5 ms·

Apple has really stepped up their cooling game in the past few years. The heat sink in the iMac Pro was where things really started to shift. It keeps the Xeon

Apple has really stepped up their cooling game in the past few years. The heat sink in the iMac Pro was where things really started to shift. It keeps the Xeons in those machines reasonably cool while being whisper quiet at idle/low load and reasonably quiet at load. They really kicked it up a notch with the Mac Pro, which remains nearly inaudible at all times, and now that’s carried forward into the Mac Studio. Really nice work. I’d love to see this kind of innovation in more standardized PCs — the NH-D15 and front fans in my custom built tower do a good job on thermals but their acoustics leave something to be desired, despite Noctua coolers and fans being some of the quietest on the market.

xuki 5y ago
It seems like nobody else but Apple care about fan noise.
- MBCook 5y ago
  I’m guessing it’s like everything else: cost and margins. Most people either aren’t willing to pay for it, or aren’t given the option because people think they won’t be willing to pay for it.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    Personally I would be more than willing to pay a premium for exceptionally quiet PC cooling, even if that meant having to use a case, CPU cooler, and GPU cooler all designed for each other.
    - lowdose 5y ago
      Never hear my Mac Mini. Value for money it is the best product from Apple.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      They make passive CPU coolers that work fairly well on modern processors. Additionally, you can set fan curves on a GPU to only trigger in the case of a legitimate emergency (eg. 85c+, which you would never hit in casual non-gaming workloads), which would probably get you 90% of the way there.
    - tedunangst 5y ago
      So like Corsair One?
      - criddell 5y ago
        Not really. Aesthetics matter too.
  - criddell 5y ago
    Apple only has something like 10% of the desktop market yet they seem to be the only company in that space doing anything interesting. Dell, HP, Lenovo, and all the other big desktop computer makers look pathetic in comparison. I say that as someone who has only bought Lenovo computers for the past 15 years. Is there any chance at all that six months from now Dell or HP will wow us with something that is faster, quieter, and as aesthetically interesting as the Studio? Or will they crank out another version of a black sheet metal case that is loud and hot and inexpensive? There have to be people in those companies that want to do something interesting, right? Or do they assume that anybody with money and taste are already out of the Windows market? Maybe it is all the fault of Windows. There's a pretty good story about the problems of Windows elsewhere on HN right now. The comments there are so damning it makes me think nobody believes in the platform anymore. You know how there's no M in FAANG? Is Microsoft stuck with people not good enough to work elsewhere? There might be no point in building interesting hardware that is ultimately going to run Windows.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- nikanj 5y ago
  My 16” Intel MB pro would not agree. Loud fans kick up the moment you plug in a screen
  - aldebran 5y ago
    My work gave me this and it’s the worst! I thought mine was faulty. Sent it for repair 2 times and then I realized it’s just garbage thermals and noise. The i9 + dGPU is too much for that form factor.
    - swiftcoder 5y ago
      The optional i9 upgrade is a bit of a trap, to my mind. The regular i7 version has pretty reasonable thermals by comparison, with marginally lower performance.
  - reitzensteinm 5y ago
    I own both a 2019 and 2022 MBP. The former is the loudest laptop I've ever owned when doing day to day compute tasks. The latter is the most quiet. It's shocking how bad the older Apple laptops are.
  - sergiomattei 5y ago
    Used to own an Intel. Recently purchased an M1 Pro, and it’s astounding how quiet it is. My old Intel MBP would sound like a jet engine just by opening Chrome. This one… I hammer it all day with multiple servers running, JS projects, tons of tabs, Docker containers, many misc. software utilities… not a single noise. I’ve only heard the fans once while using Handbrake.
    - no1lives4ever 5y ago
      The 16” M1 Pro also has amazing battery life. I regularly use mine for a whole day’s work on battery, while with the i9 16” battery rarely lasts more than 3-4 hours under similar loads.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
- duped 5y ago
  Everyone else just cares about thermals and burnt laps
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    I have hit more cases of "burnt a body part" with Windows machines than with Apple laptops. Apples tend to run with more warm surface area because the aluminium spreads all the heat on the entire surface, but high-power Windows laptops can be downright nasty if you manage to touch the area around the fan outflow because all the heat concentrates there to form an incredibly hot spot.
- dev_tty01 5y ago
  Once you have a a super quiet Apple designed machine, you will also care about fan noise.
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    My iMac once was super quiet, but many years later is less so. Unfortunately, I cannot clean its fans, which would probably reduce the noise levels quite a bit.
    - bzzzt 5y ago
      You can take it to an Apple certified repair center to get it cleaned. But keep in mind the noise could also be caused by worn out fan bearings. You'd need to replace the fans to get the noise level back to 'as new'.
      - _ph_ 5y ago
        Yes, its just between 100 and 200€ of service charge, as they have to unglue and glue back together the machine. And carrying an 27" iMac is also a challenge - you don't want to have it damaged in transport. This all is possible, but it shouldn't be necessary. Didn't stop me from buying and loving my iMac, but it is not good design. I am planning to get a Mac Studio as the replacement for that iMac, but I would be happier, if easy cleaning of the fans would be possible.
    - frosted-flakes 5y ago
      Can't you just pop the screen off and clean it? I had an iMac; the glass is held on magnetically and there are a dozen-or-so Torx screws behind the bezel.
      - _ph_ 5y ago
        No, that was an earlier design. On later iMacs, the magnets were replaced with glue. So to perform any service on the machine, the repair shop has to cut through the glue and after the work glue the Mac back together. Which, for a desktop, is pretty unforgivable in my eyes.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
They stepped up the game with the original retina MBPs too (first shrink of the “unibody” case), but it couldn’t keep up with the high end mobile Intel thermals. That model was (enviably) quiet compared to my previous gen MBP.
- sgjohnson 5y ago
  Heh, I have a last gen MBP 16” with i9. It’s basically never an i9, because once it hits 70°C it starts throttling quite rapidly and then stays stuck between 1.0 and 1.4 GHz clock speed for at least 5 minutes, and what good is an i9 running at 1 GHz? Their laptop cooling has been absolute dogshit for the past (at least) 10 years. It’s more of an inadequate cooling combined with Intel releasing CPUs that run just hotter and hotter. I can’t wait to upgrade to a 16” MBP with an M1 Max (or next gen if they release it by then). There are still some essential tools in my workflow that don’t work all that great on ARM.
  - donut2d 5y ago
    So I had a thermal problem with my 2018 15" i7 MBP that sounds very similar to what you describe. Temps hit 60° and then get heavily throttled. It started happening after a repair to the keyboard. After dealing with that for 6 months I brought it in to Apple and they fixed the issue by replacing the mainboard, I think. Since it's very rare I see throttling for my use cases (compiling, some gaming).
  - no1lives4ever 5y ago
    If your i9 16” throttles down to 1 or 1.4ghz, then most likely it is clogged with dust. Open the bottom cover and clean both the heat sink and the Fan blades properly. I need to do this to my 16” i9 once every 3-4 months to prevent it from throttling under load. Interestingly, sharing an external screen using google meet and running something like npm install will easily throttle the CPU even if the CPU usage never shows anything above 15% of use.

