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

AdamSeen said:
Whoa, that's an incredibly high number, way more than I would have thought. The number in the forum will be higher because people here are far more switched on and enthusiast than the general mac population. Still, 5% - That's a serious problem for any product, especially for Macs. Thanks for sharing.

One thing is for sure, the next release of the Mac Studio all these problems will magically disappear. No more whine and potentially lower idle speed.
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i think you're misinterpreting this statistic.

if she personally observed 20 studios returned, and 1 was noise related and the total population of studios associated with that apple store is greater than 20 (call it N).

the % with the noise issue is closer to 1/N rather 1/20 (where N>>20)
 
I don't think anyone thinks that 5% of all returns being from noise means that 5% of all people who bought a Mac Studio returned it because of noise.

5% of all returns is still huge, and enough for Apple to take notice.

At Apple's scale, reducing their return rate by 5% would save them millions in postage, labor costs, refurb losses, and lost revenue, and given that there's no real reason for the Studio to make as much noise as it does at idle, so that's free money for them.
 
jmho said:
I don't think anyone thinks that 5% of all returns being from noise means that 5% of all people who bought a Mac Studio returned it because of noise.

5% of all returns is still huge, and enough for Apple to take notice.

At Apple's scale, reducing their return rate by 5% would save them millions in postage, labor costs, refurb losses, and lost revenue, and given that there's no real reason for the Studio to make as much noise as it does at idle, so that's free money for them.
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the real question is % returns due to 'noise' of number sold.

let's be crazy and assume that 1% of all studios are returned, and 5% are due to noise.
if that store had 1000 studios sold, 10 are returned and 0.5 due to noise!
 
I agree, 5% of returns is actually not that much, and remember that a noise complaint is difficult to argue, and if it is within a few weeks of purchase, Apple will not argue at all.

However, I believe a lot of people do not even notice a whine, as it barely is audible if your office has a 25dB background noise level, and most offices are way noisier than that. That is if the Mac Studio even has a whine, which not all has.
 
When I returned my M1 Ultra because of the noise they didn't even ask why. I just said "Hey, I'd like to return this" and they said "Ok". Nobody asked me why I was returning it and I didn't have to fill out any forms.

Even Apple don't know how many people are returning because of noise.

What they will know is if the Studio is being returned in much higher numbers than say the MacBook Pro. Then they might wonder why, and come here and see that there is a thread with 2000 posts in it complaining about fan noise and that generally everyone loves the Studio, and the only people who don't like it are ones who hate the noise.

Also if only 5% of people returning a Studio are returning it for the noise, what are the other 95% returning it for? Too slow for them? They forgot to look at what ports were on it before they bought it? Thought it was a PC?
 
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MrMacCoolio said:
The returns are mainly because they bought a smaller storage package and want more speed and storage, because they have a problem with the ports, or because they tried it out and realized they don't need the power.
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didn't have to far to see the original < 1 in 20 post
 
lcubed said:
didn't have to far to see the original < 1 in 20 post
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There is a huge difference between swapping a Studio for a more expensive Studio (which Apple probably don't mind), and returning your Studio for a full refund.

If you only count people who fully refunded then I'm sure the 5% number is far far higher.

That said I've returned a number of Apple products and never explained why, so I doubt this data is correct anyway.
 
I have reported it here before but I assume no one new to the Mac Studio is reading 81 pages:
For normal „office“ work, I have set the fans to 0 rpm. After about 45 minutes the temperature of the first two thunderbolt ports have reached 60°C and I switch on the fans for about 4 minutes and the temperature drops down to about 48°C.
(BTW: I assume 60°C is totally fine for the thunderbolt chips. It is just a test for my small script that everything works ok without manual intervention.)
 
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lcubed said:
i think you're misinterpreting this statistic.

if she personally observed 20 studios returned, and 1 was noise related and the total population of studios associated with that apple store is greater than 20 (call it N).

the % with the noise issue is closer to 1/N rather 1/20 (where N>>20)
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It didn't say she personally observed or whether it was the whole store. But the way it was worded suggested it was the whole store. Not sure what the ">>" notation means.

Like others have said, when you return something to the Apple store, the best option you have is "buyers remorse", so the fact that it is registering would be big.

Anyway, we have to take this with a grain of salt. The author is a Macrumors newbie and has posted exclusively in this thread only. So it's an interesting data point, but we'd need more data points to make any sort of conclusion.

In reality, we'll probably only know if Apple sees it as an issue if we see the next version of the Mac Studio re-engineered without these problems.
 
DirkSchreib said:
I have reported it here before but I assume no one new to the Mac Studio is reading 81 pages:
For normal „office“ work, I have set the fans to 0 rpm. After about 45 minutes the temperature of the first two thunderbolt ports have reached 60°C and I switch on the fans for about 4 minutes and the temperature drops down to about 48°C.
(BTW: I assume 60°C is totally fine for the thunderbolt chips. It is just a test for my small script that everything works ok without manual intervention.)
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What are you using to set the fan speed to 0 RPM?

I would love to see what would happen under longer-duration tests.
 
