-throttling, it won't take long for these add-ons to generate excessive heat.

The next group of add-ons that perform in a similar way are file-syncers that are Ported from another OS. Utilities that are not Mac-native do not take advantage of the File System Event Store, a data structure that keeps track of recently changed folders. These ported sync-ers simply read and re-read your files, looking for changes. That means they punish performance and run up the temperatures as well. My initial candidates for this category are:

DropBox

OneDrive

Google Drive

BackBlaze

and there are many more.

Especially when these are launched at startup as login items, rather that run ONLY when requested, these add-ons may be quietly running full tilt against your very fast drive and generating enormous amounts of heat, yet staying hidden from real scrutiny..

Hi,

if I load my Mbp 16 (i9, 32gb ram, 5500 8 gb) with no ext monitor, I can make standard work (antivirus, Dropbox, office, chrome ecc) at about 1700 rpm. If I attach external monitor (tried different monitor with different connector and cable) same work at 2400 rpm (noise). Please note that without external monitor I’ve forced my mac to work with amd 5500 so to test same hardware with and without external monitor attached.

best regards

Dropbox is not innocent. It is an Application ported from Windows, and is the classic example of an App that does NOT take advantage of MacOS features.

Drop box and similar ported Sync-ing apps are unrelenting in reading your files, looking for changes. Because the drive in these Macs is about 100 times faster that the standard rotating magnetic drive shipped in slightly older Macs, it punishes performance and runs up the generated heat.

By contrast, iCloud Drive, a Mac-native app, uses the Files System Event Store to see immediately what folders have changed, and so iCloud Drive does Not punish performance and drive up heat generated.

If you were to run Dropbox ONLY when needed, and quit it when done sync-ing, I believe you would get noticeably less generated heat.

This MacBook is the "Muscle car" of Mac Notebook computers. Because it is so very capable, and the drive is very fast, it is easy to give it tasks that consume lots of system resources. With this Mac, it does not slow down the way an ordinary Mac would. Instead, it takes ridiculous amounts of work in stride, but that can cause it to heat up.

Most egregious of these is running a third-party Anti-Virus scanner. These add-ons read all your files, unrelentingly, looking for patterns found in antique windows viruses. when complete, they read them again. This heats ups your Mac, and provides no additional protection over the very good protection already built into MacOS. You should not run third-party anti-virus scanner on your Mac.

But in a similar way, if you run third-party File-Snyc-ing apps such as DropBox, BackBlaze, and others, they can have the same effect. Because they are merely ported from a different Operating System, they do not take advantage of built-in MacOS tools that immediately show which files have changed. So these ported Apps, just like Virus scanners, read your files non-stop, and when completed, they begin again. If you must run such Apps, run them only on-demand, not at login.

Readers would be happy to look over a report of what is running and using up resources on your Mac. This little "Discovery" Utility, Etrecheck, was written by a senior contributor here to do one job -- create a report of what is running on your Mac and how its resources are being used.

Using EtreCheck to Troubleshoot Potential… - Apple Community

However, it would probably be better for you if you posted your report on a new thread, as this one is already hundreds of pages of posts deep.

I have a MBP 16" with 5500M Pro 8GB, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD and i9. I had some issues at the start an went also to an Apple Store to let them identify the issue. No result at all and they were unable to understand the issue.

After searching and looking for solutions, the best I've found so far is a USB-C to Displayport cable to my LG 43" external display. Since then, most of the time, fans are running between 2300RPM to 2800RPM and are not noisy at all (without external display, it runs around 1700RPM). I'v split all connexions with external display connexion on the left and other connexions on the right (charger, converters, etc.). Previously with USB-C to HDMI or Displayport to Displayport thru an external box, I had issues with fans running high at 4500 to 5000RPM. Not sure if this can help but the USB-C to DP cable can be worth trying for others with the same issue.

So to be a little helpful. I'd love to share with you a fan profile that I found which could be helpful, because I'm working with it, and it's pretty convenient and makes the MacBook a lot more usable with external display !

I've got 2 external displays, one connected to a usb-c hub via HDMI, one connected to a usb-c to HDMI official adapter from Apple.

The problem with modifying fan profiles with TG PRO is if you lower too much the fans under a certain temperature, the internal Mac system will automatically "throttle" the CPU and the computer will become very noisy and unresponsive for a few minutes.

To overcome this problem, I used the fix "cpu throttling" from TG Pro (set to 90 % ) but this isn't the only thing to do, you need to make a custom fan profiles which's more progressive.

When writing this mail, I'm also loading a project with Logic Pro and my fans barely go to 3300 RPM which's pretty good to me.

All Fans to 35 % when Highest CPU is above 60°C 

All Fans to 45 % when Highest CPU is above 70°C 

All Fans to 50 % when Highest CPU is above 77°C

All Fans to 60 % when Highest CPU is above 80°C 

All Fans to 75 % when Highest CPU is above 85°C 

All Fans to 88 % when Highest CPU is above 90°C 

All Fans to 100 % when Highest CPU is above 95°C 

Check use Auto Boost instead of Auto Max (to activate custom fan profiles)

Check CPU Throttle fix : Temporarily increase fans when needed to keep the cpu speed limit at least 90% to avoid throttling.

