MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

... and thermal throttling, we thought we got a model that would be finally acceptable.

This model finally has the Power/Thermal management required to NOT need thermal throttling. But when you ask it to run a big external display using a "legacy" interface, while doing a lot of other stuff at the same time, that takes POWER, generates HEAT, and runs the fan speed up higher.

This thread is too complicated to examine your individual situation, but if you start a new thread and post Activity Monitor > Energy pane or an Etrecheck report, Readers could help you figure out where the energy is being consumed.

I am not trying to make light of anyone's situation. It does seem that some of the Macs described on this thread have over-heating problems.

But some may simply have too much "stuff" running at the same time. And these new Macs don't throttle them back based on heat. Instead, they do everything you asked for. The resulting heat makes the fans spin up to deal with the heat that those requests generate. The punchline is: you may need to ask your Mac to do less gratuitous stuff in the background to get it "lean and mean" enough to run the fans on low.

I do not work for Apple. My interest on this thread is analysis of what is going on. I am not suggesting that doing this extra debugging is the "approved method" for getting resolution for any specific Mac owner. What I am trying to do is make suggestions about why this different design may be behaving differently than expected, and trying to make the case that not everything is a design defect.

Some of the "issues" Users have cited here are on computers that are working as designed.

These computers are far more capable than the previous generations, and if a User has a dozen background tasks running to do everything under the sun, these Macs, will, for the first time, actually do all that stuff and more, but Not get thermally throttled. But that will cost you in fan noise. That is why the suggestion of restarting in Safe mode has some merit -- to see if the issues are caused by extra added "stuff" or by bona-fide system processes.

There is always the possibility of Sample Defect -- a problem that occurs in just one or a few computers. If this were exactly the same blatant design defect with each and every sample, this thread would already have thousands of "me, too" posts. and we do have precedent for Apple not being able to detect some problems initially, but only able to do so over time when faced with mountains of complaints and returns.

They are already investigating the 13-in model, and have issued new initial charging guidelines cited several times on this thread.

Let me add a little colour with a few additional observations: one thing that seems to inflame the situation is whether the GPU card is active (rather than integrated GPU). What is quite mad is that having Photoshop open forces the system to use the GPU card - even if there is nothing open in Photoshop.

I just did an A / B comparison to build a set number of 1:1 previews in Lightroom (which is exclusively a CPU task). With Photoshop open (ie the GPU card active), the fans peaked at around 4500 RPM; with Photoshop closed (integrated GPU), the fans peaked at around 3200 RPM. This is a significant difference in noise.

So there are two weird things here:

• Even if the GPU card is not doing anything, having it active causes higher temperatures and fan noise
• Photoshop activates the GPU card whether it needs it or not

Watching the temperatures, I'd say the logic for spinning up the fans is pretty good. The system waited until temperatures hit around 90°C before speeding up the fans, and even then only spun them as fast as was needed to keep temperatures in check.

But the behaviour of the GPU card causing high temperatures, even when doing nothing, seems very odd.

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.

So here are my observations using iStat Menu app on the base 16" model:

1. When idle (after restarting) and without external display connected, total system consumption is approx 15W, Radeon GPU is using 2W (don't know why when only Intel GPU is running).
2. When idle with Radeon switched on (forced by gfxCardStatus app) and no external display connected, total system consumption is 22W and Radeon takes 5W (that is perfectly normal).
3. When idle WITH external display (Dell U2515H with 2560x1400 native res) connected using usb-c -> DisplayPort cable, total system consumption is 37W and Radeon takes 18W!

Therefore fans spin up to 2500-3500 rpm which is very loud in a quiet environment and the top part of laptop above touchbar is very hot. CPU temp is hovering around 65C and GPU also around 65C.

Even my old Late 2013 15" with dedicated nVidia card performs much better in the same scenario.

Closing the lid when connected to the external display makes no difference - Radeon still takes 18-20W of power JUST to display a desktop wallpaper.

I am glad I have an extended warranty so when this piece of crap burns itself down because of this fatal flaw I will be glad to return it.

Hi,

so I got the base model of MacBook Pro 16" (512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon Pro 5300M 4 GB). I had similar problems few days ago.

I first turned off the True tone off, it helped a little.

But I am a front-end developer and I use terminal and webpack all the time. And in one particular project my fans were spinning like crazy. From activity monitor I found out that node.js process has 240% percent of CPU usage(!!). I know that most of you here does something else with this computer. But I managed to fix problems with the project and node.js and now my MacBook is now sooo quiet with many applications running, 2 node.js processes, 20chrome tabs, 2 vs codes, 1 Visual studio (building the project), everything is on the screenshot + I got my external display connected (it is not 4K, I need to try this with 4K when I get home).

I have tried connecting an LG usb-c 4K monitor (with usb-c <-> usb-c cable) and Radeon is still consuming around 20W of power in idle no matter the resolution, closing laptop lid etc. When I disconnect the monitor, consumption immediately drops to 5W for radeon until it switches to intel GPU.

So apparently this is a bug in Radeon drivers or Radeon graphics itself. I wonder if they even test their products at Apple or just release them hoping they will just work...

Honestly don't even bother downloading the Turbo Boost Switcher Pro - the problem is not the CPU. It's the GPU using excessive power thus generating more heat which results in higher fan RPM. I have compared both my MBP 15'' 2017 base config vs MBP 16" base config.

Both have the very same software setup using the same cables/monitors setup MBP 16'' has much higher temperatures.

Monitor: Dell 27'' 2560x1440 monitor via USB-C

MBP 16": ~60 Celsius idling with monitor connected

MBP 15.4" (2017): ~48 Celsius idling with monitor connected

MBP 16": 80-95+ Celsius under load (compiling stuff)

MBP 15.4" (2017): between 80-85 Celsius under load (compiling identical project)

Also, I want to mention I'm using TG Pro (utility to see temperatures) and have it set on "System" during the measuring meaning that OS is managing the fan speed by itself.

