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Mac studio v1 fan noise - it's going to be one of the loudest Macs at idle.
- Thread starter AdamSeen
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My advice would be try not to let your paranoia drive you to look for faults. It’s hard to do reading these threads. The only reason I traded my model in was because I noticed issues in my day-to-day use not because I stress tested the unit under unrealistic settings (not saying you’re doing that). If you’re not bothered by your Mac Studio then I’d keep it. I’m a huge fan of this product category and hope Apple continues to iterate.
When using the MacBook Pro at a laptop I can’t get the fans to even come on. When docked to a display I can get them to come on at 2500 RPM with moderate usage, but it’s utterly inaudible and I really like it.
My memory was the D300's were the primary problem cards. Mine had the D500's and worked flawlessly until I drowned it accidentally.
I only put Mac Studio to sleep. Now I noticed that it was working in the background while sleeping (despite disabling "enable wake over network") and not once did the fan start. The temperatures are much higher than normal web browsing. A single GPU was not used. This kind of blows up the conjecture that the fans must be running because of the power supply.
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This is nonsense, the PSU is 93% efficient, meaning it accounts for 7% of the heat, removing the PSU would have a negligible effect on the amount of heat needed to cool for the computer.
Apple just seems too conservative with their fan curve and are over cooling the computer, where they could run the fan speed a lot lower especially at idle. I get not wanting the computer to wildly ramp the fan up and down, but having the fan run about the same speed under full load as idle is too far on the other end of the extreme.
The D300's were the least likely to die. D700's were the most likely.
But that may have been due to usage more than anything else. Users who needed the D700's tended to use them. There were stories of post-production companies burning through MP 6,1's w/ D700's as they let them crank away 24x7.
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It's possible Apple over-compensated w/ the Studio. They did not want a repeat of the 6,1 overheating fiasco.
Apple did recall some D500 & D700 systems due to defective GPU's but that was isolated to a few months in 2015.
Thank you ! Seems that the fans air flow is clearly audible.
So you said your iphone was 1cm from the rear exhaust.
Not really sure how can i use your record to simulate on my desk ? Is your record could be used in a way to figure how noisy is a mac studio ?
So, I understand you owned a mac mini before. How would you qualify the mac studio ? Just « quiet » but louder as the mac mini, or « silent » as inaudible at 50/60 cm ?
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I just can’t believe apple has not made a statement about this yet I’m pretty sure people complained for day one. if no statement by next Wednesday I’m returning my second one
I left a post yesterday once I updated to 12.3.1 I started getting the noise back. plus TG PRO keeps reporting my left fan as not working even though it shows it moving. Kinda of freaked out. Sounds like it has a traditional hard drive in it. keeps making chirping noises.
This is what is sounds like after a few hours of use.
It's literally 1cm behind the exhaust (recorded via iPhone 13)
I'd say it can be heared in complete silence if you're without headphones.
If you use headphones of any kind, it's almost inaudible.
My mac Mini M1 was completely inaudible; never heared it once, but it was MUCH less powerful.
Once again, I'd rather have more power with a little noise than the opposite.
I don't mind a little noise for a powerful machine; I just hope having a slightly noisier unit won't mean having a damaged one.
Everything else seems to work as it's supposed to.
Ok, I checked my box and it says "assembled in China", so it's basically one of the so called "noisy units".
Anyway I already got used to the noise and everything else seems to be working fine.
Performance is as expected, SSD speeds are good and temperatures are fine.
Considering it would take 10-12 weeks for a replacement unit to be delivered (Italy here), I will keep this.
Ideally it would be good to get a more silent one, and anyway I wouldn't even be sure to get a quieter one...
It would be extra funny to wait 12 weeks only to get a machine with the same issue.
I work exclusively with headphones on and anyway I'm tolerant with noises, as I already suffer from a slight tinnitus and I had noisy gaming PCs all my life.
Anyway I already got used to the noise and everything else seems to be working fine.
Performance is as expected, SSD speeds are good and temperatures are fine.
Considering it would take 10-12 weeks for a replacement unit to be delivered (Italy here), I will keep this.
Ideally it would be good to get a more silent one, and anyway I wouldn't even be sure to get a quieter one...
It would be extra funny to wait 12 weeks only to get a machine with the same issue.
I work exclusively with headphones on and anyway I'm tolerant with noises, as I already suffer from a slight tinnitus and I had noisy gaming PCs all my life.
Ya I’m more worried about the noises that crept up after the update. I even ran recovery and did a clean install to remove TG pro. Fans are are gushing now and I’m getting the odd chirp once in a while. For the record I still think it’s the best value and now I don’t know what to do. I can‘t believe the ASD has ginormous fans and twice the power supply size snd makes absolutely no noise. I wanted it to work but my fault for updating I guess.maybe TG Pro needs to catch up to the new hardware
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Thanks for this thread for having increased my paranoia by the way.
Now I feel like I can hear it more than I used to yesterday
Thankfully I always work with headphones on.
Now I feel like I can hear it more than I used to yesterday
Thankfully I always work with headphones on.
I don’t think they’ll make a statement unless sites like The Verge or well known YouTubers ask them about it. I have tried asking different people with enough influence to ask Apple about it but seems no one is interested in pursuing this.
I remember the whole iMac g5 x vs y capacitor situation. The x I believe would swell to the point of rendering the logic board useless. apple stood by them right away and offered me a different system free of charge. They eventually make formal statements like they did Z for the ASD web cams. Wednesday is my last day to return. I was hoping for a statement to give me reason to keep. Some kind of acknowledgment with a fix.
You can see from your recording that there is a squeal at 2.2 kHz and dropouts occur - this is very audible afterwards.
I have been using the Mini M1 for a year, using only SSDs, I have also got used to the silence. The weak pure noise does not bother me, but the whistling in silence does. When I move my head, the intensity changes as there are other sound reflections against the wall, etc. It's like an insect jammer.
I bought a MacBook Pro M1 Max today because even if I win the whistle noise rebuy lottery now I don’t 100% trust that quiet Mac Studios won’t eventually develop the noise later on.
I can't bear noise and am returning my Mac Studio (M1 Max). I am coming from a Mac Mini and was startled by how noisy the Studio is even when doing nothing. I spend a lot of time in a silent office and very quickly the noise is very irritating, especially the higher pitched whistle-like noise that many have also reported.
I am also very disappointed that so many of the reviewers like Nilay Patel at The Verge and others did not pick up on this. Ironic that they pan the Studio Display but praise the Studio itself (and I'm having the completely opposite experience)
I am also very disappointed that so many of the reviewers like Nilay Patel at The Verge and others did not pick up on this. Ironic that they pan the Studio Display but praise the Studio itself (and I'm having the completely opposite experience)
I just got back from a long trip to the Apple Store after returning my whistling Mac Studio.