Water coolers are a thing And not expensive. No fans necessary, and absolutely quiet.
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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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Good try...somewhat true for measuring equipment, but remember the number is total, so you still have some resolution below regarding individual frequencies etc...
But it doesn't work like that when it comes to your auditory system...it actually gets very complicated...but depending on so so so many many factors our hearing can roughly have an active dynamic range of about 20-90dB...that is, we can pick out sounds way lower than the loudest sound in the room etc., and follow them..to put it simply, listen to say a piano concerto, and try ignore the piano the whole time it is dominant, i.e. only listen to the orchestra....and then only listen to the piano when the orchestra takes over...
Anyway, so you'll notice I said "unless masked by much louder sounds in the same bandwidth"...the bandwidth part is crucial...in order to mask effectively, you have to be masking the same frequencies...our ears/brain are still smart enough to be able to pick out about 20dB below, even with tests that were designed to trick us...this gets into the research that gave us mp3 etc....remove the things most can't distinguish...but what if they're looking for them, then things get more complicated...some will; some won't etc. etc. etc.
What's most important here is the threshold of hearing...everyone has a different threshold...something they simply cannot hear beyond, it's just not there as far as they're concerned...irresponsible live sound engineers and headphones have a lot to answer for regarding widespread mild hearing damage these days...
BTW dBC is is best for music levels i.e. 80-100dB+, but dBA gives a better representation of how the ear hears at low levels like this...research Fletcher Munson curves...it's where A-weighting comes from...using dBC or dBZ at these levels would be unwise, as you're looking at numbers that don't correlate to how we hear.
One of the things I find really strange is the unusually high rpm at idle...I've been watching the temperature logs for two weeks now, literally every sensor, all 27 of them, and I can't see a good reason for it to idle at 1350...
It's totally fine at 1100rpm...even with the room up to 28c...even with moderate use like Logic Pro...and even when I push a load of data over 10G ethernet (which was the only one I thought might be a good reason, 10G copper runs hot, even cables warm up a bit, but no on that also)...very odd choice. Honestly I think 90% of these posts, here, reddit, youtube etc. wouldn't exist if it just idled at 1100rpm...I definitely wouldn't have taken a single SPL measurement...
It's totally fine at 1100rpm...even with the room up to 28c...even with moderate use like Logic Pro...and even when I push a load of data over 10G ethernet (which was the only one I thought might be a good reason, 10G copper runs hot, even cables warm up a bit, but no on that also)...very odd choice. Honestly I think 90% of these posts, here, reddit, youtube etc. wouldn't exist if it just idled at 1100rpm...I definitely wouldn't have taken a single SPL measurement...
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I've wonder that as well. Only Apple knows why the fan profile is the way it is.
i remember that the old sperry-univac we used in the moore bldg (home of ENIAC) was water cooled.
the drinking water in the water fountains would warm up when that thing was under heavy load!
You just trade for different issues like pump noise or hearing GPU coil whine. Plus it would not fit very nicely inside the Studio chassis.
For fan noise it comes down to the pitch of the fan, which depends on its size, speed and design. Higher pitch or alternating pitch is usually far more annoying than a constant hum at a lower pitch.
He was discussing using an Alder Lake Intel-based machine, not a Studio. So I figured that could be a PC or a mini-PC chassis. Water cooling can remove all fans from the machine. And no GPU is required (he can use onboard base video) unless he's needing the GPU for specific apps.
I see. Even in that case you would not use watercooling without any fans to draw heat away from the radiator or you'd need a pretty massive radiator. There are some cases that act as a passive heatsink but I still would not use them if you need performance.
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I recall the early days of fans on CPUs for home computers and notably the first large one that came with the pentium 90 (known for heat)...one would think that a means to cool without noise would have been a thing of the past as far as being a concern or problem. Apple Apple Apple what happened to you?
It's usually a pretty low concern for companies building this stuff. If they can use e.g a cheaper OEM fan and save some money they will do that over using a model that is lower noise. At least on other desktops you can just buy some Noctuas yourself and swap them.
The video posted above about covering half of the vents makes this Mac Studio problem seem like some sort of design oversight where the particular placement, how it draws and pushes air causes some sort of turbulence effect. It would be interesting to hear if it goes away by removing the chassis for example and if it does, changes to the vent pattern might help.
"Don't buy a first gen new Apple product" is again apt because they always seems to have issues that then get fixed silently for the next iteration.
I am not so sure this is the fan(s) causing increased noise in some Mac Studios. I think the most interesting observation is still the fact that we seem to have differing PSUs in play, and I wish we could tell which PSU we have in a particular Mac Studio, without having to open it up.
The "Whine" possibly stems from that difference as well.
The "Whine" possibly stems from that difference as well.
Uh what? Ignoring the price claim, most desktop liquid cooling systems have fans on the radiators. Such a system inside a mac studio would definitely need a fan, if you could even fit it all into the case.
