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

[pshufd]

Just incredibly poor management of the fan profile. This is such a simple problem to fix in an update, but it will never happen

I have not set up my Studio yet but I'm somewhat surprised that the fans are spinning at all if there is no load. It takes a lot of work to get the fans to spin on my MacBook Pro.

 

[OpenSource03]

Just incredibly poor management of the fan profile. This is such a simple problem to fix in an update, but it will never happen

Simply because every time just speed up or speed down fans there’s this awful beeeeep whine, I guess they were aware of that…

 

[bermise]

I have 3 ASD’s and Lutron caseta outlets on every switch in my house and a Mac Studio. I must of got the “lucky” devices. There is no noise or whine, but I’m also not resting my head on my monitors listening for something to complain about on the internet. 🤷🏼‍♂️

 

[bobcomer]

There is no noise or whine,

Bonus.

but I’m also not resting my head on my monitors listening for something to complain about on the internet. 🤷🏼‍♂️

You don't really believe that those of us with a Mac Studio need to rest our head on it to hear the whine, do you? (and it's the studio itself, not any monitors). That's really insulting...

I can hear the whine from 4 feet away in a noisy room.

 

[pshufd]

Bonus.


You don't really believe that those of us with a Mac Studio need to rest our head on it to hear the whine, do you? (and it's the studio itself, not any monitors). That's really insulting...

I can hear the whine from 4 feet away in a noisy room.

We should do a poll.

My Studio is in a box in the basement. I'm not sure when I will set it up but I have a hard time believing that your experience is typical. But I will find out. I've stuck my ear in the back of a couple of Studios in The Apple Store and didn't hear anything. Of course the ambient noise level in your typical Apple Store is pretty high.

If it is a problem, then I guess a potential solution would be to get a 14 inch Max. It would be more expense but the upside is that it would be silent most of the time when the load is light.

 

[pshufd]

I have 3 ASD’s and Lutron caseta outlets on every switch in my house and a Mac Studio. I must of got the “lucky” devices. There is no noise or whine, but I’m also not resting my head on my monitors listening for something to complain about on the internet. 🤷🏼‍♂️

I suspect that the vast majority have this experience.

 

[gusping]

Simply because every time just speed up or speed down fans there’s this awful beeeeep whine, I guess they were aware of that…

LOL. Do you work for Apple’s ’engineering’ team? If that was a common finding (not saying it is), they should have found a new fan supplier not a second rate solution on an expensive computer.

 

[bobcomer]

We should do a poll.

We already have here in these forums. Wont do any good though, it's not a general population in any case.

My Studio is in a box in the basement. I'm not sure when I will set it up but I have a hard time believing that your experience is typical. But I will find out.

I have no idea if it's typical or not, I have only a sample size of one. But one thing I do know is you wont know yours is noisy or not until you take it out of the box! Maybe it wont be, maybe it will, and maybe if you have one with the whine and you can tolerate it like I do. It's a good machine, so give it a chance at least! I have many computers available to me at home, yet the studio is the one I use most of the time.

If it is a problem, then I guess a potential solution would be to get a 14 inch Max. It would be more expense but the upside is that it would be silent most of the time when the load is light.

If I had to do it all over again, I might have gone with a MBP and use it as a desktop, but that ship sailed a long time ago. I actually had a 14" MBP on order when it first came out, but decided against it for other reasons, so I cancelled.

 

[pshufd]

We already have here in these forums. Wont do any good though, it's not a general population in any case.


I have no idea if it's typical or not, I have only a sample size of one. But one thing I do know is you wont know yours is noisy or not until you take it out of the box! Maybe it wont be, maybe it will, and maybe if you have one with the whine and you can tolerate it like I do. It's a good machine, so give it a chance at least! I have many computers available to me at home, yet the studio is the one I use most of the time.


If I had to do it all over again, I might have gone with a MBP and use it as a desktop, but that ship sailed a long time ago. I actually had a 14" MBP on order when it first came out, but decided against it for other reasons, so I cancelled.

