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are you sure the iGPU will not be used? btw most of the user will not plugin an external monitor nor daisy chain monitors so the issue is not even a point there right?

I don't think any imac has used igpu when there is a dgpu present has it? They only reason they do on laptops is for battery life, which is not a consideration on desktop.
 
i think you are right and the iGPU is not used in iMac. But i wouldn't expect any problems here like already said the cooling is much better and maybe 0,5% of the users will use additional monitors.

btw after nearly 1 day of testing i have no big problem with the 5600m. Even if i run a developer windows vm its still about 6W in clamshell mode.
So its defintely better than any other dGPU i tested before in a MBP.
 
i think you are right and the iGPU is not used in iMac. But i wouldn't expect any problems here like already said the cooling is much better and maybe 0,5% of the users will use additional monitors.

Which is exactly what I said.
 
Just to summarize -

This thread is just complaining about the fans, right? There has been no reports of throttling or anything affecting performance of the laptop, right?
 
Just to summarize -

This thread is just complaining about the fans, right? There has been no reports of throttling or anything affecting performance of the laptop, right?

Yes, there is throttling. The fans get unbearably loud at 4800+ before that happens though, so most people just end up clamshelling it. If you're OK with the fan noise and sit through it (with music and headphones turned up), throttling starts to kick in cause the fans stop being enough to lower the temps, with heat and unecesary power consumption beignt he root problem. It also throttles to the point of shutdown if you lower the fan speed of the Macbook manually with TGP and temps rise above 75.

And also I wouldn't patronizingly shrug off the summarization of the thread as just complaints. I think people are trying to find patterns and solutions. Also why I pinged for any lawyers to comment on the validity of a class action for this or change.org petition. Previous poster actually got in contact with Apple engineers after emailing Tim Cook lol and should be updating shortly.
 
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Just to summarize -

This thread is just complaining about the fans, right? There has been no reports of throttling or anything affecting performance of the laptop, right?

Not so much about the fan noise, the GPU draws too much power (18W) when external monitor is attached while the lid is open at idle causing the fan complains, unecessary heat also not good for battery as well as for the machine in general.
 
Guys I had this issue and returned my MBP 16 after about a week. Now happily back on my 2019 MBP 15 2.4 i9 with 560x.

I hate to break it to you all but this is a total lost cause - with it being most likely a deep-seated hardware/driver issue and Apple Silicon coming there will be absolutely no engineering attention to this. Apple's position is that this is by design. My advice to all would be to cut your losses while you can.

Personally given I use Parallels and Windows extensively for software development and I know Apple Silicon won't support this, I don't know what the future holds for me with Apple.

I could easily end up back on Dell XPS in years to come, maybe keeping a MBP13/14 or my iPad Pro for email and light work.

A sad state of affairs really - I really wish Apple had gone AMD for their high-end MacBooks 😢
 
update

Spoke to Apple Technical. Told them my problem, very clearly.
I told this problem appears as soon as you plug in ANY monitor.
He told to take a system diagnostic while the monitor was plugged in.
I mentioned this problem can be solved using windows 10 by using third-party AMD drivers, in fact they asked me to go into detail about that. I told them that I had to set my MacBook Pro resolution to 2048x1280 or under to get 3W.
He asked me how I was using my laptop, I told him, extended mode, with lid fully open.
I also told this is specific to AMD 5300M and 5500M, on these cards the wattage is 18-20W but on 5600M it is 6W, they noted that down as well. He said he will call me back again and forward the Information to Apple Engineers.

We will see where this goes. The more us bring this issue to the higher ups the better
 
Just to summarize -

This thread is just complaining about the fans, right? There has been no reports of throttling or anything affecting performance of the laptop, right?

No since it's a bit warmer now my Macbook Pro 16" definitely throttles the CPU now. It turns super sluggish after a while with an external monitor plugged in and kernel_task in Activity Monitor shows 500%+ CPU usage indicating the fans are struggling to keep up.

Apple QA has turned to garbage :(
 
Good for you bro. Why are you wasting your time here? keep doing your work...

Because I check in here every few days to see if anything new has happened since the last 50 pages. But instead, it just keeps getting weeper and weeper. The same questions are asked over and over again.
 
