
MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise (2019) - antalk
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250878229
======
gnudad
This appears to be a software bug in macOS or AMD's drivers. Plugging in an
external monitor at certain resolutions (1440p@60Hz in my case) will cause the
AMD GPU to draw 18-20W constantly, no matter what it's doing. This causes the
total system draw to increase from ~10W to ~30W. All that heat has to go
somewhere. If I change the resolution of my external monitor to 1080p the AMD
GPU drops to ~4W and the fans are quiet again. A lot more information
available in this long MacRumors thread:
[https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-is-hot-noisy-with-
an...](https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-is-hot-noisy-with-an-external-
monitor.2211747/page-22)

~~~
zarmin
This is a bug on Macbooks in general, as I understand it. I have a 2019 MBP
with a 4k monitor, and if I change the resolution to anything except the
default, there is massive system-wide lag. God forbid I use PyCharm on 4k
scaled resolution – a full second between typing and seeing the text.

~~~
nottorp
That seems unrelated; I think Mac OS is the only place where non native
resolutions use GPU-accelerated scaling. The other operating systems just set
whatever resolution you asked for and let the monitor handle it.

This seems to be excessive GPU use when simply connecting an external monitor
at its native res.

~~~
muyuu
I use my 2015 MBP with an external 4K monitor every day and it works like a
charm. No delay, no fans going off, etc.

~~~
ecliptik
Does it have two GPUs it switches between? One high perf and one integrated?

When I had a MBP 2015 I rarely had the fan come because it only had and and
used an integrated GPU.

With a 2018 MBP the fan frequently kicks on because it switches to the Radeon
high perf GPU when doing things like connecting to an external monitor.

~~~
nigma
The MBP 2015 with discrete GPU is hardwired to output video signal through AMD
M370X. It can get quite noisy when just connected to an external display.

------
baybal2
What can I say as a person somewhat close to electronics engineering:

Look at that single skinny heat pipe, it will get saturated very fast. Second
to that, look at those tiny radiators, they are clearly not capable to
discharge the full heat flux.

I simply don't see any signs of proper thermal engineering there.

Apple says "we are listening now, and here is a new cooling design," then it
comes out to be even less adequate that the old one. I can't think of anybody
else capable of trolling up their customers like that.

If anybody wants to dish out something on an order of $1.5m to do a contract
manufacturing run for a properly designed full sized laptop, give me a note. I
do have some tricks in mind how to make 40W+ CPUs work in a _relatively_
compact case.

~~~
walrus01
If I had to guess they know what they're doing engineering wise, but they're
taking a calculated (and poorly thought out, in my opinion) risk that a small
percent of people will regularly peg the cpu at 100% usage, and they're
further relying upon clock rate throttling and the cpu die thermal sensor to
keep things from melting down. Or the management/product design group has
overridden the input of the people who actually know how to design thermal
solutions, because the laptop CANNOT be 2mm thicker.

Whenever I see a laptop with a >15W TDP CPU in a super slim package with a
tiny heatsink/fan unit, no matter if it's from Apple or another vendor, I'm
very suspicious. At least the 12 inch Macbook from a few years ago which was
truly fanless uses an appropriately low powered CPU.

disclaimer: used to do systems engineering for a server manufacturer a long
time ago, after you've gone through a dozen iterations of ways to mount skived
copper heatsinks on dual socket motherboards in 1U cases, with various fan
solutions, you realize that everything that is not acoustically terrible is
some sort of compromise. People are trying to put CPU+GPU+RAM packages that
are anywhere from 25W to 45W TDP in laptops that are physically too small for
them.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
That's why I buy gaming laptops for my work needs even though I don't play
games. Their heatsinks are generously sized resulting in good thermals and
acoustics.

~~~
desdiv
I use a similar trick: I try to find a laptop that comes in both discrete-GPU
and integrated-GPU configurations, and both version must share the identical
chassis.

This way, when I buy the integrated version, I know the chassis has been
designed with the heavier airflow of the discrete-GPU version in mind. If I'm
lucky, my integrated-GPU config might even use the identical size heat-sinks
as the discrete-GPU version.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
That's interesting. Any model you can recommend?

~~~
dijit
Dell XPS 15's and Precisions 55xx's allow this trick.

You can buy them from the manufacturer with no discrete graphics cards.

I have one with a card which is physically turned off for the same trick.

~~~
Mandelmus
Do you mean the XPS 13? I've never seen an XPS 15 in recent years without an
NVIDIA card. The cheapest XPS 15 from 2019 that I can find still comes with
the mobile NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, as does my own XPS 15 9560 from 2017.

~~~
dijit
I'm 2 days late! I'm so sorry!

If you go to dell.com and select one of the more entry level varients you can
customise more things:

[https://i.imgur.com/deQFdyU.png](https://i.imgur.com/deQFdyU.png)

------
bluedino
There isn't anything wrong here.

