I had this issue. I found people with the same problem up and down the web, across tons of MacBook models (examples: [1] [2]). Most people blamed it on bad driv

I had this issue. I found people with the same problem up and down the web, across tons of MacBook models (examples: [1] [2]). Most people blamed it on bad drivers, GPU issues, bad graphics ports, firmware issues, and so on. What actually did the trick - opening the case up, flushing the dust from both fans using compressed air, and replacing the thermal paste on the CPU & GPU. My MacBook is totally silent now. I'm sure there is more than one possible root cause, but I feel this solution is not nearly as well known as it should be. Laptops generally run hot, and MacBooks have great fans, but they do trap dust. So there are a ton of people running around with old MacBooks which are being absolutely crippled by throttling. I ran some rough benchmarks and performance has approximately doubled. It's super noticeable. IMO Apple is incentivised to do a poor job in highlighting this (and say, setting up a service program), because when your laptop starts to feel slow after a few years, people tend to feel like maybe it's time to buy a new laptop... [1] https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/1322323-macbook-pro-16-quot-external-monitor-nonstop-fans-anyone-else.html https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/1322323-macb... [2] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2017-15-mbp-fans-run-w-external-monitor.2103793/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2017-15-mbp-fans-run-w-...