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PSA: Coil Whine on MBP 16

M

milhous

macrumors member
Original poster
May 17, 2007
67
20
Just got the stock 2.6GHz model and noticed coil whine while the system is booting, and when clicking buttons in System Preferences. This is after the Catalina 10.15.1 Supplemental Update was applied which specifically addresses issues with this model.

I don't have time at the moment to investigate further, but will report back in the coming days as I put the machine through its paces. I may also try switching the outlet plug to a 3-prong grounded model to see if that helps.

Attached is a 30 second clip taken from my iPhone 6S Plus. I placed it directly on top of the left speaker grille, and pressed the power button to start booting. Rename the extension from .pdf to .m4a to listen as I can't attach m4a's directly for some reason.
 

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  • milhous_mbp16_coil_whine.pdf
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Hello

I just got a macbook pro 16 inch with the max cpu and gpu. When pushing it (building on Xcode) or running a benchmark, I hear a slight coil whine. It isn't loud but it is there. I had coil whine on my windows laptop and it annoyed me a ton. Do you think it will go away or should I just swap it now? Is it possible to get a maxed unit without coil whine under load?

Thanks
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I saw people saying in the past it was the certain configurations that had coil whine. Would the 2.3 ghz cpu instead of the 2.4 ghz or a 1tb ssd instead of the 2tb ssd have less coil whine?
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Also, if anyone else has the max in store model that the Apple Store carries (2.4 ghz, 32 gb of ram, 8gb graphics, and 2 tb) please stress it and let me know if you hear any coil whine. Thanks!
 
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Anyone else have this issue? It would be very disappointing for a 2-3k machine to have coil whine in 2019. I would return it.
 
My 2.4/32GB/2TB/8GB 'Ultimate' version has this subtle noise during Xcode compiling as well. I had a 2018 Mac mini i7 that did this too. I upgraded that Mac mini a couple months ago from a 512 GB SSD BTO version to a 1TB SSD BTO version, and the second one was pretty quiet. Doubt the SSD size had anything to do with change in sound...
 
I have the base model, if the room is quiet and you put your ear up to the speaker area you can hear some electrical noise, but it’s not noticeable in regular use.

Is this normal?
 
Yes...these days you cant run from it
Also had this on 2018, probably on the upcoming 16", on surface laptop 3 and so on..
Easy to check with black magic disk...
 
tskwara said:
My 2.4/32GB/2TB/8GB 'Ultimate' version has this subtle noise during Xcode compiling as well. I had a 2018 Mac mini i7 that did this too. I upgraded that Mac mini a couple months ago from a 512 GB SSD BTO version to a 1TB SSD BTO version, and the second one was pretty quiet. Doubt the SSD size had anything to do with change in sound...
Click to expand...
Are you going to be swapping yours out? I’m debating it since it was a very expensive laptop and I will be pushing it a lot so it won’t be like I won’t be hearing the noise.
 
I listened to the audio above.
Couldn't hear anything except what comes across as "background noise".
 
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This is not scientific in anyway, but from some personal observations and MR comments, seems with the 2019 15s the 512gb had a much bigger change of coil whine compared to 1tb.
 
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Coil whine is everywhere these days. I even hear it in my EV from one of the displays. Good thing is the motor whine drowns it out at speed.:)
 
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