One of the confusing issues is that people say, "I'm only using 15% of my CPU,
the fans should not be coming on."

What they don't realize, is that using 1 core running at turbo speeds is only
going to show up as 15% of the CPU, but draw enough power and create enough
heat to trigger the fans!

Another thing that some of these posters are not aware of, is that running
these temperature/fan speed monitoring applications can use quite a bit of
power! They're drawing all these fancy graphs, the applications are usually
poorly optimized. Even the Mac OS Activity Monitor is a hog in Catalina for
some reason and can take 15-20% of a CPU all by itself.

And that doesn't even take into consideration all the other apps people have
running. You can see in their screenshots or menu bar they have Dropbox, 3rd
party wireless keyboard/mouse programs, they might have 10 things running in
just their menubars! They need to look in the Activity Monitor's Power section
to see what the real culprit is.

Plugging an external monitor into your MacBook will enable the dGPU and that
will create more power draw, this is nothing new:

[https://i.imgur.com/9KmLPMX.png](https://i.imgur.com/9KmLPMX.png)

It's the workload, not the monitors you have plugged in.

I posted a picture in the MacRumors thread with 4 externals (4K, 2x1440,
1x1080) plugged into my base model 16" and it idled in the 50 degree range
with no audible fan noise. Once I started streaming video and opening apps,
the fans then started, as expected.

~~~
comboy
My 2019 15" mbpro makes quite a bit of noise on login screen with nothing
connected to it. It's not a made up issue. USB 2.0 devices disconnect randomly
which is a no-go for musicians. Touch bar freezes. The list goes on. I'd
abandon it a long time ago but music software is macs first. Plus Logic is
decent. It's so sad that they don't give a damn because market takes a while
to adjust.

~~~
tpmx
That touchbar freezing issue is a pet peeve of mine. It's been happening for
years now. I've personally witnessed over it perhaps 10 times over multiple
hardware/OS revisions.

Perhaps it's time for Apple to admit defeat and just build a watchdog service
that runs every 30 seconds and if things aren't working: kill and restart
whatever process and/or driver that runs the touch bar.

~~~
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
The reason nobody really notices the touchbar issue is because almost nobody
uses the Touch Bar!

~~~
xwowsersx
hahaha true

------
Naomarik
Been using Mac primarily since 2011 and sad to see everything keep declining
with Apple's software and hardware quality. When programming an app and its
backend with react native/clojure my 2015 Mac Pro gets way too hot and slow.

Just built a Ryzen 3600 desktop with 32 gigs of RAM for about 1/4th the price
as the cheapest 16 inch Macbook. Windows with WSL2 has been extremely good and
I'm satisfied with my development environment. Key things were disabling
automatic updates via group policy, setup autohotkey to keep all my MacOS
keybindings, use X410 to display emacs and using the new windows terminal.
Development is super fast, compilation is fast, git is fast, everything just
works. Attempted to switch with WSL1 awhile a year ago or so and while it was
okay, I wasn't very happy with it.

My mac just sits there now mainly being a coaster until I need to test iOS
builds.

~~~
mns
I think you are underestimating the cost of your setup. There is no way in my
opinion that you can build a decent PC with 1/4 price of a MacBook Pro.
European prices might be higher, 2699 official price for base 16" (you can
actually get it for 2399 from official resellers). But still 675 Eu for a
proper setup is impossible. Just the CPU and RAM will cost you a bit over 300.
I know you are just making a point, but it is a false statement that people
constantly make when discussing prices of Apple hardware and this thing is
getting quite annoying. Yes, they are more expensive, but when you look at the
exact components, specs, you will find that Dell or Lenovo could be only
around 10 to 20% cheaper in best case scenario.

~~~
aquaticsunset
I mean, it's not that outlandish. It's such an apples to oranges comparison
but performance for dollar is still in the "build your own desktop" side of
the arena, as it's always been.

[https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rfLcGc](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rfLcGc)

~~~
sounds
My guess is Naomarik didn't buy a case, power supply, or new SSD.

------
nujabe
What's disturbing is that Apple seem to be deleting posts:

 _After attempting to be part of the solution; spending a ton of time testing,
providing information in the community, communicating with Apple Engineers and
Apple Business Team, our most recent post was deleted as "Speculative".

We have spent over $300,000 on Apple hardware over the years both business and
consumer and now our voice has been muted. How can we move forward using
Apple? Instead of deleting our posts, how about send it to management?_

~~~
krn
> How can we move forward using Apple?

And why should they? What's wrong with trying out something like Thinkpad X
series[1] instead? Or Thinkpad P series, which can now come with Ubuntu LTS
pre-installed. I wonder, if they would have invested so much time in fixing
Dell's issues for Dell. Probably not. Why? Because there is no Dell's lock-in.