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Don't expect it will be much better with a Dell Computer. I have 2 Precision Mobile workstations here... if you think a MBP is loud the precision will just laugh at you..... its like jet turbines and the dell precisions are even more expensive than apple...

The xps had big quality issues in every model. Now its touchpad, sound.... I didn't saw one single youtube tester including Dave Lee who could get one xps which had no serious flaws even if they said its a good device...

As a software engineer i have to work with many different devices and its really awful what you get currently from ANY company.

I would suggest at least anybody to try out TG Pro as a workaround with custom fan profiles what was working good for me.
 
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Hey guys,

so the issue we all notice is the loud fan when using more than one display. Are you guys really sure that the most problem is the wattage of the AMD Radeon? I mean: If I switch off Turbo Boost with Turbo Boost Switcher, my fans are also very quiet. So it may the Intel CPU or the mix of CPU and GPU? Or maybe it's just the configuration of the fan speeds - I noticed that if the fans are at highest level, the whole MacBook must be under a specific temperature to put the fans to a lower level. What I mean: Everybody talks only about the wattage of the GPU, but maybe there are various factors causing this issue…
 
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Hey guys,

so the issue we all notice is the loud fan when using more than one display. Are you guys really sure that the most problem is the wattage of the AMD Radeon? I mean: If I switch off Turbo Boost with Turbo Boost Switcher, my fans are also very quiet. So it may the Intel CPU or the mix of CPU and GPU? Or maybe it's just the configuration of the fan speeds - I noticed that if the fans are at highest level, the whole MacBook must be under a specific temperature to put the fans to a lower level. What I mean: Everybody talks only about the wattage of the GPU, but maybe there are various factors of this issue…
Yes, it's a mix. More power consumption equals more heat being generated, so the dGPU consuming 15W to 20W more when an external display is plugged in results in a higher temperature all around. Personally I see a difference in CPU temp of almost 20 degrees Celsius when idle (42C idle without an external monitor, 60C idle with two monitors attached). Under load (running a CPU-only benchmark) the results were better with the monitors disconnected, which to me implies that the CPU was being throttled thanks to the extra heat generated by the dGPU.

Switching off turbo boost will reduce the power consumption of the CPU, meaning also the general temperature will go down. I ran some benchmarks and disabling turbo boost impacts performance quite severely in CPU intensive tasks, so it's not a great solution.

An Intel i9 CPU in a MacBook Pro chassis (or any laptop, really) will run hot when maxed out, period. However, the heat generated by the seemingly unnecessary dGPU usage when an external monitor is connected makes things quite a bit worse. The MBP gets seriously hot and spins up its fans even when the CPU is under medium load. If this only happened under full load it would not be quite as problematic.
 
The point is that the MacBook Pro 16 heats even if you don't do anything, with an external monitor plugged. Plug the monitor, wait two minutes, the chassis becomes hot. This is not normal, at all. And the only parameter we noticed to change is the radeon pro consumption that jumps from 0 to 18 W.
 
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Because I check in here every few days to see if anything new has happened since the last 50 pages. But instead, it just keeps getting weeper and weeper. The same questions are asked over and over again.

uh no. no one’s yelling. If you read the thread there’s actually new development as well as more reconfirmation of the problem. check Kunggu’s post. Its important that people know it’s not just their device. Apple doesn’t help,so threads like this offer people at least some general peace of mind. If it doesnt bother you, good on you. there’s better stuff worth your time.

update

Spoke to Apple Technical. Told them my problem, very clearly.
I told this problem appears as soon as you plug in ANY monitor.
He told to take a system diagnostic while the monitor was plugged in.
I mentioned this problem can be solved using windows 10 by using third-party AMD drivers, in fact they asked me to go into detail about that. I told them that I had to set my MacBook Pro resolution to 2048x1280 or under to get 3W.
He asked me how I was using my laptop, I told him, extended mode, with lid fully open.
I also told this is specific to AMD 5300M and 5500M, on these cards the wattage is 18-20W but on 5600M it is 6W, they noted that down as well. He said he will call me back again and forward the Information to Apple Engineers.

