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The Silence is Deafening

alanvitek

alanvitek

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 18, 2021
117
319
I upgraded to an M1 Max... and this thing is quiet. Like, noticeably quiet!

I'm a hobbyist game developer, and most of my workflows consist of Unity, Blender, Photoshop, VS Code and the like. I also do web dev. These fans never turn on. My Intel Mac? Fans constantly. The Dell work laptop next to me? Fans even in sleep mode (updating I guess?).

It's funny to me how obvious the silence is haha.

Anyone else had to adjust to the lack of noise?
 
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satcomer

satcomer

Suspended
Feb 19, 2008
9,115
1,977
The Finger Lakes Region
The point Apple Silicone is off Arm architecture that use a lot less energy to do video/artist/music! This seem to baffle switchers that had do with liquid cooling and not being able to use the pressor at full force on battery either!
So don't fret because this has been answered before when the first M1 came online! Older Intel Mac Books sounded like jet engines on Macs just few years ago!
 
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macphoto861

macrumors 6502
May 20, 2021
496
444
I'm amazed at how quiet this thing is. It runs, but it's barely noticeable. I used to have to either have to leave the room or make sure I had my APM on when exporting JPEGs out of Lightroom because the i9's fan noise was so irritating.
 
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Krevnik

Krevnik

macrumors 601
Sep 8, 2003
4,101
1,312
It's the reason that my 16" M1 MBP is my favorite workstation now. I can take it (nearly) anywhere, it doesn't produce much noise when working, and I can plug it into a Thunderbolt dock and have a desktop setup where I'm not making compromises due to a GPU that covers my needs.

It's the laptop I've been waiting for.
 
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thedocbwarren

thedocbwarren

macrumors 6502
Nov 10, 2017
430
378
San Francisco, CA
Krevnik said:
It's the reason that my 16" M1 MBP is my favorite workstation now. I can take it (nearly) anywhere, it doesn't produce much noise when working, and I can plug it into a Thunderbolt dock and have a desktop setup where I'm not making compromises due to a GPU that covers my needs.

It's the laptop I've been waiting for.
Click to expand...
I'm planning on buying one soon. I have the 13 M1 MBP and it's awesome beyond my expectation. I can't even imagine how much more so the M1 Max is.
 
alanvitek

alanvitek

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 18, 2021
117
319
I’ve been on the fence between keeping the 16” M1 max or possibly switching to an M1 max Mini if they release one. I mostly have it hooked up to an external monitor. Either way though, AS really exceeded my expectations
 
Sterkenburg

Sterkenburg

macrumors 6502a
Oct 27, 2016
556
553
Japan
The difference with the old Intel toasters is so big that, when I first put my M1 Max on the desk, for a moment I thought fans were not working! They really don't spin up at all during normal daily usage. I had to intentionally activate them using iStat Menu to hear what they sounded like :D. Genuinely impressive!
 
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TracerAnalog

TracerAnalog

macrumors 6502a
Nov 7, 2012
796
1,462
The silence is impressive, as is the battery life… except when gaming. When I play Divinity the battery depletes in less than two hours, with the fans going on max. I’m guessing that game is not yet optimized for the M1 Max ?.

For the rest: awesome machine and very quiet.
 
Z

zzemman

macrumors newbie
Jun 17, 2021
25
34
Between the silence, the power and the battery life, these laptops are true game changers. I never would have imagined that such progress was possible. It's incredible. I also thought my fans were not connected. When I think back to the days of using Turbo Boost Switcher, Macs Fan Control and letting the CPU cook above 80 degrees C on my Intel machine, just to keep fans down to a bearable noise level, it seems like I jumped forward of full decade of laptop progress.
 
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Krevnik

Krevnik

macrumors 601
Sep 8, 2003
4,101
1,312
TracerAnalog said:
The silence is impressive, as is the battery life… except when gaming. When I play Divinity the battery depletes in less than two hours, with the fans going on max. I’m guessing that game is not yet optimized for the M1 Max ?.

For the rest: awesome machine and very quiet.
Click to expand...

