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Excessive heating and fans on M3 Max 14" Pro with Xcode

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frontrange-goats1001

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 1, 2024
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I recently purchased an M3 Max 14" Pro with 36GB ram, 2TB storage and I'm experiencing excessive heating and fan activity just running a simple Xcode project on the M3 Max.

On iStatistico Pro, CPU cores 1-7 are showing around 180-200+ F temperatures and fans over 6k rpm within a minute of running the simulator. I use an external 4K monitor and these temps and rpms are slightly lower without an external monitor, but persist nonetheless.

Im coming from a 14" M1 Pro and I never had this kind of issue. This same project ran perfectly fine on my M1 Pro though it was slightly less snappy. Even running a boilerplate Unreal Engine project sends the temps and fans through the roof and renders the application unusable.

Has anyone faced similar issues? I'm on latest MacOS public 14.2.1. I've tried reinstalling Xcode and restarting the Mac a few times.

Is this a software or hardware issue, or something M3 Max specific? I'm still in the return window but I'd rather not have to deal with setting up another Mac all over again.
 
frontrange-goats1001 said:
I recently purchased an M3 Max 14" Pro with 36GB ram, 2TB storage and I'm experiencing excessive heating and fan activity just running a simple Xcode project on the M3 Max.

On iStatistico Pro, CPU cores 1-7 are showing around 180-200+ F temperatures and fans over 6k rpm within a minute of running the simulator. I use an external 4K monitor and these temps and rpms are slightly lower without an external monitor, but persist nonetheless.

Im coming from a 14" M1 Pro and I never had this kind of issue. This same project ran perfectly fine on my M1 Pro though it was slightly less snappy. Even running a boilerplate Unreal Engine project sends the temps and fans through the roof and renders the application unusable.

Has anyone faced similar issues? I'm on latest MacOS public 14.2.1. I've tried reinstalling Xcode and restarting the Mac a few times.

Is this a software or hardware issue, or something M3 Max specific? I'm still in the return window but I'd rather not have to deal with setting up another Mac all over again.
Click to expand...
The M3 Max 14” models run pretty hot with several YouTubers showing this. Even on my 16 inch M3Max, it runs notably hotter and louder than my prior M1Max 16” as it‘s drawing more power courtesy of the higher CPU/GPU core count despite being on 3nm.
 
magbarn said:
The M3 Max 14” models run pretty hot with several YouTubers showing this. Even on my 16 inch M3Max, it runs notably hotter and louder than my prior M1Max 16” as it‘s drawing more power courtesy of the higher CPU/GPU core count despite being on 3nm.
Click to expand...
Ah okay, thats super disappointing. I figured going from an M1 Pro to M3 Max would just be a spec bump but I didn't realize there would be such heat / noise tradeoffs.

I spoke with Apple support and they suggested that temps going over 200F is pretty dangerous so Im reluctant to do any serious work on this machine.

Would changing to 16" and downgrading to a Pro yield to better heat / fan performance? I wonder if I should just keep my old M1 Pro instead.
 
I work with Xcode, Terminal, and Simulator on my 14-inch MacBook Pro and I have experienced no signs of excessive heating. I would maybe use the activity monitor to see which program might be taking up a lot of resources.
 
95C is pretty normal for laptops under heavy load on cpu temp, it's what they're designed for. If someone at Apple said that's dangerous, then they were clearly a clueless low level rep.
 
200f is not dangerous or that hot for the silicon. Perfectly within operating temperatures.
You can set it to low power mode to reduce heat, noise and battery drain. Performance should still be better than M1 Pro. Though less of course
 
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