[1]
[https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/c/t...](https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/c/thinkpadx)

~~~
zymhan
Oh come now, you surely understand that you cannot just drop in a Windows or
Linux PC as a replacement for a Mac, just like you couldn't do the opposite.
Organizations have management tools, single sign on, and software that may
only run on one OS.

Suggesting a ThinkPad or Dell as a replacement is naive.

If an organization wants to change the computers it gives it's employees so
dramatically, it will take some transition time, and a lot of fighting. We're
not just talking about your personal laptop here.

~~~
fortran77
I switched from Mac to Windows 10 and it was painless.

~~~
ac4tw
I'm curious about how long you were using Mac and how much of the ecosystem
you were taking advantage of. Specifically were you using Apple messaging,
photos, and / or email?

Also, did you take advantage of handoff or airdrop?

I imagine if you were strictly using cloud services, it was a relatively
painless transition.

------
dragonsh
I was planning to buy MacBook 16-inch as I am still on 2014 edition which in
my view were one of the best MacBooks.

I simply hate that unnecessary Touch Bar, was hoping Apple will remove it but
didn’t. Thought then of getting 16-inch as they have an esc key.

Waiting for this kind of review, I will put on hold purchasing it until get a
clarity on fan noise. My current old MacBook fan do make some noise but only
under load of games.

Hope Apple can go back to basics and redo the MacBook Pro to make it similar
to 2014 with new hardware.

~~~
rorykoehler
I went from late 2013 13 inch to the 2016 16 inch (maxed everything but the
graphics). I also hate the touchbar. Things like volume control that used to
be a tap away are now hidden in sub screens. You can switch it to only
function keys but they are missing the icons for volume etc and you can't
touch feel where the buttons are so I have left it in full touchbar mode. Some
functions of it are actually quite cool but it should exist as well as the
function keys not instead of. I haven't had any of the issues described
anywhere. Mine works flawlessly. Very very happy with the machine overall. A
huge improvement on the 2013 mbp i came from which i agree was an excellent
machine.

~~~
Cthulhu_
You can tweak the touch bar to put e.g. volume control on the 'home screen' if
you prefer; it's hard to find though, it's under Keyboard, then the Customize
Control Strip button at the bottom.

~~~
rorykoehler
I just checked. Unless I'm missing something there is no simple volume control
like on the physical keyboard? I already have the volume button on my touchbar
home screen however tapping it opens a slider. I don't want or need a slider
and have to do a tap and then slide to get the volume down whilst before it
was one press of a button. This usually requires me to look away form what I'm
doing. It's definitely a step back in terms of UX. It was perfect before the
touchbar.

Thanks for pointing that feature out though. Have replaced Siri with the play
button :)

Edit: Just playing around with this a bit more I noticed the expanded view now
has all the normal icons. Either I missed it before or I changed something. Is
there a way to make the expanded view the default?

~~~
shadowfiend
You can tap-hold-slide to adjust across the whole range, rather than tapping
then hunting for the slider. You can also set the touch bar to show an
expanded control strip by default (which includes a volume up/volume down/mute
triple) if you want.

~~~
rorykoehler
The tap and hold works well. I guess I will settle on expanded view with fn
key for app controls. Probably the best for my usecase.

------
tsp
I waited multiple years to upgrade from a MacBook Pro 2014, but was
disappointed year after year, because I read about heating issues, the bad
butterfly keyboard or the useless touch-bar.

In 2019 I felt like things are not going to get any better, so I bought a
MacBook Pro 2019. Was quite unhappy that I didn’t wait a bit longer after I
saw the 16inch version coming out a few months later, because it had an escape
key (which I really miss on mine), but now I am kind of happy that I have the
2019 15 inch version where the heating problem does not appear.

The touch-bar really is completely useless, I find myself tapping the wrong
"keys" all the time. Changing volume was so easy before, now it became really
hard. But most of all I miss the escape key. If it wasn’t for macOS I had long
picked a Windows laptop.

~~~
zarmin
I feel your pain. This may help:
[https://www.haptictouchbar.com/](https://www.haptictouchbar.com/)

------
lqs469
Cook is a complete businessman, best at cutting costs, increasing profits and
attracting customers to buy more. Don't forget that memory began to weld on
the motherboard because this can only be replaced and not upgraded. He was a
businessman, not an engineer or a designer, and that was the beginning of
apple's decline.

~~~
amrrs
This cliched argument is quite ironic and insane. A leader doesn't have to be
visionary all the time. Just last week there was a news about Apple selling
more Watches than the entire Swiss industry and no one would talk about Cook
there but when things go wrong, we forget that it's someone in QA or Product
but all the blame goes to how Cook isn't a Product guy.

~~~
missosoup
> A leader doesn't have to be visionary all the time

Yes they do. If they're not visionary, then they're just a manager.

Apple grew because of a visionary, and now it shrinks because the best a
manager can do is try to maintain the status quo in the face of changing
factors. It's fundamentally a losing battle.

