9 ms·
Try charging on the right and not on the left
- xgbi 5y agoThis doesn't make sense, and I'm a bit worried: I "cheaped" out and have a "left side only USB-C" MBPro from 2019. Should I understand that having any kind of load on the measly 2 ports I have on my 1600€ computer will lead to abysmal performance? Like, attaching a USB hub to add basic necessity like HDMI or USB A?
- egypturnash 5y agoYes, my 13” 2016 Pro has this problem and only has two left side ports. It chews through batteries about once every 18 months. It’s been really annoying. Maybe they fixed this issue in the time between 2016 and 2019.
- WA 5y agoAttach an LG Ultrafine 5K and you can fry an egg on your €3,300 laptop and use the white noise from the fan to sleep well.
- danlugo92 5y agoAttach the same monitor to both an M1 and an Intel Laptop, you can fry chicken on the latter.
- gambiting 5y agoCan you? My i5-10300H equipped laptop drives two external monitors daily and the fans don't even start in normal use. Maybe specify which laptop? The M1 can't even support two monitors plugged in directly, which is a joke for a machine this expensive.
- easton 5y agoThe new MacBooks from a few weeks ago can due to Apple putting some effort into the GPU. I think they’re talking about the Intel MacBook Pro, which had meh cooling from what I hear. (Although if you want to see bad cooling, try out a Surface. Throttle city after anything strenuous.)
- alpaca128 5y ago> if you want to see bad cooling, try out a Surface. Throttle city after anything strenuous Implying Apple's cooling is any better? Both build difficult to repair devices tuned only for looks. Whether it's the Macbook that literally doubles its performance if you build a custom cooler that prevents throttling, or the Surface Book that you can't use at full performance for long because the charger cannot deliver enough power to sustain it. Nobody can cheat thermodynamics, and attaching "Pro" to the name doesn't make it go faster either. I just hope I can keep buying "normal" laptops. They're ugly and noisy, but at least I know they can be fixed without melting off the keyboard or the repair guy telling me it's water damage when it isn't.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ansible 5y agoDo you have a discrete GPU on that laptop? Intel integrated GPUs are often set up to use main memory instead of dedicated GPU memory (as for the Iris graphics). I wonder if that makes a difference, though it is on the same package.
- matthewmacleod 5y agoThe M1 can't even support two monitors plugged in directly, which is a joke for a machine this expensive. That is the case for the M1, which is the lower-end of the new processors – a bit disappointing because I'd've otherwise bought one, but a relatively uncommon scenario overall for a lower-end Mac. It's not the case for the recently-launched chips, which support up to 2x6k external displays (M1 Pro) or 3x6k + 1x4k (M1 Max).
- ahartmetz 5y agoAt least it's white noise. Tonal is far worse :D
- nikanj 5y agoYes. But the computer is very, very, very thin. Which sells more computers than actual performance under load. Benchmarks show the MB having decent performance, as they start cold and don’t have external devices attached either. Thermal throttling only shows up once you’ve already bought
- dahfizz 5y ago> Yes. But the computer is very, very, very thin. Which sells more computers than actual performance under load. No. Apple sells computers regardless, but now that "form over function" Johnny Ive has left Apple, Mac sales have actually shot up. People want their computer to look and feel good, but it still needs to function as a computer. Now that the actual functionality of the Mac is a priority again, they are selling better.
- hunter2_ 5y agoReminiscent of the Volkswagen dieselgate situation where emissions are fine during the EPA test drive but horrible otherwise. This sort of thing will probably haunt us forever, in various forms.
- bierjunge 5y agoI have the 2019 MBP 16" with i9 inside and it's terrible for any task heavier than browsing the internet or watching cat videos. Running CMake + gcc on a bigger project? The fans start running like crazy. The performance of the i9 is awesome, at least for the first 1-2 minutes, after that the CPU is throttling you back to the 90's and the fans are spinning even louder. But this is not even the funniest issue with it. I have the biggest and most performant charger (96W, pretty much the maximum, because the USB-C standard states, you can only push up to 100W through it). You may think, if Apple put that charger in the box, it should be enough to achieve max performance with it AND still be able to charge it. Nope, but maybe it would be at least enough power, so the battery is not discharged. Lol, nope, higher load for a extended time WILL discharge your battery while being connected to the power supply. I've tested it with two separate MBP with exactly the same spec (i9 + 32GB RAM + Radeon 5500M 8GB) with exactly the same behavior.