That's actually a funny answer, as other folks have pointed out...
I formed part of Overclockers UK for a while in the 00s, actually claimed the throne as the most overclocked CPU in Europe for a brief while, and we were all about (duh) overclocking, meaning lots of cooling, and liquid cooling was the holy grail for us. Water cooling requires not only a case build for it (we often didn't even have cases on our setups), and the water then got cooled outside the rig, with massive fans, or other electric processes. In summary, it was NOT quiet, it was VERY expensive, and it was for a VERY specific purpose - to run a few benchmarks before the computer crashed
In today's world, you can indeed buy water-cooled CPU/GPU/PSU coolers, but they do require something to get rid of the heat, usually, a fan to cool the liquid.
You can get them without fans but even on the ones with fans you can get the large and slow 120mm fans which make very little noise compared to the ones being discussed.
Granted most come with fans but the radiator (and its coils) can do plenty of heat exchange without a fan.That's actually a funny answer, as other folks have pointed out...
I formed part of Overclockers UK for a while in the 00s, actually claimed the throne as the most overclocked CPU in Europe for a brief while, and we were all about (duh) overclocking, meaning lots of cooling, and liquid cooling was the holy grail for us. Water cooling requires not only a case build for it (we often didn't even have cases on our setups), and the water then got cooled outside the rig, with massive fans, or other electric processes. In summary, it was NOT quiet, it was VERY expensive, and it was for a VERY specific purpose - to run a few benchmarks before the computer crashed
In today's world, you can indeed buy water-cooled CPU/GPU/PSU coolers, but they do require something to get rid of the heat, usually, a fan to cool the liquid.
It's still noisy though... I tried installing new cooling in an 2008 Mac Pro, but the Apple standard was much better.
In modern computers the airflow and cooling elemenets is enough. If the object is to make it quiet, slowing down the fans may be one of the few ways to go, and possibly replacing the fans with Noctua equivalents.
In the Mac Studio these are not options available to us, unless you want to void the warranty.
Hi guys,
I thought I would buy a Mac Studio in replacement of my old 2011 Mac Pro, but those noise problems are getting me in doubt. The best solution might probably be to wait for an M2 Mac Studio fixing this, but... Do we have any idea about when it might be released?
I thought I would buy a Mac Studio in replacement of my old 2011 Mac Pro, but those noise problems are getting me in doubt. The best solution might probably be to wait for an M2 Mac Studio fixing this, but... Do we have any idea about when it might be released?
Thing is, the M2 might have even more noise. I have opted for a Mac Mini M1, fantastic reviews, and silent, awaiting its arrival
It's even possible that this ``problem``will not be fixed with a M2 version of Mac studio.
I've never heard Apple recognize there is a problem with coil whine on Mac studio.
It's possible Apple fixes this noise problem silently of course, but at this point, I'm really not sure it will be fixed in the future.
I agree it's too bad the Mac studio suffer from this noise problem because it's a very good computer anyway.
I'm in the same doubts as you. I've purchased a Mac mini m1 (16go/1To) and wait for a "good" Mac studio (certainly a V2)
Same spec as I have ordered, and if it turns out to be a powerful, silent machine, I will just stick with it, stability is paramount.
Depending your needs, the Mac mini M1 `ìs``powerful.... IF :
* You do not need powerful GPU (not my case), but suffisant for image editing with saying Pixelmator pro
* You do not need huge RAM. It's one of my casual problem. 16Go is Ok, but sometimes I've got memory pressure in yellow (but never red or intensive swap) ==> I use lots of apps open simultaneously including Xcode, VScode, assembler/disassembler, safari with 20+ tabs, mail, spotify, WhatsApp (but no VM and/or docker)
* You do not need many USB ports
* You do not need to plug more than 2 monitors
yes, thats true, for audio production, as I do, it should be more than adequate, I know people running pro studios on the Mac Mini M1!Depending your needs, the Mac mini M1 `ìs``powerful.... IF :
* You do not need powerful GPU (not my case), but suffisant for image editing with saying Pixelmator pro
* You do not need huge RAM. It's one of my casual problem. 16Go is Ok, but sometimes I've got memory pressure in yellow (but never red or intensive swap) ==> I use lots of apps open simultaneously including Xcode, VScode, assembler/disassembler, safari with 20+ tabs, mail, spotify, WhatsApp (but no VM and/or docker)
* You do not need many USB ports
* You do not need to plug more than 2 monitors
This is what I need to do as I produce music for a living.
I really love the mac studio specs: lot of connectivity, RAM up to 64, this is perfect as I might plug a lot of things (soundcard, controllers, Hard drives, several screens) and run a lot of plugins... Not sure the Mac mini is the best profile for this, but silence is really important as my control room is also a recording room sometimes.
Quite difficult choice, the truth is there is no perfect solution right now as far as I know.