~~~
selectodude
Cook has overseen just shy of 1 trillion dollars worth of growth for Apple.
They routinely have quarters larger than Apple’s entire year back in 2011.

~~~
missosoup
Cook is riding on the upward trajectory that was set before he took his role.
Brand image carries a lot of inertia, and as a manager rather than a
visionary, cook focused on getting the most use out of that pre-set trajectory
while it lasted.

It has run out of energy. If AR doesn't pay off, it's all downhill for Apple
from Q4 this year onwards.

~~~
stouset
This argument gets more and more ridiculous as time progresses. Apple is worth
nearly ten times what it was eight years ago. It’s launched a watch which has,
in a few short years, overtaken the _entire_ Swiss watch industry in revenue.

This is just another take on the tired argument that Apple is only successful
because of a core group of fanboys/girls who will buy anything just because
it’s Apple, despite Apple’s customer base being an order of magnitude greater
today than it was back then.

~~~
missosoup
I set some fairly short term and trivially verifiable predictions. Save this
comment and come back to it at the end of this year.

Unless Apple's AR play succeeds, they're going to be left in the dust by
Chinese offerings with better functionality at half the price.

Cook has had the better part of the decade to come up with something new, and
has failed to deliver anything except incremental minor updates which are
increasingly convergent on competitor offerings. There is clearly no vision.

~~~
stouset
Are you just going to pretend the AirPods and Apple Watch don’t exist? By
themselves they’d be a Fortune 500 company.

“Minor updates”. You have to be joking.

~~~
missosoup
Are you going to pretend either AirPods or Apple Watch are meaningfully
competitive against other offerings on the market?

There are headphones with better spec than airpods at half the price available
right now. They're not locked to any ecosystem. Apple has no idea how to
continue competing in the envelope of modern hardware because competitors
either beat them or match them on every move but without the premium.

Save my comment. Check back in a year. It'll be a good lesson.

~~~
dahart
> Are you going to pretend either AirPods or Apple Watch are meaningfully
> competitive against other offerings on the market?

The definition of meaningfully competitive is growth, revenue, and market
share. You're implying they're not competitive, which implies you think
they're not making money. By what metric are they not competitive?

> There are headphones with better spec than airpods at half the price
> available right now. They're not locked to any ecosystem. Apple has no idea
> how to continue competing in the envelope of modern hardware because
> competitors either beat them or match them on every move but without the
> premium.

This claim has always been made, for 35 years, and has always been true of all
Apple hardware. Yet they compete and make a lot of money. What you're
demonstrating is you don't understand what Apple is making or why people buy
their products. What you're demonstrating is that better spec cheaper hardware
isn't enough to beat the competition.

------
gwbas1c
One thing I miss about Steve Jobs is that he hated fan noise. The fact that
Macs only made noise under extreme load was something that I really
appreciated.

I'm at a loss for what I'm going to do for my next laptop. Windows 10 still
has performance issues that Macs don't have, but Windows laptops clearly have
better hardware.

Anyone make the switch back to Windows? (Every time I try Linux it feels like
a dumpster fire, even though I want to like it.)

~~~
jillesvangurp
I've been considering both Linux and Windows (with the linux subsystem,
obviously) but so far can't bring myself to do it. I'm leaning towards Linux.
My main beef with both ecosystems is the high amount DYI and tweaking needed
to get things functioning and that I actually need to make an indepth study of
exactly which variants of which hardware to get in order to get a linux setup
that works.

With windows I have no love for Windows specifically but would appreciate
access to a wider selection of games. For work, all I need is docker and
access to linux/unix tooling. Homebrew and docker for mac cover my needs but
I've been hearing good things about windows and the linux subsystem. Obviously
that kind of stuff works great on Linux as it all runs natively there.

IMHO the big problem with Linux is that people are still thinking about
distributions like it is the early nineties. It does not make sense to me for
small (or even bigger) linux distributions to even pretend to be able to
maintain huge software repositories with distribution specific builds of all
OSS known to mankind. What's needed here is people just agreeing on how to
package up binaries such that they can be run on any linux distribution after
their developers test, sign and release them.

I saw this in action when one of my favorite OSS tools released a major
version a few weeks ago and I was able to install the mac build while world +
dog was complaining about a lack of pre-packaged binaries for their favorite
Linux distros (pretty much all of them). I'm talking about Darktable, which is
one reason I'm seriously considering a move to Linux because I absolutely love
it and it runs best on Linux. I installed it within 2 hours after it was
tagged on Github. That for me sums up the problem with Linux: the application
ecosystem remains a mess of incompatibility and middlemen adding dubious value
(mainly verifying it does not clash with their other customizations for other
packages).

IMHO this is a reason why the most widely used consumer versions of Linux are
basically things like Android, ChromeOS, and a wide range of software for TVs
and other embedded hardware; none of which involve a mainstream Linux
distribution or package manager. The only package managers you need on a mac
are for installing OSS software. Normal software is just a simple drag and
drop to install and move to trash to uninstall. Apple nailed this already with
OS 9 before Linux was a thing. MS with its need for custom installers never
figured this out either.

Docker is kind of doing this for servers these days and snaps look promising
but still a bit flaky. I think it's telling that the hope for gaming on Linux
is basically Steam doing the hard work of providing a way to install software
on Linux that is compatible with the goals of software developers that want to
release software directly to users instead of to some middlemen that need to
repackage, modify, an tweak a custom package of your software.