I have a 16-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro but I found out too late that it only supports two external monitors. I just use it as a laptop now and it will handle my complete workload though only on the internal display (I use six spaces to keep things sane). My understanding is that the GPU load with external monitors is pretty heavy and that's where the Max would have made for a better choice to run it as a desktop.

I also have the option of just getting another Mac mini and using two of them - I would have to partition my workload which I already do now. Moving files between systems is also an extra step.

 

[bobcomer]

I also have the option of just getting another Mac mini and using two of them - I would have to partition my workload which I already do now. Moving files between systems is also an extra step.

One of my other computers is an Intel Mac Mini I bought in 2020. I use a NAS for shared files between all my computers.

 

[pshufd]

One of my other computers is an Intel Mac Mini I bought in 2020. I use a NAS for shared files between all my computers.

I use my M1 mini as a NAS with a 2 TB SSD hanging off of it. Performance is fine - it's just another step to connect to it or to move it over.

 

[pshufd]

Just watching Max Tech's old Studio review and his comments are that they run quieter than Apple suggested. I think that they have 3-5 of them in their offices and am sure that he would have mentioned a coil whine or other odd sounds.

 

[jmho]

You can’t hear a Mac Studio in an Apple Store because an Apple Store doesn’t have an ambient sound floor below 25 dB.

If you’re not using your studio in a room with ambient levels below 25 dB you probably won’t care about the studio’s noise issues.

It’s like buying an expensive TV that has awful black levels for the price range but you watch it in a bright room in direct sunlight and go “it looks great to me! Everyone else must be lying.”

My house is about 19-22 dB and in blind testing I could tell if the studio was on from over 30 feet away.

Conversely I have an ASD at work and I had no idea that thing apparently makes noise too, because my office is probably 45 dB ambient so I can’t hear it.

 

[pshufd]

I got it up and running - the Studio is really easy to set up because of all of the ports in the back, similar to the mini. This thing feels so close to my M1 Pro MacBook Pro in performance and feel. Just a pleasure to use.

I can hear a quiet whoosh starting at 12 inches away from the front of the device that gets louder as my ear gets closer. At 18 inches away, I don't hear anything. There is little ambient noise in the room. In contrast, I never hear the mini, no matter how close I am to it. I can only tell that the fan is spinning by putting my hand on the back. I am not sure where I will place the mini on my desk. The options are to have it under a monitor or to have it behind a monitor Under a monitor would be about two feet away. Behind a monitor would be 3-4 feet away. At any rate I don't expect to be able to hear the whoosh of the fan. I didn't hear anything that I would consider a whine.

I ran it at 50% CPU load. I couldn't get it any higher than that with a ton of YouTube tabs.

I suspect that my experience is similar to the vast majority of Studio users or else Apple would have addressed the problem by now. It is quite amazing that Apple can pack so much power in a laptop.

 

[bobcomer]

If you’re not using your studio in a room with ambient levels below 25 dB you probably won’t care about the studio’s noise issues.

fwiw, I hear the whine on mine with 35dB background noise...

 

[PianoPro]

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.

Seems like the obvious explanation is that the fans are on all the time (about 1330 rpm on mine) to provide airflow cooling for some components not related to the CPU power consumption. The fan speed then doesn't increase until the CPU or other components reach some specified temperatures that rarely occur (since we see the fan speed increase so rarely). In your example, 70C CPU temps aren't high enough to need more cooling so the fan speed doesn't increase. If not needed, why speed up the fans and increase noise if not necessary?

 

[jmho]

I suspect that my experience is similar to the vast majority of Studio users or else Apple would have addressed the problem by now.

Are you new to Apple?

Even if every single Studio sounded like a Harley Davidson without an exhaust pipe Apple wouldn't mention it until 3 days before releasing the new model where they fix it - then suddenly they'd go on at length about how noisy the old model is and how quiet the new one is, which is why everyone should definitely upgrade.

