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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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Macs Fan Control from forum member @crystalidea is a wonderful tool. No doubt will have Mac Studio support soon, if it doesn’t already. https://crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control
I’m considering using my Studio Ultra as a 24/7 home server as well as workstation, since it should be pretty low power at idle. And I live in a small studio apartment, so if the fans run even at idle I may want to turn them down a bit at night. Then again if it’s just a little soft white noise, it may not be a bad thing…
I’m considering using my Studio Ultra as a 24/7 home server as well as workstation, since it should be pretty low power at idle. And I live in a small studio apartment, so if the fans run even at idle I may want to turn them down a bit at night. Then again if it’s just a little soft white noise, it may not be a bad thing…
I don’t think you can lower the fan below it’s idle speed with this. I did use a workaround a few years ago with another program, but it prevented the fan from ever spinning up under load.
Why do you think it’s conjecture?
That’s 2 Lbs of extra fans and heatsinks. It’s clearly going to be more heat. It’s based on what I’ve seen any time a chip company has crammed more cores and more transistors onto a die/substrate. It doesn’t get easier to remove heat. Watch how right I am. Ultra will be louder.
It doesn’t matter how much bandwidth there is or how low the latency between one half and the other half of the cores and RAM are. It’s very much akin to the old 2-socket AMD Opterons and NUMA in a way. You’re looking at two CPU’s glued together with a silicon interposer. There will be some performance hit when a left side CPU core needs to access memory on the right side controller.
Apple has never been able to figure out how to properly implement NUMA, which is why the old 8/12-core 2009-2012 Mac Pro’s had such horrible and inconsistent memory bandwidth. They took the easy way hackjob option and made them use UMA. All RAM on both CPU’s controllers was handed over to the OS as though it was one big contiguous block all the same. Wrong. It’s not. As a result, half the time you’d access main memory, it would be on the local controller at about 18GB/s the other half, it would have to go through QPI and pull at 6-8GB/s while competing with other bit of PCIe and GPU data on the QPI bus. Sounds familiar? It should. It’s the same as the M1 Ultra. The difference may be slight, but there will be some performance penalty when accessing half the RAM on these systems when using the opposite half’s GPU and CPU cores.
Ive been using Apple hardware since the early 90’s. The upper top tier stuff is always drool-worthy until you get it in hand and actually try to put it into production use. One step down from top or the second hardware version of a specific model is always so much better.
Max will be faster in lightly threaded tasks, unless Apple has created a zero latency interconnect with infinite bandwidth using transistors that switch at infinite frequency. Only way it isn’t is if Apple has finally figured out NUMA, and the proudly state they haven’t when they call it Unified Memory. That 800GB/s will never all be available to a single core at once.
Mac Mini does not make a peep. My Mac Studio is annoying and loud just at idle
yours is the Max or Ultra? and man, i think the M1 Mini makes everything seem loud
dang. i got the Max w 32 cores... idk what to think, it def seems like some barely have any noise and then others are loud
I bet, after seeing the Max Tech tear down, the ultra has a better thermal design.
It depends on your background ambient noise.
As I mentioned in the other thread:
Sound is relative to the noise in the environment. When giving readings on whether it is inaudible or loud, can you let us know what your background room ambient noise is?
eg.
studio ultra.
24db ambient
can hear fan - annoying/fine
This will help everyone understand the issue more quickly, especially if there’s an issue between the ultra and max.
use iPhone and app decibel x
I got the M1 Max 32 core Mac Studio and it is loud at idle.
I had the same configuration in the 16" M1 Max MBP and I never heard the fans once. I returned that and bought a 14 M1 Pro and waited for this MacStudio to have a full time desktop and more portable MacBook Pro. I have had the M1 Mac mini, MacPro 16 core, MBP 14 M1 Max, and now 14" M1 Pro and this MacStudio is louder that all of them. Wow.
I'm disappointed and don't know what to do. I think it's going back. Crap, I wish I kept the 16" MBP now.
I had the same configuration in the 16" M1 Max MBP and I never heard the fans once. I returned that and bought a 14 M1 Pro and waited for this MacStudio to have a full time desktop and more portable MacBook Pro. I have had the M1 Mac mini, MacPro 16 core, MBP 14 M1 Max, and now 14" M1 Pro and this MacStudio is louder that all of them. Wow.
I'm disappointed and don't know what to do. I think it's going back. Crap, I wish I kept the 16" MBP now.
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I can put my ear right down on my Studio and basically hear nothing. I know it's running the fans because I can feel the slight air flow but no sound. This is in my home office with nothing else turned on except the Studio and Studio display. But I'll give a little credence to the posters saying it's noisy, they are obviously hearing something but my Studio is as quiet as any mac I have owned.
Edit: Had the wife listen and she can hear a VERY low hum and yes her hearing is much better than mine, even with my hearing aids. She said very low and not annoying at all.
Edit: Had the wife listen and she can hear a VERY low hum and yes her hearing is much better than mine, even with my hearing aids. She said very low and not annoying at all.
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My Mac Pro was under my desk and I never heard it, ever. The Mac Studio is right in front of me and it's audible with a constant noise. I am going to move it to the right side of the desk for now so at least it isn't right in front of me, but if this same chip is silent in the MacBook Pro 16" and loud in this thing then something is wrong. Maybe it's just the chassis and nature of the fans. I'm curious to seee if the Ultra is quiet because of the better heat sink.
I think the more important question ist: How will it sound in two years of running full speed in a professional environment and collecting dust? My Macbook 2018 was fine when I got it but toast after two years. Could this happen with the Studio as well and would Apple be able to open the box and free the fans from dust?
I have Tinnitus with a constant ring in my ears and I hear it from 3' away. it's attached to the Pro Display XDR so maybe that is taxing it more but like I said, the MacBook Pro 16 was silent in the same setup.
I missed my Mac Studio delivery yesterday unfortunately but most of you aren’t battle hardened by Window PC’s. I have one with a Nvidia 3080 RTX card and the thing can sound like a wind tunnel. Just saying everything is relative.
Thanks for pointing that out. I blame the otherwise under-informed reviewer that I unfortunately watched… lol
Oh I have a BOXX Workstation I used to use for 3D work and that sounds like an airplane. However, now that Mac is catering to pros again I don't have to deal with that. But apparently I do have to deal with noise if I keep this Mac Studio.