~~~
hocuspocus
I find that I'm spending more time tweaking MacOS than the two others.

At my previous job I was lucky to use a workstation. It was running a plain
Ubuntu LTS provisioned by my IT using Puppet. Zero maintenance on my end.

For the handful of applications where I wanted the latest versions, getting
upstream or PPA packages was usually enough. I don't know why you think Snap
packages are flaky, they're great for things like Jetbrains IDEs. Never had a
problem.

I admit Homebrew gives me access to the latest binaries quickly, but it's also
the slowest and most brittle package managers I've been using.

------
nvch
I have an issue with an external monitor, confirmed with multiple users on
MacRumors forums [1], that looks like a software bug.

When using opened Macbook with an external screen power usage by discrete GPU
is not less 19W almost no matter what (resolution, screen size, etc.).

In my case, with new LG 5K, GPU power usage in clamshell mode is near 5W and
with the lid open – 19.5W (and the laptop is too noisy to be usable as an
additional screen).

[1] [https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-is-hot-noisy-with-
an...](https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-is-hot-noisy-with-an-external-
monitor.2211747/page-22)

------
dharma1
The thermal design of Macbook pros just isn't adequate for >4 core high clock
speed CPUs, especially with a discrete GPU thrown in the mix too.

I had one of those i9 2018 MBPros and it was always super hot. Much happier
now with a 13" 4 core MBpro, it runs quite cool and without any fan noise most
of the time.

Built a separate AMD 3900x PC with an Nvidia GPU for heavy lifting, and can
use that remotely with the MBpro if needed.

~~~
antalk
For what it's worth, this only occurs when connected to an external monitor --
which causes the discrete GPU to overheat, even with no apps running. Using
the built-in display (with the discrete GPU on) is fine.

~~~
tobyhinloopen
I’m using 2 external displays (one 4K) and it’s not overheating and the fans
are completely silent.

My 16” i9 is MUCH quieter than my 15” 2015 Macbook pro, and it’s not like i’m
browsing Facebook: i’m constantly compiling and running tests on every file
save.

My macbook feels warm but not hot, even when I touch it at the fan exhausts. I
do notice my battery only lasting about 2,5 hours though.

Playing games it runs great and while you can hear the fans, it’s much better
compared to my 15” 2015.

Personally i’m really impressed with the cooling and performance of the 16”

~~~
smashedtoatoms
This has been my experience as well. Fans kick on on long compiles, and that's
about it.

------
treyfitty
To be fair, I run 2 4K monitors at 60hz and I don’t hear my fans doing normal
work (Excel, Firefox, PyCharm, Jupiter Labs). I use a DisplayLink hub (idk if
that matters, but I’ve heard DisplayLink is driven by CPU)

However, when I watch a 1080p movie, no matter what player, on just the laptop
display, the mouse cursor feels sluggish and my fans are on 50-75% at all
times.

~~~
_bxg1
I have this happen too, on my 2014 at work. In Chrome, like clockwork, any
time I watch a video that isn't on YouTube my fans spin up to the point where
it's distracting. Not sure if I've had it affect my mouse cursor, though. I do
have a 1080p monitor plugged in but I never have fan issues outside of
watching videos.

------
dangus
Just to add my two cents, I drive a 4K monitor in a quiet room and don’t
notice any significant difference in operation compared to my previous 2016
model.

Perhaps this is a driver bug that hits some configurations or situations?

The thermal design of the 16-inch seems adequate especially when compared to
outgoing 15-inch models, so I think it’s something they can fix in software.

Something to note: all recent discrete GPU MacBooks will switch to discrete
graphics as soon as you plug in any external monitor. Higher power consumption
and heat should be expected to a reasonable extent (everyone’s definition of
reasonable is different).

------
dep_b
My new i9 15" is a lot cooler and more silent than the i7 2015 it's been
replacing. I guess doing a completely clean install with nothing else than
using iCloud to sync data from the old machine fixed a lot of software related
performance issues that piled up on the old one. I expect the 2015 to be a lot
better again after a clean install. I think most of the problems on the 2019
are software related.

Not seeing any of the heat / performance problems mentioned by other people,
the only really weird thing I've seen is that the color palette was way too
dark getting out of sleep until I minimized and maximized brightness. That
helped until the next sleep where it was too bright this time and the
brightness trick didn't work anymore. Finally fixed it by switching between
another color profile and back.

Otherwise TouchID was pretty good, don't really notice the touchpad in any way
good or bad and the touch bar goes largely ignored just like the row of keys
it replaced. Keyboard action is nice, it's slightly more clicky than the 2015
but still has about the same travel.