- discardable_dan 5y agoI have a 2019 MBP that runs hot because it's supporting an external monitor. The year before every laptop became a WFH desktop, Apple decided that running an external monitor could be a massive heat issue and nobody would care. It's literally burning out my work laptop, and soon I'll have to ask IT for a new one. Apple doesn't care, though: they already got paid. As I understand it, though, most of the thermal issues are to do with the north bridge and the video card. Basically, Intel's power model for USB is built around performance, not thermals. GamersNexus actually has some interesting videos about this, but at the end of the day Intel shit the bed on northbridge performance while developing USB-4 support. I wildly speculate that this is a massive part of why Apple moved to their own silicon: to get away from Intel, who is clearly losing every competition they're in. (I don't know why Apple didn't go toward AMD, but I expect GPU hang-ups were part of it.)
- millzlane 5y agoThey finally made the device a little thicker. Apple could have put a better quality heat sync and fan in these models, they chose not too.
- jgwil2 5y ago*heat sink Edit: why is this downvoted? This is a legitimately confusing mistake; people may think it has something to do with synchronization.
- goldenkey 5y agoIt's pedantic and the way you did it was rude. You ought to have commented: "I believe you meant heat sink, not 'heat sync', am I correct?" The average HNer is above average in intelligence and does not require a minor typo to be explicitly corrected.
- znpy 5y agoAs GP pointed out, apple doesn't care, they already got paid. I'll go further and I'll say I think it's actual dishonesty on their side: they're providing additional thermal headspace to their own cpus, when instead they have constrained Intel for years. It's still pointless to point this out, apple users are going to buy apple stuff anyway...
- Pelam 5y agoI have set up several macs to spin up the fans more aggressively. Subjectively this seems to help a lot. And the noise is not much worse, because eventually they spin at full blast anyway; just a bit too late when presumably thermal throttling is already hitting.
- officeplant 5y agoyep, started using smcfancontrol in 2008 due to Jobs insistence on silent horrible stock fan curves. Only stopped due to M1 Mini's not needing my input on fan speed.
- causi 5y agohigh CPU usage by kernel_task is caused by high Thunderbolt Left Proximity temperature, which is caused by charging and having normal peripherals plugged in at the same time. Did anyone ever figure out why exactly the temperature sensor was making kernel_task go crazy?
- mkl 5y agoThe comment by jksoegaard may explain it: "the purpose of the thread is to force idleness". I guess it uses up all the CPU without actually making the CPU do anything, so other processes can't use the CPU and produce more heat than it can handle.
- causi 5y agoThat's very interesting. I didn't know it was possible for a process to use the CPU without using the CPU, as it were. Rather I thought the CPU usage was more or less a direct measurement.
- vnorilo 5y agoFrom [1] On processors that have a halt instruction that stops the CPU until an interrupt occurs, such as x86's HLT instruction, it may save significant amounts of power and heat if the idle task consists of a loop which repeatedly executes HLT instructions. -- I don't know how it is implemented in darwin, HLT is a privileged instruction, then again it's kernel_task. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idle_(CPU) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idle_(CPU)
- remram 5y agoI would expect that the CPU frequency would throttle down, rather than regularly running halt instructions.
- shrx 5y agoDocumented here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207359 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207359
- kuu 5y agoHow does something like this happen without QA knowing and Apple fixing it? I mean, it's happening cause charging it, that's something all users will do :S Sounds a lot like the antennagate
- whywhywhywhy 5y agoThey spotted it and made the trade off that it wasn’t worth fixing
- throwaway2077 5y agohow the fuck was that problem not caught very early on into development?
- millzlane 5y agoI could imagine like 5 ways.
- throwaway2077 5y agoit is a product notorious for severe heat dissipation issues, so I'm picturing extensive tests being done in development, and yet nobody noticing it
- millzlane 5y agoStrange. The proprietary software you run after you perform a repair has a specific port requirement and you can only use the left side ports. I always wondered what was so special about these ports.
- thrower123 5y agoAt least Apple realized USB-C only was a stupid idea after a couple of years and reverted...
