MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise

Same here, now I try to turn off the machine every day and disconnect the external monitor when I can.

Sometimes I like to do some trading or at least follow the market, even that has become really stressful, because when I use that platform with an external monitor connected the machine will get really hot and the fans will go crazy and if I disconnect the external monitor is impossible to work and follow the market on a 16-inch screen.

So far using this machine has been a really stressful experience and not a "Pro" experience at all.

You are deciding it is too hot.

The machine has not reached thermal shutdown, meaning according to its design limits it has not reached a temperature Apple engineers decided was "too hot."

Warmer than usual? Sure, but the 5000m-series GPU is also much more powerful than the GPU in previous models.

papsa wrote:

But technician guy I spoke with said that I'm not first person who have problems with 16" macbook with i9 CPU and for now there is only one solution - wait till Apple will start a recovery program which will happen when there will be a lot of people with problem.

He also suggested me to install Mojave and check if problems are solved using this macos version.

I have a hard time believing that, as Apple Support technicians will not state "a lot of people" have a problem, and they also would not advise installing Mojave because you cannot install Mojave on an MBP 16.

They were released with macOS Catalina installed, and you cannot install a version of macOS that predates that the model originally shipped with.

Just stumbled upon this on Reddit. If it's not allowed then please feel free to remove it. This member has a 16" MBP and two external monitors connected (and he's not using clamshell mode) to it without issue. Interesting timing because he was asked about fan noise with 2 monitors connected. He stated that he has no issue with fan noise under MacOS. As normal he would expect fan noise under Bootcamp'd Windows but he doesn't run Windows. https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/g5f8f8/my_we_can_all_peacefully_coexist_setup/

Yep, he states that it's 2 x 1080 monitors. Before learning about 160hz hack, I would downscale my monitor(s) down to 1920x1080, because that would also result in 5w usage in clamshell mode. Running 1920x1200 would result in 20w.

The 16" MBP is an amazing computer and not everyone is having your problems with it. But again, you should take it up with Apple directly about your problems. You state my information about the MacBook Pro isn't helpful, no worries. Ignore my posts. 😊

I have a mental image of RICHD101 putting on his hard hat heading into the mine, i.e. this thread, to do yeoman's work every single day. lol

"I have tried to explain to you how to reduce the power required by your GPU (using a DisplayPort display and/or invoking clamshell mode)

I have tried to explain to you how to reduce the power required by your CPU (turn off single-processor Turbo boost)

Neither of these suggestions made it into your list. Did you not understand, or are you just ignoring my suggestions?"

I'm not ignoring them or you. I am using Apple's recommended, designed for Macs/OSX and sold by them, monitor. I believe it does not fall into the "legacy" monitor you are talking about.

I also raised questions about the numbers that don't add up and I didn't see a reply. One specific question, assuming the heartbeat refresh, is why do machines with 8gb of ram use the same energy as the ones with 4gb of ram? If I'm understanding your explanation of how the heartbeat refresh works, it would imply that the machine with half the gpu ram would require less energy. They do not based on all of the data I have seen.

Also, wouldn't previous iterations of MBP's also use this heartbeat refresh? And some of those had similar amounts of ram that always had to be filled and run at full speed, yet those MBPs didn't use up as much power when in dual display mode. How do you figure?

Some say that this specific dGPU uses a lot more energy because it's a lot more powerful, compared to previous MBP iterations, which is why this one requires 20+ W and older ones did not. But your'e saying it's the RAM having to be filled and ran...

So previous generations used RAM that required less power to fill?

per your post: If ANY heartbeat displays are being used, the DDR6 display RAM is run at its full rated speed, and the lights dim as it eats up 20W of power to run its RAM at full speed (and full power) This is before it puts anything up on a display..

Also, I want to reduce the power used by my GPU, not CPU. I will still try the Turbo Boost, though.

SIDE BAR SXXT:

Does anyone have a browser recommendation to keep these machines running cooler? I am running Brave, which I believe is Chrome, and I am reading that people are saying Chrome is an energy/resource hog. I used to run Safari, but their ad blocking has been neutered Apple re-did how those extensions work. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Does anyone have a screensaver recommendation? When my screensaver, regardless of which one, goes on, my energy usage goes up and my fans start! The Drift one especially likes to spin the fans... I'm beginning to think the waves of the items drifting in the screen saver are powered by the air from the 16" MBP fans.