I really doubt anybody still on a 2015 or older will regret getting the 16".
Probably the software problems get ironed out over the course of the next
months.

------
jonplackett
I really hope they haven't finally replaced the 'revolutionary' keyboard only
to throw in a 'revolutionary' new fan system...

~~~
wodenokoto
Would it be a pun to call a fan revolutionary?

~~~
jonplackett
Haha. I guess all fans are revolutionary then.

But this one is is comes with extra revolution for every USB-C port you use.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Makes me wonder if there's technology for fanless fans, moving air without
spinning fans.

~~~
rgoulter
Dyson's visually look like this. [https://www.dyson.com/fans-and-
heaters/dyson-cool-overview.h...](https://www.dyson.com/fans-and-
heaters/dyson-cool-overview.html)

~~~
sooheon
These have fans in the base.

------
insited
This isn't even the bad part. Apple have a massive batch of faulty macbook pro
2019 16" machines and aren't admitting it. I'm on my 3rd $7000 replacement 2
months after purchase, this third still faulty so now swapping for an early
2020 model when it comes out. I'm lucky if it lasts longer than an hour
without restarting. Terrible during renders.
[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250905859](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250905859)

Funny thing is, when I do eventually get a machine that isn't faulty, I still
have to deal with Catalina, since the new macbooks can't be downgraded and
Catalina has a lot of sleep bugs that restart also:
[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250826263](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250826263)

Every single 2019 16" macbook owner has also experienced the speaker popping
issue, which after 2 system updates has simply lowered in volume instead of
being loud and noticeable.

PopGate. GPUgate. KernelGate. T2Gate. It is actually far beyond a joke, this
was the true cost of apple become the world's first 'trillion dollar company'.
They cut so many corners all they can produce are lemons now.

------
luisrudge
I have the same issue with a 2016 15" model. When I plug an external monitor,
the place you put your wrists on gets super hot. I had to buy an external
keyboard/trackpad long before my keyboard started to fail.

------
rorykoehler
>I have noticed that Chrome is a problem

I use Firefox and my machine is silent. Typing on it now. 20+ tabs open and
about 20 others apps open. I can't hear my machine without putting my ear
against it.

------
jasoneckert
I've got the 16" MBP and definitely echo many of the same frustrations that
others have noted here.

Owning Apple products nowadays is a bit of a masochistic endeavor in many ways
- a year ago my local Linux group had me write a funny book on "Escaping the
Cult of Mac" that talked about this
([https://github.com/jasoneckert/CultOfMac](https://github.com/jasoneckert/CultOfMac)).

------
eralps
Just about a week ago, there was another thread about Macbook 16-inch Fan [1]

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22207018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22207018)

There are tools that can measure some sensor temp and control the fan speed
according to that on Mac. I was using it on my older MacBook Pro and the fan
usage was relatively better than when it was set to auto.

------
jamescontrol
I went from a MacBook Pro 13” late 2013, to a 2019 16” and I have the same
issue, running the exact same development setup, and I hear the fan much much
more on the new machine. I know it’s faster etc so it can’t directly be
compared, but still, I feel like I notice it now, every single day multiple
times, where with the old 13 inch I never really noticed it at all.

*Same setup and dev env on new MacBook as on the old

------
jasonrhaas
I have the Macbook Pro 16 and have been using it for a few months now.
Overall, I think its pretty bad laptop for how expensive it is. Yes Apple
fixed many things people were complaining about but it is a perfect example of
how Apple has stopped innovating and stopped caring about the MacBook line. In
fact, I dislike it so much I have started using my 10 year old MacBook Air
instead of my brand new Macbook Pro.

Things I dislike about the MBP 16:

\- Still has the touch bar

\- Screen size is awful. I like to work with windows size by size and the 16
inch screen size is awkward because most website won't re-size properly.

\- Its heavy as hell, slightly thinker than the old ones.

\- Its slow. Yes, all the RAM and CPU and the thing is laggy. I don't know why
but it just has a bad "feel" to it.

\- Touchpad is too big. Its gigantic and I often end up touching it by
accident.

\- Its crazy expensive

In the end, I will end up selling it and using my 10 year old Macbook Air
until it dies. After that I'm not sure.. maybe I will try the newer Macbook
Air and see if its tolerable. At least it doesnt have a touchbar.

~~~
MperorM
My experience has been quite different from yours, so I figured I'd share mine
as well.

\- Yep touchbar just sucks, I've spent too much time messing around with with
the default version, bettertouchtool, and pock, and I cannot find anything its
good at. Worse yet, the volume slider often will freeze the touch bar
completely.

\- The screen size and format is wonderful. I hate how Dell and Thinkpad
laptops I've used in the past, have these widescreen formats, where very few
lines of code can be visible at a time due to the limited vertical space.

\- I didn't realize this until you pointed it out, but it's definitely very
heavy compared to my 15-inch 2018 model and thinkpad x230. This haven't
bothered me at all, however.

\- It feels significantly faster than my 2018 model, and the CPU temperature
stays much lower under the same workloads.

\- I know a lot of people have trouble with this, so if you've previously had
this problem the 16 inch doesn't change that. Both my hands rest on the touch
pad while typing, and I have not had this problem once. Your mileage may vary.

\- I got mine discounted down to roughly 2k. Pretty ridiculous yeah!

\- The battery life is insane. On a simple workload it will last me an entire
day. On my full workload (Flutter development with android and ios simulators
open) it lasts about half a day.

In the end I'm very happy with my purchase. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm
still using this laptop 8 years from now.

