(2019) 16" is HOT & NOISY with an external monitor! :(

[Minga089]

I’ve just received a new baseline 16” through work. Connecting to a 24” 1920x1200 HP monitor via an Anker dock and then HDMI.

Seems pretty fine to me. Definitely runs hotter when connected to the display but not very hot. I would say hotter than warm. Fan noise is there but pretty unnoticeable in a quiet room.

This is with multiple Chrome tabs, the full MS Office suite and Dreamweaver open and usually dialled in to a meeting via Cisco Webex, amongst other smaller Apps.

Did I get lucky or am I just not very picky?

I have a similar experience (i7 / 5300m):

Radeon High Side: 17-18W

Quiet fans: <2.000rpm at idle and generally the machine is quit most of the time

Temperature: 53-60 at idle (depends on room temperature)

Absolutely love my MBP 16" , although the 18W power draw (lid open with an external monitor) is indeed ridiculous...

 

[DesertNomad]

What browser are you using? Are you using clamshell mode or open? Try watching a 4k youtube video fullscreen with full resolution on the XDR display for a few minutes and report back. It doesn’t start right away. Also what resolution are you using on the XDR display?

Do you have a link to a 4K video I can try? I have the 16" open, connected via the right side to an XDR and on the left side to a TB3->TB2 adapter, three OWC RAID systems and then a 27" Thunderbolt Display.

I am using Safari but have Opera as well.

 

[ght56]

Haven't gone through the 160 pages.. but have you all tried ensuring you are plugging power into the right side USB vs the left?

Suppose to play a role in reducing heat and keeping the fan off..

This does seem to make a very small difference on my 16-inch. That said, the huge power draw of the 5500M still keeps the temperatures high even at idle.

 

[Mity]

Do you have a link to a 4K video I can try? I have the 16" open, connected via the right side to an XDR and on the left side to a TB3->TB2 adapter, three OWC RAID systems and then a 27" Thunderbolt Display.

I am using Safari but have Opera as well.

Sony has good 4K videos:

And here's an 8K one:

 

[IceStormNG]

There are multiple sites saying you are incorrect. They talk to both the older 15" and the newer 16" having the same issue.. Not saying they are right but not sure what you are using as fact.

Why You Shouldn’t Charge Your MacBook Pro From The Left-Hand Side

A new piece of research claims that plugging in a MacBook Pro charger on the left-hand side of the device can cause the laptop to run hot, potentially affecting its performance

www.forbes.com

Can a simple charging mistake cause your MacBook Pro to overheat?

Can you really charge your MacBook Pro a "wrong way," causing overheating and throttling of the CPU? If so, what can you do about it?

www.zdnet.com

I never read anything it was only for the 13" MBP..

I don't know. But I tried both sides and never had any issues with my MBPs. I never experienced this problem no matter from wich side I charge. It also makes no sense.

 

[kyds3k]

I just changed to a USB-C to DisplayPort cable (was using a USB-C to HDMI dongle) . . . noise and heat seem to have reduced a LITTLE bit? I still have an appointment to see about swapping over to a 5600.

 

[LithiumChrome]

I have the 5300 as well.
Basically I have a eGPU connected to my 16" (top right port).
I connect two monitors to the eGPU. This lowers the power draw of the 5300 to about 5W
It works fine untill I start doing something on the internal screen. For example, if I play a video on my internal screen the wattage goes up and while it is not constant 18W it still IS something SO to completely eliminate the unnecessary (in my particular scenario. This might not work for others so keep that in mind) power draw of the 5300 you run the sudo command using terminal app.

Open terminal
copy and paste this: sudo pmset -a gpuswitch 0 and hit return. You will be asked to enter password. As you type nothing will happen on the screen so make sure you're type it correctly. Once done hit return again.
Now internal screen will use the on board intel graphics.

If you want to power the 5300 up just copy and paste this: sudo pmset -a gpuswitch 1 and hit return.

*****
on a side note no matter what I do Today I can't get the terminal command to work. It does nothing lol.
So weird.

Thats great, thank you very much for the reply.

Is this a permanent command or will it need to be reapplied if the machine is restarted?

 

[LithiumChrome]

Official answer is: "working as designed."

I contacted support for a battery issue (that mysteriously went away) and spoke to them about this issue as well. they know about it but it's not something they can change at the hardware level, as I was told.