It probably is pretty optimized if it’s able to hit those power draw numbers to be honest. The reality is that the CPU+GPU total power draw can still be in the 80-90W range. Plus any extra for the display/etc. The efficiency is that most workloads don’t need to sit in that power range when the GPU is only lightly being used, as the GPU makes up a larger chunk of the power budget, yet can sit at a watt or two for most workflows that don’t use the GPU for compute or games. So while the peak sustained power draw is similar for both the latest Intel 16” MBP and the new M1 Max MBP, the M1 Max will spend a lot more time well below that until you pull out specific games or CPU+GPU workflows that can drain the battery like you’ve found.
 
Blue Quark

Blue Quark

macrumors regular
Oct 25, 2020
196
147
Probabilistic
Well, not that it could make any mechanical noise even if it wanted to, but I do enjoy my M1 MBA being a quiet and normally never-much-above-room-temperature.
 
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LIVEFRMNYC

macrumors G3
Oct 27, 2009
8,877
10,987
16 M1 Max. Only times I got the fans going is when rendering a frame in Blender and exporting 8K 60fps video footage. The only reason I noticed is because I glanced at TGPro on the status bar, being that the fans were at low rpms. And the fans don't even enable most of the time when I do that. VERY IMPRESSED!!!!
 
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S

SeenJeen

macrumors 6502
Jul 16, 2009
381
280
I got the fans spinning real good with a bunch of Chrome tabs today.
I try so hard to use Safari but some websites straight up won't even load with it.

Also Zoom kills these new M1 Pro batteries. From 100% down to 10% in 4 hours today.
 
Larsvonhier

Larsvonhier

macrumors 68000
Aug 21, 2016
1,611
2,983
Germany, Black Forest
satcomer said:
The point Apple Silicone is off Arm architecture that use a lot less energy to do video/artist/music! This seem to baffle switchers that had do with liquid cooling and not being able to use the pressor at full force on battery either!
So don't fret because this has been answered before when the first M1 came online! Older Intel Mac Books sounded like jet engines on Macs just few years ago!
Click to expand...
Silicon vs. Silicone ;-)
Also makes a difference in the old band name "Silcon Teens". Misspell that... haha.
 
L

leifp

macrumors 6502a
Feb 8, 2008
522
501
Canada
TracerAnalog said:
The silence is impressive, as is the battery life… except when gaming. When I play Divinity the battery depletes in less than two hours, with the fans going on max. I’m guessing that game is not yet optimized for the M1 Max ?.

For the rest: awesome machine and very quiet.
Click to expand...
I play Divinity 2 on my M1 Max and yes, that wipes it out! Nothing else I do on this system causes the fans to spin up. Admittedly, the most taxing present [non-gaming] activity is photo editing; this laptop is complete overkill at present. I expect a 5 to 7 year use case for it, though. Identical to my 2014 5K iMac. Purchased in 2015 and until last year I didn't notice any hitches in running software. Hence the M1 Max MBPro purchase...
 
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A

apparatchik

macrumors 6502a
Mar 6, 2008
883
2,689
I'm eagerly awaiting the high-end Mac mini, I'm 100% home bound for work now, hopefully it comes with the same performance specs (SSD/Storage speeds, 64GB Memory, M1 Max) as the new MBP's but at a more reasonable price due to not having the expensive screen, speaker system, battery, keyboard, etc. that I'm sure makes up a good chunk of the cost.
 
I

iBug2

macrumors 601
Jun 12, 2005
4,540
863
alanvitek said:
I upgraded to an M1 Max... and this thing is quiet. Like, noticeably quiet!

I'm a hobbyist game developer, and most of my workflows consist of Unity, Blender, Photoshop, VS Code and the like. I also do web dev. These fans never turn on. My Intel Mac? Fans constantly. The Dell work laptop next to me? Fans even in sleep mode (updating I guess?).

It's funny to me how obvious the silence is haha.

Anyone else had to adjust to the lack of noise?
Click to expand...
I have a Caldigit Raid Enclosure. Since I got rid of my iMac and switched to M1 Max, the only thing that makes a noise in my room is the raid enclosure. So I bought some usb-C SSD's and took the RAID offline as well. I only mount those drives if necessary. So dead silent working room now. Couldn't be happier.
 
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