We will see where this goes. The more us bring this issue to the higher ups the better

What email address did you message to get to the Apple engineer? I’ll hit them up as well. Thanks for your efforts
 
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Don't expect it will be much better with a Dell Computer. I have 2 Precision Mobile workstations here... if you think a MBP is loud the precision will just laugh at you..... its like jet turbines and the dell precisions are even more expensive than apple...

The xps had big quality issues in every model. Now its touchpad, sound.... I didn't saw one single youtube tester including Dave Lee who could get one xps which had no serious flaws even if they said its a good device...

As a software engineer i have to work with many different devices and its really awful what you get currently from ANY company.

I would suggest at least anybody to try out TG Pro as a workaround with custom fan profiles what was working good for me.

the issue isn’t living with the fan noise, it’s the fact that the heat problem is very theoretically fixable, so people are trying to verify The problem and get apples attention. TGPro basically slows my laptop to a standstll if temps go above 75, so it’s not really in our best interest to lower the fans cause the unavoidable heat. the throttle is triggered by the heat and overrides everything.
 
Is there something we can do as a community to make Apple give this the attention it deserves? Unfortunately, sometimes something doesn't get dealt with unless a fuss is made. If we can make them worry that this might damage their reputation, they might actually do something about it. It's such a basic thing, and plenty of people have the "open laptop connected to an external monitor" set-up — it's not some obscure issue.

Some ideas:

— A change.org petition, posted periodically on this thread and others so it doesn't get buried amongst the slew of complaints and garners as many signatories as possible. This would indicate the ubiquity of the problem, and wouldn't be a good look for them.

— Bring this to Louis Rossmann's attention. He has a huge YouTube channel, and often makes videos critical of MacBooks. This could get the word out, and make it something tech-savvy people are aware of. Perhaps, in response to "I'm thinking of getting a 16" MacBook," people would say, "Have you heard about the issue it has with external monitors? It's ridiculous, and Apple haven't bothered to fix it!" If this became a thing, Apple might decide to try and put an end to it.

— I have seen some people talking about legal action. I don't know exactly how one would proceed with this, but this could make them take it more seriously. It's not on that people are paying for this expensive laptop only to find out it can't do something that cheap laptops can do: run an external monitor while it is open and at idle without heat and fan noise issues.

This is my two cents. I would appreciate any comments/additions.
 
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To add additional perspective, my 2016 base 13 non touch (i5/16gb ram) runs decently smooth with the LG ultrafine 5k monitor. I admit my work isn't graphics intensive and that certain apps will cause the fan to spin up when I start multitasking. However, typical web browsing, coding, and watching videos (not in full screen) work fine.

I have a 16 inch (i7/5500m) coming in. Worst case, I think I'll end up exchanging it for a 13 inch, but I can see how those who need the 16inch specs are frustrated with this heat problem. Hopefully, we don't have to wait for 16-ARM for a fix.
 
SO.. if I understand correctly, the problem is gone if you use the MBP with the lid closed? Anyone with an LG Ultrafine 5K that confirm that?
 
SO.. if I understand correctly, the problem is gone if you use the MBP with the lid closed? Anyone with an LG Ultrafine 5K that confirm that?

MBP16" 5500M 4 GB clamshell with Ultrafine 5K (TB3) very much has this issue. iStat Menus reports 20+ Watts of constant power use from Radeon High Side.

Fans run at a minimum of 2800 RPM when the computer is hands-off idle, and 4000-5500 RPM, if watching a video, using any apps or having a telco with Teams/Webex. The same happens with the latest Big Sur beta. Luckily I'm not a podcaster or a voiceover artist, because even a potato microphone would pick up the noise.

The 20W baseline consumption means that any CPU load over 10% makes the fans run at 4000 RPM or more. I can't concentrate to work without closed or in-ear headphones with this Mac. It's not the end of the world, but I would have stuck with the 2014 maxed out iMac if I had know about this "feature" last November. Finance-wise I could exchange this setup to the new iMac without loss, but those 2013 bezels are just too much to look at for 4 more years :)

When the external monitor is disconnected, fans slow down to 1800 RPM very quickly and stay below 3000 RPM most of the day.
 
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