DirkSchreib said:
I have reported it here before but I assume no one new to the Mac Studio is reading 81 pages:
For normal „office“ work, I have set the fans to 0 rpm. After about 45 minutes the temperature of the first two thunderbolt ports have reached 60°C and I switch on the fans for about 4 minutes and the temperature drops down to about 48°C.
(BTW: I assume 60°C is totally fine for the thunderbolt chips. It is just a test for my small script that everything works ok without manual intervention.)
Click to expand...
If you have the fans set to 0 rpm, is the Mac completely silent? If the high-pitched noise goes away, then that would (more or less) eliminate coil whine and make it fan related. My opinion is that it is airflow through the holes.
 
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Killerbob said:
I agree, 5% of returns is actually not that much, and remember that a noise complaint is difficult to argue, and if it is within a few weeks of purchase, Apple will not argue at all.

However, I believe a lot of people do not even notice a whine, as it barely is audible if your office has a 25dB background noise level, and most offices are way noisier than that. That is if the Mac Studio even has a whine, which not all has.
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Is there a cheap way to measure my ambient workspace noise level
 
kofman13 said:
Is there a cheap way to measure my ambient workspace noise level
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An iPhone will do a decent job. There are several apps and that is a fairly accurate dB measure.

The Apple Watch can do it too, but supposedly it doesn’t go below 30dB.

Other than that you need to buy a microphone and though there are plenty of cheap solutions out there, quality follows price.
 
Killerbob said:
An iPhone will do a decent job. There are several apps and that is a fairly accurate dB measure.

The Apple Watch can do it too, but supposedly it doesn’t go below 30dB.

Other than that you need to buy a microphone and though there are plenty of cheap solutions out there, quality follows price.
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Thanks! What app would you recommend for iPhone? My watch saying my workspace is fluctuating 39-42 db. Want to double check with phone if that’s correct
 
kofman13 said:
Thanks! What app would you recommend for iPhone? My watch saying my workspace is fluctuating 39-42 db. Want to double check with phone if that’s correct
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I use one named "Decibel X", which records in real time what the noise level is. As I am typing this in my work office, the background is a staggering 47dB, mainly due to the HVAC. Typing on my keyboard increases that noise level to 58-61 dB (I use a MS ergonomic keyboard with proper keys).

Interestingly enough, "Decibel X" on my AWU agrees with "Decibel X" on my iPhone 14 Pro, but the app "Noise" on my AWU says 42dB at the same time.
 
I use my Mac Studio for photo editing primarily, and I’ve never noticed any fan noise and it is on my desk next to display.
I noticed more noise from old 27” 5k iMac.
But I guess more processor hungry applications than Lightroom may push the processor and fan harder.
 
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Killerbob said:
I use one named "Decibel X", which records in real time what the noise level is. As I am typing this in my work office, the background is a staggering 47dB, mainly due to the HVAC. Typing on my keyboard increases that noise level to 58-61 dB (I use a MS ergonomic keyboard with proper keys).

Interestingly enough, "Decibel X" on my AWU agrees with "Decibel X" on my iPhone 14 Pro, but the app "Noise" on my AWU says 42dB at the same time.
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Great app. Curious what the decibel of people’s rooms that hear the whine and get bothered is
 
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CyberDavis said:
But I guess more processor hungry applications than Lightroom may push the processor and fan harder.
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That's the weird thing. Even when I'm pushing all CPUs to the max for extended periods of time I never see my fans go above their stock ~1300rpm. The power consumption will jump to ~100W, and the CPU temps will get to ~70C, and that's about it really. When the load drops, the power and temps drop quickly, but if I didn't have iStats running I would have no indicators of high CPU load. Unlike my previous iMac where the fans would spin up if I looked at it wrong.
 
jmho said:
When I returned my M1 Ultra because of the noise they didn't even ask why. I just said "Hey, I'd like to return this" and they said "Ok". Nobody asked me why I was returning it and I didn't have to fill out any forms.

Even Apple don't know how many people are returning because of noise.

What they will know is if the Studio is being returned in much higher numbers than say the MacBook Pro. Then they might wonder why, and come here and see that there is a thread with 2000 posts in it complaining about fan noise and that generally everyone loves the Studio, and the only people who don't like it are ones who hate the noise.

Also if only 5% of people returning a Studio are returning it for the noise, what are the other 95% returning it for? Too slow for them? They forgot to look at what ports were on it before they bought it? Thought it was a PC?
Click to expand...

Maybe their software doesn't run well on it.
 
TTYS0 said:
That's the weird thing. Even when I'm pushing all CPUs to the max for extended periods of time I never see my fans go above their stock ~1300rpm. The power consumption will jump to ~100W, and the CPU temps will get to ~70C, and that's about it really. When the load drops, the power and temps drop quickly, but if I didn't have iStats running I would have no indicators of high CPU load. Unlike my previous iMac where the fans would spin up if I looked at it wrong.
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Just incredibly poor management of the fan profile. This is such a simple problem to fix in an update, but it will never happen :(
 
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