- throwawaymanbot 5y agothe 2019 MBP 13" is garbage. All sorts of wacky issues with it. I did read that they made the chassis for a different chip that was delayed, and thus anyone who owns one of these, ends up with a chassis that struggles to cool a completely different chip than what was planned. (Im not sure this causes all the other issues however)
- somedude895 5y agoBefore I found this solution, my MBP would basically hang up with the fan going crazy whenever I'd have an MS Teams call. It still feels ridiculous when it happens and I switch plugs. It feels like such a strange thing to have to do on a pricey device like this.
- cwoolfe 5y agoI noticed my 2019 MacBook Pro physically hot to touch even after being idle for 8 hours at night. Now I unplug my USB-C monitor and USB-C-to-USB-A adapter at the end of the day and that has solved the problem. Now when I come to the machine in the morning, it is nice and cool, and I plug-in my peripherals again. It seems Apple has noticed this sub-par pro performance and moved back to the MagSafe charger in the latest pro models. Also, for the cynical among us, I would like to point out that each issue I've had with a MacBook, Apple has fixed for free. Don't assume they wont fix it until you take it to the Apple Store and ask.
- counternotions 5y agoWas there an Apple Store response for the overheating / overnight-charging problem?
- cwoolfe 5y agoI didn't ask them about the heat issue since I attributed the issue to my cheap non-Apple adapters. Issues they've fixed for me for free: broken back-plate on the old 2010 white unibody macbook, as well as a stuck key on keyboard of 2018 Macbook Pro.
- jjav 5y ago> I noticed my 2019 MacBook Pro physically hot to touch even after being idle for 8 hours at night. My late-2020 MacBook Pro also stays warm (even hot, sometimes) while supposedly sleeping. It can also no longer charge on the right side, that just stopped working. Had to rearrange my desk to satisfy the power bugs on the laptop. Quality has gone way down, I don't quite see myself ever getting a Mac laptop again, after being on OSX laptops ever since OSX 10.0 came out.
- ordiel 5y agoApple hardware quality and the design decisions have gone to shit since jobs died. The folks thet were feed up with the hype of his return to a diying company (and with a good reason, since the company really improved) are the ones keeping the company alive... In my opinion unless something changes it wont take long for it to be the dying company they use to be... They have a grat "body" but they lack the "heart" (and apparently the brain also)
- drclau 5y agoYeah, Apple hardware may be worse than it used to be. But as far as I can tell, it's still at the top. Can you point out a company that consistently makes better hardware than Apple does?
- jimmaswell 5y agoLiterally any random gaming laptop on Amazon probably won't have any of these problems, while also having ethernet ports etc.
- zepolen 5y agoThey'd also cost half as much and allow you to upgrade disk and ram.
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y agoOn my HP Envy x360 (2020 - AMD Ryzen) I got the same problem if the power is going through a USB-C Hub. My thermals are 10 degrees higher while charging through USB-C than when charging through the barrel connector.
- mzzter 5y agoNon-obvious debugging involving a mental model of the physical world reminds me somewhat of “the case of the 500 mile email” [0] [0] https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html
- lewisjoe 5y agoThis is the reason I have a couple of monitors lying uselessly on my table. Everytime I connect an external monitor, it makes the GPU go crazy and overheats the Macbook enough to summon this kernel_task demon. Couldn't comprehend why one of the best laptops on the planet cannot handle one external monitor.
- Tagbert 5y agoWhen you attach an external monitor, that switches from using the Intel integrated GPU to the AMD discrete GPU which uses a lot more power.
- 19h 5y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28733467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28733467 Also why is that submission now marked as a dupe? It doesn't even point to the one that it is supposed to be a dupe of.
- hammock 5y agoI run a displayport hub connected to a M1 MacBook pro and i noticed it crashes sometimes when in the back port. So i have to keep it in the front port.
- CRConrad 5y agoAnd here I thought this was about charging electric cars: "Audi thoughtfully put charging points in both fenders, but only the right one is suitable for high-speed use." -- https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/reviews/2022-audi-rs-e-tron-gt-review/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/reviews/2022-audi-rs-e-tron-gt... (Picture caption, about pic #4 from the top.)
- telesilla 5y agoEarlier this year, suddenly had my 2017 MacBook pro freak out and freeze on using the camera or screenshare: fans would go nuts and cpu meters were completely loaded. After reinstalling and upgrading the OS with no luck it occurred to me to check for dust. Indeed, there was much dust and after a good proper clean all is normal again. I used compressed air for best results.
- bob229 5y agoThe build quality of macs are actually abysmal