~~~
wyclif
How did you get that discount?

~~~
MperorM
Student discount on top of a sale on all apple products in the university
store that happened a week after the 16 inch release.

------
seanalltogether
I like to keep my macbook on an elevated stand when its connected to
monitor/keyboard/mouse. Does anyone know of a passive cooling stand (no fans)
that works with macbooks? Maybe just something with a giant finned heatsink
that presses right up against the middle of the case or something?

~~~
SamBam
I use a Rain Design mStand. It's basically just a raised chunk of aluminum. It
probably passively cools to some extent (it claims it does), but I have no
metrics to say how much.

(Of course, you could possibly also lay a freezer pack on the bottom of the
stand, and maybe it would wick heat away even faster, and still passively...)

~~~
seanalltogether
So I'm just checking out a video review of that stand. It looks like there's
rubber pads that maybe raise the laptop up a bit off the plate. Can you tell
me if your laptop is actually laying flush against the aluminum plate, or is
there an air gap?

------
floatingatoll
I laughed at OP misspelling “fan talk” in the throwaway account’s name. Then I
flagged this, because it’s the third time this past week that someone has
tried to rabble-rouse about fan noise with a link to poor data and/or
extensive discussion threads with terrible quality data and no summary.

A meta-analysis of this discussion would have been super interesting. A link
to Apple’s equivalent of a Reddit post is not, especially from a throwaway
account.

I feel bad for the people with fan noise but this is not the way to handle it.
Please do better. Collect data, measure power draw, and most of all _document
how you performed your tests_ so that you can start asking others to perform
those exact tests, to your specifications. More science, less complaining,
please.

~~~
antalk
LOL, no. I’ve been a HN reader for years, and this MBP fan issue is driving me
nuts for a while now, I wanted it to get some attention. Then I realized I
don’t remember my HN password, that’s why the new account.

My name is Antal. K is the initial of my last name.

Glad we cleared that up.

But the last part of your message is noted, thank you. Next time I will do so.

~~~
floatingatoll
Apologies re: name assumption. There’s always a lot of throwaway accounts with
blank profiles and they’re impossible to tell from genuine content with any
certainty. I’ll not comment about account names in the future, it was a bad
call.

------
sgt101
I got one, heard the fan, felt the heat. Switched on "Automatic Graphics
Switching" in the power saver options and as I type it's on my lap as quiet as
a mouse and as cool as a cucumber.

~~~
333c
For me (and at least one other commenter in this thread), the issue occurs
when plugged into an external monitor. The linked thread seems to indicate the
same. Any thoughts on that? I'll check the relevant setting.

~~~
dnissley
I think graphics switching only works when running on battery power. Wonder if
there's a way of make it still work when plugged in...

~~~
sgt101
Ahh - probably true. It was annoying me playing world of warcraft and I turned
down the settings to shut it up - I forgot that.

Not an option if you are using it for your "work" workflow.

