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Mac studio v1 fan noise - it's going to be one of the loudest Macs at idle.

Electrical tape will leave a sticky mess after a while. Dunno what they used (my Ultra is quiet) but maybe that blue painters tape could be a solution?
 
I used a not particularly strong clear packing tape, personally, so it could be peeled off easily if necessary and wouldn't look too bad while it's on there. Your results may vary.
 
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kofman13 said:
Guys i really dont think its related to voltage or PSU. At this point it's pretty clear that it has to do with the holes on bottom and on back and airflow. and for people who started hearing whistling 3 months later, probably something changed with airflow. probably more dust build up on BOTTOM holes. which correlates to people saying they get MORE whistling when they block the bottom holes. so it must be related to dust build up on the bottom holes causing whine/whistle months later
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I’ve been doing extensive testing since mine is a Studio that “developed” the noise after some use. I’m convinced that it’s related to airflow.

Why would this change over time? Some theories include dust build up (neighbour is doing a ground up rebuild of his/her apartment), air density change (we’ve had a very wet summer here in Beijing with the air suddenly becoming a lot more dry), or just the studio adjusting fan speed to compensate for new additions like the 10GbE switch and NAS.

One good thing is that my hearing is not that sensitive at 2.5KHz so I’m ok to live with this. While doing the testing, I also noticed many other high frequency noises in my room coming from switched mode power supplies, power bricks and even from some places I haven’t been able to identify yet. Seems we live in a pretty noisy world…
 
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falconer. said:
I used a not particularly strong clear packing tape, personally, so it could be peeled off easily if necessary and wouldn't look too bad while it's on there. Your results may vary.
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Gaffer’s tape is good for these purposes. It’s designed to be removable without leaving adhesive behind. I’ve used them on expensive camera bodies to protect from the metal camera strap connectors. Even after several years of use in different climates and conditions, the tape comes off easily.
 
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i love that in 2022 we have start DIY mcGuyvering brand new expensive tech out of the box. oh well. for the price the studio is what i need so i will probably order it and also a roll of tape
 
pshufd said:
Not sure what you guys are trying to do but it sounds like a C clamp from Home Depot would get the job done.
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Nah.

However, if you're gonna go old school, a thin chunk of carefully crafted Bondo might do the trick.
 
ert.jpg
 
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kofman13 said:
i love that in 2022 we have start DIY mcGuyvering brand new expensive tech out of the box. oh well. for the price the studio is what i need so i will probably order it and also a roll of tape
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It's going to be like this forever, man. If the starship Enterprise existed in real life, Scottie and Geordi would be slapping duct tape all up and down the Jefferies tubes.
 
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I wonder if we will soon discover black tape on the inside of the holes in the curvatures when we unscrew a Mac Studio.
 
it's been a few months since I've returned mine (end of march). I've installed a bunch Mac Studios over the past few weeks (not mine but systems my customers bought). also, I visited a friend who owns a Mac Studio (who said to me that his is dead silent. funnily enough this guy also owns Hi-Fi equipment worth tens of thousands...). my observations: absolutely every single Mac Studio I touched has the whine! it doesn't matter if it was manufactured in march or august. the thing is that most people just can't hear it. and of course it depends on the noise level present at the various workplaces. often the whine simply can't be heard because of this.

also, I'm 100% convinced that the source of the whine are the fan motors. or a lousy designed PWM driving the fans. just do a reboot of the Mac Studio. it will stop the fans for a few seconds during the restart. the whine is present as soon as the fans are starting to spin up again.
 
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mikeboss said:
it's been a few months since I've returned mine (end of march). I've installed a bunch Mac Studios over the last few weeks (not mine but systems my customers bought). also, I visited a friend who owns a Mac Studio (who said to me that his is dead silent. funnily enough this guy also owns Hi-Fi equipment worth tens of thousands...). my observations: absolutely every single Mac Studio I touched has the whine! it doesn't matter if it was manufactured in march or august. the thing is that most people just can't hear it. and of course it depends on the noise level present at the various workplaces. often the whine simply can't be heard because of this.

also, I'm 100% convinced that the source of the whine are the fan motors. or a lousy designed PWM driving the fans. just do a reboot of the Mac Studio. it will stop the fans for a few seconds during the restart. the whine is present as soon as the fans are starting to spin up again.
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I try to tell that to people all the time but fall on deaf ears 🤭🤫

Though I am convinced it’s the micro super precise holes in the back making the sound. Just tape some of them and it’s gone.
 
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mikeboss said:
it's been a few months since I've returned mine (end of march). I've installed a bunch Mac Studios over the last few weeks (not mine but systems my customers bought). also, I visited a friend who owns a Mac Studio (who said to me that his is dead silent. funnily enough this guy also owns Hi-Fi equipment worth tens of thousands...). my observations: absolutely every single Mac Studio I touched has the whine! it doesn't matter if it was manufactured in march or august. the thing is that most people just can't hear it. and of course it depends on the noise level present at the various workplaces. often the whine simply can't be heard because of this.

also, I'm 100% convinced that the source of the whine are the fan motors. or a lousy designed PWM driving the fans. just do a reboot of the Mac Studio. it will stop the fans for a few seconds during the restart. the whine is present as soon as the fans are starting to spin up again.
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if it was the fan motors, then why does putting tape over certain holes make the sound stop?
 
kofman13 said:
if it was the fan motors, then why does putting tape over certain holes make the sound stop?
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It's far from only airflow. I can clearly hear if my GPU is working on something or not... It's not whining, but sounds like a cricket at intensive GPU tasks.
 
mikeboss said:
taping over the holes doesn't make the whine go away entirely. the whine's still there, less noticeable, muffled to some extent. but I can still hear it.
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If those are fan motors, why do I hear whine only sometimes, and sometimes it's completely silent?
 
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