Forgot the screenshots :(. Power usage can be seen in the top bar. Upper number is total power usage, lower number is dGPU power usage. Any mode that results in high gpu power usage results in loud fans.

Also adding 3 additional screenshots in dual screen mode. External screen connected via DisplayPort and tested on 3 different refresh rates.

You do realize that this was me switching between resolutions every 5 seconds? And that leaving my mac at any of those that result in 17w GPU usage would result in +20C in ~2minutes of doing nothing except showing wallpaper, right? And that thermal shutdown is not only criteria for something to be wrong (as much as William would like it to be)? Just a quick reminder that whole thermal throttling situation that happened when apple first introduced i9 into macbook pro range didn't result in thermal shutdown as well.

And just returning to my original point - running same computer in 2.5x higher refresh rate (60hz vs 160hz) results in 4x lower power consumption (5w vs 20w) which while idling results in 10-20C lower temps... and that results in anywhere between 500rpm and 4000rpm lower fan speed (1700rpm vs 2500-5500rpm). Do you really consider that normal and working as designed?:) If your answer is yes, I really have no more questions for you :)

"My Prius used to get 80 MPG, it's completely unacceptable that my new car with a 500 HP V8 gets only 12 MPG!"

Thats the argument here.

The TGP for the GPU is 50w, so even if it's drawing 20w that's less than half of what it could draw when working its hardest.

https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/radeon-apple-5000m-series

I get how the fans can be annoying, but otherwise getting bogged down in power usage statistics might be a fun hobby but is otherwise of limited use, mostly because only Apple can change anything if there is anything that can be changed here.

Here's some hard data. Connected via USB-C to DP 1.2 port on Samsung U28E510 at 1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz. Lots of watts and heat.

Since it is hot here in So Cal today, my palms are getting sweaty on the palm rest while I am bathed in warm air. It sounds like the ocean with no waves. Nice.

I like the analogy, however the argument here is that your 500hp v8 car [over]heats while towing a bicycle rack :) And even though the optimal coolant temp is 90C, and max temp is 130C, but it's surprising that car this powerful is unable to keep its coolant below 110c while doing 1% of the work it was designed to do.... If we return to MPG analogy it would be the fact that towing a bicycle rack results in 5MPG vs 12MPG that is usual for that vehicle. And that attaching additional trailer results in 11MPG and 90C coolant temp. :) To many this comes a surprise because with Prius both of these tasks resulted in proportional decrease in MPG.

evilZardoz wrote:

Hi,

I have now completed some testing comparing my old 15" MacBook Pro 2019 (i9 2.4GHz, 32GB RAM, 4TB SSD, Vega 20 graphics) vs my new 16" MacBook Pro 2019 (i9 2.4GHz, 64GB RAM, 8TB SSD, Radeon 5500 8GB). TL;DR is that the 15" did not exhibit this problem.

You literally cannot meaningfully compare an old MacBook Pro with this one; the GPU is nowhere near as powerful and its power use characteristics are completely different.

However, feel free to pass your data on to Apple Support.

The fact is there are some people that are not impressed with this situation, myself included.

There are a very small number of people here who seem to have no problem using an external monitor, however, the vast majority of MBP users in this thread are noticing issues and there appears to be no solution in sight.

The marketing copy states the MBP 16'' has better thermal design. This is not translating into real world usage when using an external monitor for a lot of people here.

We can compare to previous products because they set the baseline for comparisons. For example, we can compare the keyboard, it is improved in a lot of ways, the screen is larger and that is better. However when comparing the temperature, at idle, when using an external monitor there is not an improvement, it is noticeably worse. It is not just the fan noise it is graphical issues and huge amounts of heat without any reason.

The model with the Vega uses completely different display RAM -- the thing that is causing a LOT of the heating up issues Users are reporting. The model with the Vega uses a GDDR5 HBM module, heavily optimized for its intended use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Bandwidth_Memory

the new 16-in MacBook Pro with discrete graphics chip features 4 or 8GB of GDDR6 display memory.