There must be a kill switch somewhere; I'll have a look.

~~~
sgt101
right - I've had a look and I found
[https://github.com/codykrieger/gfxCardStatus](https://github.com/codykrieger/gfxCardStatus).

I cloned it and then compiled it with xcode. I found one problem which is a
badly encoded file, which I fixed using the file inspector to set the encoding
and then saved it. After that it built and runs. On my 16' 2020 MBP it allows
me to turn off my 5300M. When I open WOW it refuses to allow the card to be
turned off, its web site says that's what it will do with an external monitor
too.

------
ernie24
There's a video by Max Tech which digs deeper into the topic (along with
possible fixes):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkmdHVfk4XE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkmdHVfk4XE)

TL;DR: 1) It seems this is Intel's fault not Apple's 2) For fix - use TGPro
(or something similar) to create your own fan speed profile (I use TGPro since
many years without any issues)

------
sub7
I just installed and set up Ubuntu after a long time. IMO both Windows and
Linux have totally caught up to OSX and while their hardware is still
marginally better, that gap is on a downward trend as well.

With mobile, I think Android is close on software and far superior on
hardware.

I wonder what happens to Apple stock if they don't get a new product line that
takes off - cars, TVs etc. Will ApplePay eating PayPal and Stripe offset this
downward trend enough?

------
danielstocks
I'm on a 15" MBP and I'm really missing the physical escape key (especially as
a long time vim user).

I was considering the 16" MBP, but I think I'll just go ahead with my Hacking-
tosh build instead! I spend 99% of my productive time at my desk. For anything
on the move I'm more inclined to go "light", a 13" Air perhaps`. I was hoping
iPad would cut it, but I'm afraid iPad OS is too limiting.

------
peterclary
I have a MBP 16 with a Philips 48.8” 5120x1440 monitor, running with the lid
closed. I have the extra 8GB on the GPU. The only time I’ve noticed fan noise
was when I was running Minecraft with Optifine and a very aggressive shader
pack. At first I thought the hissing sound was from rain in the game. Apart
from that I haven’t really heard anything.

------
Shivetya
related only by brand...

I upgraded from a 2013 iMac to a 2019 model recently for two reasons, the
primary being my 2013 used an Nvidia 780m chipset and Nvidia no longer made
compatible drivers and Apple wasn't doing any real updates either. Second I
wanted he higher resolution screen.

However, the fan which I rarely had come on in the 2013 is hyper active at
times in the 2019 even with similar content. Oddly it is not consistent. Now I
did go from i5 to i9 which do run hotter but they are very spiky as in the
seem to flare a core or two enough to excite the fan logic.

The GPU while getting warm (Vega 48) will less likely cause the fans to spin
up past 2k than a random cpu spike. So either the fan logic is wonky or the
processor logic is. While I understand that core balancing is complex it just
seems to randomly jump single channels far more often than load across the
whole

------
gmurphy
FWIW, disabling Intel Turbo Boost (using Turbo Boost Switcher) has solved all
my 16" MBP fan noise issues with no noticable performance impact for my daily
tasks - you can even disable it in Bootcamp Windows (by setting CPU to 99% in
power settings) and still get good framerates in Destiny 2.

------
DerekRobot
My ASUS GA502 makes all kinds of noises. It has a loud coil whine when the
keyboard backlight is off/dim, and the audio chipset is constantly popping the
speakers by turning on and off to save power.

I bought it open box; the buyer probably went insane from the noise before
they could even set up Windows.

------
bborud
However you look at this, it is bad engineering from a company that can afford
to to proper engineering but don't.

Boo.

------
arexxbifs
Interesting. I have an Acer Swift 1 with passive cooling and just the
integrated Intel graphics, and it seems to run a couple of degrees hotter when
I've got an external monitor connected. Not so much that it worries or bothers
me, I just think it's kind of strange.

------
zedpm
Hmm, I have the 6-core i7 version of the 16-inch MBP, and I'm driving two 2560
x 1440 displays (in addition to the built-in display). I have Chrome open with
dozens of tabs, lots of other apps running, etc. and I haven't noticed any
unexpected fan load.

------
x3sphere
I’m only getting 4-5W usage on the 5500M GPU at 3440x1440@100Hz, fwiw. Which
is a fairly high refresh rate for that res.

However, I only get the low power usage when in clamshell mode. Driving the
built in display plus my monitor makes it shoot up to 20W usage.

------
crusso
On a related note, I have a 2018 MBP touchbar and it's currently out at Apple
so they can replace the bulging battery. My guess is that it runs too hot
sitting on my wooden desktop.

Anyone have any great recommendations for quiet cooling systems?

------
ashishb
Again why isn't there a single good premium Linux laptop in the market yet?

~~~
_bxg1
There is... a single one

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/02/dells-2019-xps-13-de...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/02/dells-2019-xps-13-developer-
edition-the-best-linux-laptop-til-the-2020-version/)

------
petercooper
I've found if I push the MacBook 16 at a certain point on the bottom of the
chassis, it makes weird squeaking noises like there's a bird trapped in the
machine. Other than that, a perfect machine so far!

------
DaveSapien
I'm going to miss Turbo Boost Switcher Pro, when apple kills it...

------
hawkweed
My biggest painpint with mbpro 15 2018 is double keystroke problem. Just
driving me nuts. Apart from that, I would never change mbpro for any other
machine.

~~~
fortran77
I agggree! MaccbookPPro is the bbest! I ffeel sorrry for those Windozze
peopplee.

------
D13Fd
Mine seems fine. I have not noticed any more fan noise than any previous
macbook. I use it for 8+ hours a day, open, usually with a Luna Display
connected.

------
p1necone
This isn't surprising at all to me. All Apple has to do is put "i7" on the box
and their customers will eat it up and then just browse Facebook and YouTube.
Their whole shtick for years has been selling "pro" devices to regular
consumers who aspire to be pros.

------
hieudang9
an other report from someday ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22207018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22207018)

------
sumo89
Oh boy we've never seen this issue with macbooks before...

------
nottorp
So did they at least fix the keyboard?

~~~
conchy
yes, it's a lot better. first time a new MacBook Pro shipped with a new
keyboard that is actually better to type on.

------
utxaa
to me this is not any more complicated than not getting a MBP

------
ThouYS
oh oh

