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TimUzzanti Author

Level 2

252 points

MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

We are testing two new 16-inch MacBook's before doing a rollout across our organization. Under low loads (25% cpu utilization), fan noise will get annoyingly loud. We're not doing any GPU related and more routine work such as: using web applications, debugging web pages, Microsoft Teams conferencing (audio/video) with a handful of people, Photos downloading from iCloud, Mac Mail downloading a new mailbox from Exchange.

We DID NOT notice this on our 2015 MacBooks and this might prevent us from continuing the 16-inch MacBook rollout in our organization.

Interested to hear others experiences.

Tim

MacBook Pro 16", macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 21, 2019 11:34 AM

4,224 replies

imajez

Level 1

4 points

Mar 6, 2020 5:03 PM in response to Dogcow-Moof

William Kucharski wrote:

Which shouldn't surprise you; Chrome has always been ridiculously resource-intensive.

I currently have 91 tabs open in Chrome on my 5,1 barely using any CPU. There were easily 20+ more open earlier. They quickly add up when doing research stuff on top of all my regular sites.

The lack of impact on my machine is why I do not bother closing things down.

Mar 6, 2020 5:12 PM in response to imajez

imajez wrote:

...

I currently have 91 tabs open in Chrome on my 5,1 barely using any CPU. There were easily 20+ more open earlier. They quickly add up when doing research stuff on top of all my regular sites.

The lack of impact on my machine is why I do not bother closing things down.

A lot of research gives you mainly text sites. These are generally not an issue.

When you get more than a few Chrome windows with graphics and animation, then it is likely to get hot.

imajez

Level 1

4 points

Mar 6, 2020 5:37 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

A lot of research gives you mainly text sites. These are generally not an issue.

When you get more than a few Chrome windows with graphics and animation, then it is likely to get hot.

Don't assume research means pages of dry text. There's around 15 youTube pages, a couple of FB pages, Whatsapp, twtter, instagram, loads of shops and review pages, soundcloud, apple forums, macrumours forums, newspapers and I could go on and on....

oscil

Level 1

4 points

Mar 6, 2020 5:38 PM in response to TimUzzanti

Does this only happen with one screen attached? I have a Pro Display XDR and Wacom pro 16 connected to my 16 MBP, and while I do see the Radeon wattage consistently at 20 like others here the fans are definitely not always blowing. They don't kick in until the system gets up to 70C+ (even though it idles around ~65C normally)

Very weird behavior nonetheless!

Vlaimir

Level 1

4 points

Mar 7, 2020 3:05 PM in response to TimUzzanti

For an experiment, read this article in Russian (use a translator): https://www.iguides.ru/main/other/kak_intel_obmanyvaet_pokupateley_ili_pochemu_ne_stoit_brat_starshie_versii_noutbukov/

On Windows, install the "Intel Extreme Tuning Utility program":

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-

Try changing your Turbo Boost settings (maybe disable) and run a stress test.

You can use the program https://www.crystalidea.com to evaluate the fan performance level.

TailsDog

Level 1

18 points

Mar 7, 2020 3:25 PM in response to Vlaimir

I've tried disabling TurboBoost and it doesn't really help in my situation, I think it only helps if you are going to do some CPU intensive processing. There is an OSX app that will do it called `Turbo Boost Switcher`.

I think that too much heat is getting generated by the dGPU when using an external monitor and the Turbo Boost doesn't help that.

dcristof

Level 1

8 points

Mar 9, 2020 6:25 PM in response to TailsDog

What I noticed is that Bryce's PCIe Lane Width is x8; all of ours are x16. It is one difference.

AMD Radeon Pro 5500M:

Chipset Model: AMD Radeon Pro 5500M

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 8 GB

Vendor: AMD (0x1002)

Device ID: 0x7340

Revision ID: 0x0040

ROM Revision: 113-D3220E-190

VBIOS Version: 113-D32206U1-019

Option ROM Version: 113-D32206U1-019

EFI Driver Version: 01.01.190

Automatic Graphics Switching: Supported

gMux Version: 5.0.0

Metal: Supported, feature set macOS GPUFamily2 v1

axlroden

Level 1

4 points

Mar 10, 2020 8:09 AM in response to dcristof

dcristof wrote:

What I noticed is that Bryce's PCIe Lane Width is x8; all of ours are x16. It is one difference.

AMD Radeon Pro 5500M:

Chipset Model: AMD Radeon Pro 5500M

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 8 GB

Vendor: AMD (0x1002)

Device ID: 0x7340

Revision ID: 0x0040

ROM Revision: 113-D3220E-190

VBIOS Version: 113-D32206U1-019

Option ROM Version: 113-D32206U1-019

EFI Driver Version: 01.01.190

Automatic Graphics Switching: Supported

gMux Version: 5.0.0

Metal: Supported, feature set macOS GPUFamily2 v1

Will have no relevance.

dcristof

Level 1

8 points

Mar 10, 2020 9:17 AM in response to axlroden

Does anyone else who is experiencing the heat and fan issues while plugging in an external monitor with the lid open have a PCIe x8 configuration?

Worth checking I think, even if we would think it shouldn't any impact on performance.

iTech23

Level 1

44 points

Mar 10, 2020 1:45 PM in response to dcristof

Mine is also x16.

Today I after reading the news on Macrumors, I tried the latest but nothing new here, after 2 minutes watching the video loop on Apple website, the machine was at more than 80C and the fans were already at 3200RPM and increasing pretty fast.

Until today I was only using the machine with an external monitor for really shorts periods of time to avoid any issues but it's causing me a lot of productivity issues, so I decided to use it like I normally do, if it breaks Apple will have to figure it out a way to send me a new machine to South America because I'll be working here for the next 2/3 months.

Mar 10, 2020 2:19 PM in response to LucasKotkowski

So I tried Razer Core X Chroma eGPU with Radeon RX 5700 XT inside and I was very optimistic at first.

Monitoring via iStats menu I measured temperatures during usual browser/watching video workload (open lid, 4K display connected):

Without eGPU: temperatures above 70 C, fans above 3200 RPM

With eGPU: temperatures below 50 C, fans sitting around 1800 RPM (basically silent)

But then I started to test it during some more demanding tasks, like using Lightroom, Photoshop and DaVinci Resolve and it was an utter failure – eGPU actually makes the system SLOWER, at least when using it with a lid opened.

I'll try it once again tomorrow in a clamshell mode, but it seems that every video about the topic was right – since it takes the signal twice as long to travel to and from graphics card, GPU intensive tasks are actually slower than when using only laptop's dGPU.

That's a bummer :( It was my last resort, but now I see there's no other option than using MBP 16 only when travelling and sticking to my 2 years old PC at home (which should be slower than my MacBook according to benchmarks, but it's actually waaay faster).

Let's just say, I'm a little bit angry...

kakariki

Level 1

4 points

Mar 11, 2020 11:18 AM in response to TimUzzanti

Hello Tim,

I have a MacBook Pro 16 inch for a week and have de same problem. When I connect my Eizo to my MacBook Pro and work in Lightroom the fans are spinning. I like my MacBook so I hope that Apple will come with a solution.

Anton

SteMae

Level 1

4 points

Mar 11, 2020 12:39 PM in response to TimUzzanti

My brand new mac 16 is having the same issue with the loud fan for no good reason, under minimal occupancy. Which is weird for such a powerful machine, to go nuts even when I only am running spotify and powerpoint.

Most importantly, the touch bar gets so hot that I can't keep my finger on it for longer than a few seconds because it is so extremely hot. For a 2.7k machine, this is a bad experience. Please provide an update that fixes this. This is ridiculous.