-Tom

I just want to add that I'm experiencing a weird behavior of Mail app randomly reopening its window after initial closing it (the is still open, just the window that is closed), some times the window also reopens as half window especially when I'm watching a movie on full screen.

Following some people's recommendation of having turbo boost switcher pro app, I bought the app straight away after posting my previous message, and I can attest that computer is now very quiet in a similar manner to my previous 2017 MBP, here is a photo of the computer running on no boost with the having turbo boost switcher pro app ON .

Apple you should reimburse the 9.95$ that I paid for this app!! Shame for 4300$ product that is sold with heating and fan issues. A company making billions, with most cash than any other. Aren't you able to put on the market a product with high quality components and no flaws?!! Are you trying to fool your customers? Are shareholders too greedy to accept to have efficient products that will snap a bit of your profits?

Quick update to my last post a while back on Jan. 4. I ended up exchanging my model for a downgraded machine to see if that fixed the fan noise for me. I switched from the i9 to the i7, and from the 8gb 5500 gpu to the 4gb 5300, and the fan noise is pretty much nonexistent for me now (hopefully not jinxing myself by writing this).

With my original i9/5500 model, even one external monitor and a single browser tab the fans would spin to around 5000 or higher, and now with the i7/5300 model I have two monitors, ~15 browser tabs, youtube, and a VM running, all with fans in the low to mid 2000s (which is very quiet, in my opinion). I know other people have downgraded their machines and still experienced the same problems, so maybe there's an element of randomness to it? I'm a little bummed that I have the i7/5300 model when I really wanted the highest specs possible, but the fan noise was too bothersome -- not only for me, but for those working around me. It was getting annoying having a fairly quiet office space interrupted by just connecting a monitor to my macbook.

Anyways, still looking forward to seeing if this gets addressed by Apple. It's probably unlikely they'll say anything about it in the next couple weeks, so I'm guessing I'll just stick to the model I have now. It's undoubtedly a big improvement as far as noise level is concerned.

Guys also wanted to point out some interesting/important things. Namely the fans "rpm" go up on all my machines (private & business laptops) when using non-native apps like CleanMyMacX, Dropbox, Skype, Slack, FramerX, etc. All .js based apps eating resources (memory and processor) and forcing fans rpm's to go up every time I using one/few of them.

Can anyone do a small test, connecting the MBP16 to an external display and switching off every "non-native" app, please? And see if the fans going crazy in that scenario as well? I returned my MBP16 unfortunately, so I can't try this myself :(

But (assuming) one of the app (causing fans to go crazier a bit), plus external display (which pomping up the overall temperature a bit) and we have the loudest machine on our desk.

So maybe the issue is on the software side (non-native apps) rather than hardware "thermals".

I had norton antivirus running..I complained to norton who sent me a removal email...went through all steps.I removed all and the fan stopped..i'll update if it it comes back..worrying.I'll test more.

I made some experiments ( i9 2.4Ghz, 5500M 8Gb, 64Gb, 1Tb SSD)

At 10% load

• no monitor: 50C and 1750 RPM
• external monitor: 65C and 2250 RMP

If I heat it up by running some CPU intense program and then go back to <10% load

• no monitor: the fan gradually goes down to 50C within 2 min to reach 1750 RPM (with no external monitor) (it is actually pretty hard to get the fans to run at full speed, it takes about 10 minutes at full load)
  • 0:00 min 5500 RPM
  • 0:30 min 5000
  • 0:45 min 4400
  • 1:00 min 4000
  • 1:15 min 3400
  • 1:30 min 3100
  • 1:45 min 2500
  • 2:00 min 2100
  • 2:15 min 1700
• with an external monitor: it take 2 minutes to cool down to 65C but the fan keeps running
  • 0 min 5500 RPM
  • 1 min 5400
  • 2 min 5200
  • 3 min 5000
  • 4 min 4000
  • 5 min 3500
  • 6 min 3000
  • 7 min 2600
  • 8 min 2300

Note: As a comparison: my MacbookPro 2017 (2.9 Ghz Quad-Core i7, Radeon Pro 560 4Gb, 16Gb, 0.5 Tb) with monitor takes about 2 min to get the fan speed back to the base level.

I think it could be a problem with the firmware: it tries to reach 50C but because of the external monitor it gets stuck at 60. The speed at which the Temperature slows down is pretty much the same in both scenarios, but with the external monitor, the base temperature is higher, and the algorithm seems to expect to reach less than 50C.

This is not acceptable for me, because I am a developer and I have often short CPU bursts compiling or running tests. That keeps the laptop hot and often above 4000 RPM which sounds like a workstation in the 80ies.

But it could be a hardware problem as well -- and because I don't know what it is, I will send it back (since I am still within the 14 days) . Sad decision but for a 4,500 Euro laptop, for me, the risk is too high that it is a hardware problem.

After many investigation on where this fans power is being spent, I have discovered a process that's always at a 100%, it's called " CEP HTML Engine" it's related to adobe products, some fixes are suggested here, I have removed one of the adobe products I had just for the sake of a test, and the results are back to normal, no more unexpected fan noises from just a normal browsing on chrome... I hope it helps...

Not all MacBooks are defective, my macbook is fine after I fixed issues with software I used and stopped spotlight from indexing some folders (node_modules), since then my MacBook is completely fine. There is some noise while connected to the external monitor but it is not very loud. When I don’t have any display connected then it is dead silent even when I am transpiling JavaScript projects with webpack.

So no, not all macbooks are defective and I think that some issues could be fixed by users.