Macbook Pro 16 overheating

I am thoroughly disappointed with this laptop and Apple as a company, it is absolutely ludicrous that a $3500 machine somehow reaches 80°C when just looking at text heavy websites. The laptop constantly is too hot to work on. I use mainly Sketch and Affinity designer since Adobe apps simply push this computer to 90°C or more constantly and make the fans kick in all the time, so I've left the adobe suite to my desktop, but Designer and Sketch constantly slow down, freeze, get. beach balls, one being a native Mac OS App, while pushing temperatures to the 80's constantly and even reaching 100°C.


I am worried for a number of reasons:


1) Already went through all the apple support channels 3 times, sent this laptop to an apple repair center just for it to be sent back with a sheet of paper with iCloud active printed, even though I followed all the instructions presented by apple throughout the emails for sending the laptop and nowhere does it say that iCloud needed to be closed or signed off, I signed off and closed all of my other accounts, but I forgot iCloud, they had my laptop 2 weeks just for it to be sent back with no diagnostic or answer to my issue. I had to personally open a new ticket just to know what the **** happened. They never gave me a direct answer to why they sent it back if there's no documentation saying if iCloud is active they won't check the laptop. After 2 long phone calls with a rep, they finally ran diagnostics tools and just said that Sketch was the problem that it was running the GPU at 3000% and that I had to contact the devs. This was either BS because unless iStats measures things differently and even the activity monitor, after the call I ran various tests and at no moment did Sketch reach even 100% GPU usage.


2) After this call where Apple decided to blame Sketch, I ran a comparative test with my wife's own mbp 16, hers being the base model with 16gb of ram and the 5300m. Sketch ran flawlessly with the same file on her machine, with safari in the background and switching to it constantly for references, while on my laptop with 32gb of ram and the 5600m, after 30 minutes working on it, the keyboard was getting too hot to keep my right hand on it, system temperature was between 75 and 85°C and was getting slow downs when panning in Sketch and changing apps. Near the hour mark I couldn't comfortably keep my hand on the keyboard without feeling like it was being burnt and the bottom of the laptop as well as the touchbar were scorching, with system temp at around 90 and spiking to 100°C.


I'm not using external monitors and honestly for a machine touted as being able to do video work and 3d, which I haven't done since vector design already melts it, I feel like I got cheated out of my hard earned money, I'm from a developing country and it took a while to save, but since all the apple products I've owned have been investments, I felt it was a good idea to pull the trigger on such an expensive machine, only to be greeted by this myriad of problems and Apple kind of shrugging their shoulders and blaming Sketch.


I've also reinstalled the OS twice, reset SMC, PRAM, and NVRAM, I did a clean install of Sketch and even created a new file in case I had made a buggy/heavy file. Still have a lot of issues, as I am writing this iStats is reporting that using only Safari and Slack I am using 22% of the GPU.


I am at a loss, I am angry, feel duped and just ****** whenever I work on this laptop and I can feel it simmering and then burning as time goes by, I've seen so many threads all over the net of people having issues with this laptop with external monitors as well as other issues, and I feel like a beta tester who shelled out $3K+



MacBook Pro 16″, 10.15

Posted on Aug 17, 2020 2:52 PM

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6 replies

Aug 17, 2020 7:03 PM in response to NecolasCage

Yeah I agree 100%. The 16" Macbook Pros are awful. A ton of bugs and that external monitor overheating issue has no excuse from Apple. (Apple just denies it's an issue)


I get the kernel_task going to 800% CPU usage a ton now that it's summer so a bit warmer.


I wouldn't recommend the 16" MBP to anyone. They're a dud and that's coming from a 2013 13" MBP.

Sep 6, 2020 3:31 AM in response to NecolasCage

The MBP 13' 2020 is having the same problems.

  • 76ºC for using 20% of the CPU capacity (using Sketch and Firefox only)
  • After 2 months usage, motherboard had to be replaced - needless the data was lost in the process. In short: the data on it is NOT yours.
  • Screen had to be replaced too.
  • 4 weeks to get the machine under warranty repaired - no replacement option (you need to have a "pro" account to get some "help").

20 years working exclusively on Apple and it's the worst machine I ever used.

Sep 29, 2020 8:01 AM in response to crypto32

crypto32 Said:

I'm also having issue with 16 Macbook with 5600m. Doing basic task it gets as hot as my 2020 razer laptop playing games at max out setting. I compared to an coworkers with a none 5600m and it doesn't get nearly as hot doing the same task.”

———-


A Few Tips:

  • Use a Laptop Cooler:

Targus and Fellowes are brands with good reputations for me. Power it off of a USB Cooler that is plugged into an external power source (not the laptop).


  • Remove Login Items:
  1. Go to: System Preferences > Users & Groups > User Name > Login Items
  2. Select: an Item
  3. Click: the “—“ button
  4. Approve: of the removal in the popup window.


  • Force Quit Items:
  1. Click: the Apple emblem in the Finder bar
  2. Select: Force Quit...
  3. Select: any item ending in “(Nor Responding...)
  4. Click: Force Quit button
  5. Perhaps quitting all will fix this


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Macbook Pro 16 overheating

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