My logic project has finished loading and I'm currently at 3036 RPM.

Clamshell mode.

To me, it's pretty convenient that way.

So time goes on.

I am now on an HMDI/DP DisplayLink Adapter and have 1800RPM when developing in my IDE all day long.

I tried Plugable USB 3.0 nach DisplayPort 4K UHD - with Chipset 5500 from Display Link - works but a little bit laggy with the mouse.

After this i tried "PLUGABLE 4K DISPLAYPORT AND HDMI DUAL MONITOR ADAPTER WITH ETHERNET FOR USB 3.0 AND USB-C" because this one has the Chipset 6950 from Display Link and support 2 External 4K Monitors and have an Ethernet Port - good for office time.

Both Adapters works. Process only takes CPU 5 - 7% while writing Code.

If you scroll much it will rise from 20 - 80% - while scrolling.

If you wnat to watch YouTube the - process will rise, as expected. Moving Videos to the Internal Display is a good work around.

Now i have a setup which works silent.

best regards

greschor

KUKURUZNIG do not try USB-C to HDMI as the work remains still with the dGPU with the driver bug. You need to change to USB to HDMI like one from Startech. These adapters emulate kind of a graphic card in the adapter and rely on the displaylink driver. This means no work for the dGPU as an effect only the internal intel graphics card comes to live which does not result in heavy noise. The current design of the 16" MacBook Pro is not appropriate in regard of the price to performance ratio. It is technically absolutely possible to reduce the power consumption: SwitchResX proves that. Unfortunately it seems to be less cost intensive to just wait and disavow the defect than fix.

Hi romain89,

romain89 wrote:

You have to buy an external GPU enclosure and connect it to your MBP with thunderbolt 3

…

I know it's a pain having to spend 500 dollars+ again but it's the only viable solution.

…

Don't listen to any other solutions, fancy adapters, fancy way of plugging the cables (left right, top ports.. this doesn't change anything)

The only way is the external GPU enclosure because it moves the graphic calculations outside the MBP. No power being used by the MBP for the graphics (the external enclosure is powered by itself), and no calculations from the MBP so no heat generated.

Not true, quite.

Or use a DisplayLink Adapter as a cheaper solution - like https://plugable.com/products/usbc-6950ue - around 100€ - i really enjoy it. But i am developing most of the time on an UltraWide Display with lid open.

And useing Endurance for throttling the CPU, if i not need the full power. Since then, i have a silent MacBook Pro.

MBP 16" 2019, 2,4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9, second screen (2560x1440) via HDMI via USB‑C Digital AV Multiport Adapter:

• 🚨 power on the right (USB-C port of MBP), second screen on the other right => MBP gets hot, fans are running loudly
• ✅ power on the right, second screen on the left => MBP stays cool, cannot hear fans until rubbing my ear on the touchbar

Maybe this "solution" has been told by before but couldn't find it and after reading some of the helpful answers, some first and last posts i thought it's worth a try to post this..

cheers

Hi,

I bought a 2019 macbook pro 16 "a few weeks ago. I also noticed that the fans were running loudly constantly connected to my 4k external monitor. To work around this problem, I used Mac Fans Control to manually control the fan speed.

Today, following the Big Sur 11.2 (20D64) update, I no longer have this problem.

To check.

<< I am wondering if the problem is the USB-C to thunderbolt translation and that puts additional load on the GPU. >>

The conversion of ThunderBolt-display, DisplayPort [family] display, and USB-C display back and forth in any direction is completely trivial, and is done with discrete logic or "just wires". The rasterizer/Display-generator does not do ANY additional work and does not generate more heat.

The same is not the case with HDMI or DVI. In that case, the signals are generated differently, the levels are higher, and the timing is different, which has an impact on memory timing. In some cases, this may cause the display memory to switch to high-speed/high-power mode. This can be a Major cause of generated heat.

The 16" MacBook Pro with dGPU usage and external Displays has higher power usage due to defective settings of frequencies. You may invest time in SwitchResX or buy an external USB to DP or HDMI adapter based on DisplayLink. From client experience utilize an external display results in higher fan noise. For all not required to work in a quite environment or very undemanding in regard of noise it is not an issue. As you may fix with software (SwitchResX e.g.) you may understand as bug in driver.

I picked up a new MBP 16" on 2019 December and have zero noise now (after months of trials, errors) - even till 44%CPU usage and with 2k monitor, but to achieve that I use:

• (a) Turbo Boost Switcher app to turn Intel Turbo boost off (the performance hit is negligent, approx 10-30% subject to app),
• (b) USB-C to HDMI connecting to Gigabyte gaming monitor (165h refresh rate, 2560x1440), but do note the connection on the left side (port),
• (c) charging and other USB accessories via USB-C hub on the right side (port).

Using Cubase (audio) to max (45% CPU) I get max 70 Celsius and fans at 1800 (sometimes till 2500 subject to audio project or some VST plugins)

If any of the points is not done or missed (especially Turbo OFF) then all falls