So the whole issue with the dGPU power drain is likely not going to get fixed in future updates? This really sucks for me. I frequently use an external monitor, in an unplugged state and just about get an hour from the battery (16" i7 5300M 2019)


I've reported the issue to Apple and have been speaking with a senior advisor who told me they are aware of the issue but didn't comment further than that. I've sent several diagnostic reports to them.

 

[LithiumChrome]

I just changed to a USB-C to DisplayPort cable (was using a USB-C to HDMI dongle) . . . noise and heat seem to have reduced a LITTLE bit? I still have an appointment to see about swapping over to a 5600.

Is this something that Apple is willing to do? and also is the general consensus that the 5600 doesn't experience major battery drain?

 

[thedocbwarren]

Considering it's very likely a problem with the hardware, no.

Considering it needs to ramp up the memory speed for the outgoing connection it's going to use high-wattage. Essentially the dGPU is at high load if used with externals or major use regardless. Cost of using a dGPU in a laptop. eGPU is the best option here. I know we have the clamshell options with 5w, that's because it's driving one monitor and not routing back. That's an option too.

I think these were designed for the high load with fans honestly since they intended it to use a lot of resources ad a Pro laptop (maybe too much for small usage.) Less demanding usage I think was designed or intended for the 13 or MBA honestly. Reminded of when they expected these along with a Pro iMac to replace the Mac Pro.

So the whole issue with the dGPU power drain is likely not going to get fixed in future updates? This really sucks for me. I frequently use an external monitor, in an unplugged state and just about get an hour from the battery (16" i7 5300M 2019)


I've reported the issue to Apple and have been speaking with a senior advisor who told me they are aware of the issue but didn't comment further than that. I've sent several diagnostic reports to them.

 

[IceStormNG]

So the whole issue with the dGPU power drain is likely not going to get fixed in future updates? This really sucks for me. I frequently use an external monitor, in an unplugged state and just about get an hour from the battery (16" i7 5300M 2019)

No it won't the dGPU drains the battery as it consumes a lot of power. AMDs power management is pretty bad. if the dGPU is engaged, say goodbye to your battery.

On battery, you should stay on the iGPU. Sadly gfxCardStatus doesn't seem to work on the 16" or you could use that to lock your MacBook to the Intel GPU while on the go. If your applications really need the power of the Radeon, then there's nothing you can do. Your MacBook has a 100Wh battery. The dGPU consumes up to 50W and the Intel CPU as much as is available. The whole system is power limited to 100W average and 150W Peak. So on max average load (=100W), you get a 1h battery time.
With a tool like iStat Menu, you can see the total wattage and also the wattage of several components. So you can see what drains your battery.

 

[supaninjax]

Considering it's very likely a problem with the hardware, no.

Considering it needs to ramp up the memory speed for the outgoing connection it's going to use high-wattage. Essentially the dGPU is at high load if used with externals or major use regardless. Cost of using a dGPU in a laptop. eGPU is the best option here. I know we have the clamshell options with 5w, that's because it's driving one monitor and not routing back. That's an option too.

I think these were designed for the high load with fans honestly since they intended it to use a lot of resources ad a Pro laptop (maybe too much for small usage.) Less demanding usage I think was designed or intended for the 13 or MBA honestly. Reminded of when they expected these along with a Pro iMac to replace the Mac Pro.

That’s not true. Same exact machine runs much quieter without excessively loud fans and heat on bootcamp. Previous generations never had this issue either. It’s definitely a software issue

 

[supaninjax]

Do you have a link to a 4K video I can try? I have the 16" open, connected via the right side to an XDR and on the left side to a TB3->TB2 adapter, three OWC RAID systems and then a 27" Thunderbolt Display.

I am using Safari but have Opera as well.

Safari doesn’t support 4k videos unless you’re on Big Sur. Make sure you select the full 4k+ resolution on the youtube video and play it full screen. Within a few minutes my fans are maxing out regardless of which 4k video is playing

 

[mrmachine79]

That’s not true. Same exact machine runs much quieter without excessively loud fans and heat on bootcamp. Previous generations never had this issue either. It’s definitely a software issue

You're not comparing apples with apples. Windows has a completely different architecture and rednering pipeline. Windows vs macos is not just a driver difference. Comparing hardware performance in bootcamp vs macos is not helpful in determining whether or not a macos software update could possibly fix the issue. Unless you are suggesting they completely rewrite macos to be windows. And, many many reports that the same problem exists on windows and on desktops. It's just not a problem for windows because windows uses the GPU much less to render the core OS that the elevated baseline power draw doesn't push the fans into jet engine territory. Comparing hardware in bootcamp vs macos is only useful if you are deciding which OS to run.

