MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

TimUzzanti,

I 100% agree with you on all points; my hope is to do the opposite and keep the thread on track. No answer or any answer other than a post of test results requested tells us all more about why they are here and posting. The "whatever your purpose or intent" comment was to say I frankly don't care as long as they are willing to help with the test.

There is something wrong with this machine, because it behaves as it does when we attach an external monitor. I am currently using it without a monitor attached and it is dead silent and cool.

That isn't correct Tim. In the video where I address how to "fix" or workaround this issue my specced out 16" was in-fact receiving 97 watts of power from the Pro display XDR. I spent a half hour testing with a 4K thats connected through USB-C where the Mac was receiving power (but not as much) and then the 5K which I think provides 87 watts and after I spent about 4-5 hours testing the rest with the ProDisplay XDR.

Yes this issue ***** and hopefully apple can fix or improve it but have you had a chance to test out competing windows laptops? I've tested 3 with 8 core i9's and heat issues are present and fans are worst while having larger chassis with more cooling capabilities. My video has already helped so many people in the comments so I'm glad at least there are some things we can do right now. https://youtu.be/EkmdHVfk4XE

[I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.]

I did all the testing about two weeks ago and wrote up a post to comment here. It was almost 15,000 characters and Apple would only allow 5,000 so I couldn’t post it. I ended up changing the comment style post into a video so it could help more people and was only able to make the vid last week.

All the b-roll footage was new and done to show people visually what to do. The tests and figures I mentioned was from when I recorded it. Usually I would shoot while testing for b-roll but since it wasn’t initially going to be a video and was just meant to help people on this support page I didn’t take screenshots or record just wrote down my findings. Hope that clears things up.

OK I did a test regarding the blue artifacts on contrasting light dark colors and it seems it is related to nightshift.

So after sunset if nightshift is active and you are using the discrete GPU it causes blue artifacts but still it is a bit random as I can move things around the screen and it disappears and it doesn't have the problem on the integrated graphics.

So it looks like this is a software issue related to Night Shift and can be fixed by deactivating it. Still it's odd the issue only shows up on the discrete GPU.

I do overclock as well but with these windows laptops (MSI, Dell, Asus) you can not overclock them because they are already thermally limited. In fact the 16" MacBook pro performs better than them under full load (cinebench) and mixed load (geekbench) while staying quieter and it's also thinner/lighter. Under mixed usage its also quieter and its not artificially limited out of the box.

The windows laptops are all artificially limited out of the box. Not only do you have to change the windows power savings slider from balanced (which many buyers don't know about) but on all you have to change at least one other setting an in the cases 2 other settings that you need to find to unlock the full power of the CPU, and even then the Mac outperforms it.

On a few of the machines you loose CPU performance when unplugged and the same thing goes for GPU performance and that has its own set of stuff you have to change to remove the artificial limit. It looks like Windows manufacturers are doing the same thing as I did in my video to limit noise and heat and improve battery life when working with such a powerful and hot CPU and powerful GPU.

I'm not saying Apple shouldn't fix it, especially the software bugs but this issue is not only an Apple issue. I know we didn't' have it with older laptops but that makes sense because of thermals as I mentioned in the video. Apple has been avoiding noise for as long as they could and it seems like they are finally running into the same issues. Hopefully they will fix the software issues you guys found.

I don’t think I ever said that. That is not normal and should be fixed. I’ve never seen that from Apple but I have seen older 15” models run consistently under load at 95-97C which isn’t good.

Hope Apple fixes this issue soon and I’m wishing you and your team the best. Back to work for me!

Hey Maksim,

Props for the great video. I think you did a fabulous job in going deep with the analysis and providing some genuinely useful workarounds. The commentary around the challenges of trying to maintain a thermal envelope in the CPU while not improving the process node for a number of years is a very good point.

Perhaps what was missing, though, is more consideration for how the dGPU is behaving. In my mind, it simply doesn't make sense that plugging in an external monitor jacks up the power consumption of the dGPU from 5 W to 20 W (while not actually doing anything). That extra power comes straight out of the MBP's thermal headroom, which leaves very little for CPU heat dissipation. It just can't be right.

So my only criticism of your video is that it gives the impression that Apple has done nothing wrong. In my mind, we shouldn't have to resort to third party work arounds to keep the machine polite when it is not doing anything - we should expect more from Apple. It would have been nice, then, if your video made the point that there is room for improvement and we should all put the pressure on Apple (through support channels) to produce the software fixes that are surely needed.

Both of the threads you posted appear to my eye to be sample defects, problems that occur in one or just a few samples of the product.

All of those posters should contact support and get their computers serviced.

Yes, of course there will be other issues related to GPU that float through. These systems are complex, and brand new hardware is involved. But they are not likely to be applicable to this discussion of the heat and fans issues.

Guess what...

Last week I send my macbook on warranty to service. Yesterday I took my macbook from Authorized Apple Service because I they said that it working normally. BUT...

I called Apple support tell them (again!) about temperatures and the issue and service decision and tech guy said that temperatures AREN'T normal. He called to service to ask how they tested my computer and after this call he told me that EVERY single macbook pro 16 they tested have the same issue so they claim that is normal and temperatures are in standard/normal levels.

And they can do absolutly nothing. The only way is to wait for Apple fix the issue by software update.

What a joke! It is almost month when I bought this mac and it's still unusable with external monitor (because I don't want to cook it) so I can't work using it.

What a joke! It is almost month when I bought this mac and it's still unusable with external monitor (because I don't want to cook it) so I can't work using it.

I'm waiting on them to let me know how they go with mine, if they give the same response I might ask for a refund.

I'm start thinking that the best what we all can do now is to inform about the issue as much media / blogs / YT channels as we can.

It's odd that every single review I read about this mac said nothing about external monitors. I suppose that they don't event tested it so they didn't notice any issue and this is why there is no info about this issue in media.

Maybe when media will start talk about issue this would force Apple to do something because it's 3 months from the release...