 

[pshufd]

Are you new to Apple?

Even if every single Studio sounded like a Harley Davidson without an exhaust pipe Apple wouldn't mention it until 3 days before releasing the new model where they fix it - then suddenly they'd go on at length about how noisy the old model is and how quiet the new one is, which is why everyone should definitely upgrade.

First Apple computer I used was the Apple ][.

 

[sam_dean]

Here's a question for people in reaally quiet spaces that you can proverbially hear a pin drop.

Is there any computer from Apple or anyone else that has the similar/same

- power draw
- performance per watt
- raw performance

That is quieter than a Mac Studio?

 

[pshufd]

Here's a question for people in reaally quiet spaces that you can proverbially hear a pin drop.

Is there any computer from Apple or anyone else that has the similar/same

- power draw
- performance per watt
- raw performance

That is quieter than a Mac Studio?

The 2021 MacBook Pro 16 Max is probably similar to the Studio Max and the fans don't come on until you really load it up with work. I have the 2021 M1 Pro MacBook Pro 16 and it is silent 99% of the time. I do wonder why they couldn't just use the same fan curve in the Studio that's in the MacBook Pro.

 

[sam_dean]

The 2021 MacBook Pro 16 Max is probably similar to the Studio Max and the fans don't come on until you really load it up with work. I have the 2021 M1 Pro MacBook Pro 16 and it is silent 99% of the time. I do wonder why they couldn't just use the same fan curve in the Studio that's in the MacBook Pro.

Doesnt it spin up when attached to an external display?

 

[roach1245]

Here's a question for people in reaally quiet spaces that you can proverbially hear a pin drop.

Is there any computer from Apple or anyone else that has the similar/same

- power draw
- performance per watt
- raw performance

That is quieter than a Mac Studio?

The 16" M1 Max Macbook Pro laptop is identical in CPU+GPU clock speeds / performance to the M1 Max Mac Studio.

The neurotic high-pitch coil whine is unique to the Mac Studio.

They have both fans but these are hardly audible.

 

[roach1245]

I suspect that my experience is similar to the vast majority of Studio users or else Apple would have addressed the problem by now. It is quite amazing that Apple can pack so much power in a laptop

It took Apple 3 years to acknowledge the problematic butterfly keyboard - the first official statement being in 2019:

We are aware that a small number of users are having issues with their third-generation butterfly keyboard and for that we are sorry. The vast majority of Mac notebook customers are having a positive experience with the new keyboard.

And in 2022 - 6 years later - Apple came around fully:

Apple agreed to a $50 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit on Monday night over the company’s “butterfly keyboard,” which was installed on MacBook laptops between 2015 and 2019.

2027 is the time to reflect on this 82-pages-by-now thread - don't expect anything earlier from Apple.

 

[Killerbob]

The 2021 MacBook Pro 16 Max is probably similar to the Studio Max and the fans don't come on until you really load it up with work. I have the 2021 M1 Pro MacBook Pro 16 and it is silent 99% of the time. I do wonder why they couldn't just use the same fan curve in the Studio that's in the MacBook Pro.

Because of the internal PSU in the Mac Studio vs. the external one for the MacBook Pro?

 

[AlphaCentauri]

Here's a question for people in reaally quiet spaces that you can proverbially hear a pin drop.

Is there any computer from Apple or anyone else that has the similar/same

- power draw
- performance per watt
- raw performance

That is quieter than a Mac Studio?

Talking about Apple and idle noise level - Macbook Pro M1 Max is comparable performance-wise with Studio Max and much quieter (when idle). Anything comparable with M1 Ultra performance level - no.

Under load, nothing comparable from Apple comes quieter than Studio Ultra noise levels. Perhaps some water or semi-passively cooled PC towers built on purpose to be quiet (not off the shelf HP, Dell or Lenovo models). HP Z4 is 45dB at idle, for comparison. And it sounds like it, I know because I’ve had one 😏