EDIT: And previous generations have all had exactly the same behaviour. It's not new. Forced dGPU usage and increased power draw/heat due to max memory clock with external display attached. It's just been less of a heat/noise problem in older models with slower max memory clock speeds. Or in the case of my own 2019 15" which I compared side by side with the 2019 16", the 15" was WAY worse with frequent 1000% kernel_task and 800MHz CPU throttling.

 

[soiramk]

Well laptop is new and I was getting a warning to service the battery. It did not change after a reboot and I did notice it was draining fast. After speaking with them they asked for a diagnostic. Once I ran it the warning went away. Battery life is still the same but I discussed the heat issues as throttling as part of a battery drain discussion. The tech acknowledged this is a known thing but they can't fix without changes to hardware.

I bought the laptop at 12/31/2019 and as I write this post, the health of my battery is 89%. I have seen it as low as 86%…. Do you know if battery is replaceable in this model if I’ll need one in the future?

 

[kyds3k]

Is this something that Apple is willing to do? and also is the general consensus that the 5600 doesn't experience major battery drain?

welp, it's been over 14 days so i can't return/trade in. and looking on the site i can only trade it in for $1440. pardon my French but f*** that. I'll probably just end up getting an eGPU when i get back to Kenya, and waiting for however long it takes to get there :-(

 

[petterihiisila]

I bought the laptop at 12/31/2019 and as I write this post, the health of my battery is 89%. I have seen it as low as 86%…. Do you know if battery is replaceable in this model if I’ll need one in the future?

I've got similar figures. Where I live, Apple-official replacement costs €209. That's not cheap, but fortunately not a highway robbery either.

The % went to about 87 in six months, but it hasn't moved from there in the past 3 months. This correlates with the release of the battery health feature, something I was I had last year.

This is off-topic btw.

 

[soiramk]

You're right. Sorry for the off-topic.

 

[pcote]

I am interested! I just walked to the Genius Bar and complained about this. The genius said, "maybe MBP is incapable of your work, you should buy a more powerful one". WTF!

Wow, that’s an incredibly stupid comment from a "Genius", hahaha...

 

[DesertNomad]

I tried the 4K videos above in Opera and they played fine at full screen on my XDR display with only very low-level fan and the MBP 16" (5600M) only got mildly warm above the TouchBar roughly above the += key. I then tried it at 8K and the fans came on at what I would call medium speed after a minute or so.

 

[Appledoesnotlisten]

I tried the 4K videos above in Opera and they played fine at full screen on my XDR display with only very low-level fan and the MBP 16" (5600M) only got mildly warm above the TouchBar roughly above the += key. I then tried it at 8K and the fans came on at what I would call medium speed after a minute or so.

Very good. Curious is adding eGPU to 5600m will eliminate fan noise regardless what screen you are playing videos on.

 

[FilmIndustryGuy]

so whats the verdict? Which monitor can I buy that is around 32-38 inches with sharper text other than the Ultrafine from 2017?

 

[adgoodma]

OK, for me at least, I have figured out that the 5600m creates much less fan noise unless I get chrome going. I have an egpu with running the second screen, the computer in clamshell with a UltraFine 27 as the first monitor.
My problem is that I run Ecamm which is a gpu hog and gets everything hot. I have that using the eGPU. However, no matter how I set it up, using google meet through chrome, which is the way I access online teaching, gets the computers fans to 100%.
So it seems that at least in my case, google meet and chrome is the main culprit. Perhaps there will be some updates to chrome, but at this point, I don't think my 5600 is working incorrectly.

 

[mrmachine79]

OK, for me at least, I have figured out that the 5600m creates much less fan noise unless I get chrome going. I have an egpu with running the second screen, the computer in clamshell with a UltraFine 27 as the first monitor.
My problem is that I run Ecamm which is a gpu hog and gets everything hot. I have that using the eGPU. However, no matter how I set it up, using google meet through chrome, which is the way I access online teaching, gets the computers fans to 100%.
So it seems that at least in my case, google meet and chrome is the main culprit. Perhaps there will be some updates to chrome, but at this point, I don't think my 5600 is working incorrectly.

Since you have an eGPU already, try setting the eGPU attached display as default so all newly launched apps use the eGPU.

 

[adgoodma]

Since you have an eGPU already, try setting the eGPU attached display as default so all newly launched apps use the eGPU.

Thanks - I’ve done that. But there there’s a pretty common bug that doesn’t allow chrome to reliably use the egpu. It’s seems that chrome is just a mess for macs