xuki 5y ago

It seems like nobody else but Apple care about fan noise.

MBCook 5y ago
I’m guessing it’s like everything else: cost and margins. Most people either aren’t willing to pay for it, or aren’t given the option because people think they won’t be willing to pay for it.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  Personally I would be more than willing to pay a premium for exceptionally quiet PC cooling, even if that meant having to use a case, CPU cooler, and GPU cooler all designed for each other.
  - lowdose 5y ago
    Never hear my Mac Mini. Value for money it is the best product from Apple.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    They make passive CPU coolers that work fairly well on modern processors. Additionally, you can set fan curves on a GPU to only trigger in the case of a legitimate emergency (eg. 85c+, which you would never hit in casual non-gaming workloads), which would probably get you 90% of the way there.
  - tedunangst 5y ago
    So like Corsair One?
    - criddell 5y ago
      Not really. Aesthetics matter too.
- criddell 5y ago
  Apple only has something like 10% of the desktop market yet they seem to be the only company in that space doing anything interesting. Dell, HP, Lenovo, and all the other big desktop computer makers look pathetic in comparison. I say that as someone who has only bought Lenovo computers for the past 15 years. Is there any chance at all that six months from now Dell or HP will wow us with something that is faster, quieter, and as aesthetically interesting as the Studio? Or will they crank out another version of a black sheet metal case that is loud and hot and inexpensive? There have to be people in those companies that want to do something interesting, right? Or do they assume that anybody with money and taste are already out of the Windows market? Maybe it is all the fault of Windows. There's a pretty good story about the problems of Windows elsewhere on HN right now. The comments there are so damning it makes me think nobody believes in the platform anymore. You know how there's no M in FAANG? Is Microsoft stuck with people not good enough to work elsewhere? There might be no point in building interesting hardware that is ultimately going to run Windows.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
nikanj 5y ago
My 16” Intel MB pro would not agree. Loud fans kick up the moment you plug in a screen
- aldebran 5y ago
  My work gave me this and it’s the worst! I thought mine was faulty. Sent it for repair 2 times and then I realized it’s just garbage thermals and noise. The i9 + dGPU is too much for that form factor.
  - swiftcoder 5y ago
    The optional i9 upgrade is a bit of a trap, to my mind. The regular i7 version has pretty reasonable thermals by comparison, with marginally lower performance.
- reitzensteinm 5y ago
  I own both a 2019 and 2022 MBP. The former is the loudest laptop I've ever owned when doing day to day compute tasks. The latter is the most quiet. It's shocking how bad the older Apple laptops are.
- sergiomattei 5y ago
  Used to own an Intel. Recently purchased an M1 Pro, and it’s astounding how quiet it is. My old Intel MBP would sound like a jet engine just by opening Chrome. This one… I hammer it all day with multiple servers running, JS projects, tons of tabs, Docker containers, many misc. software utilities… not a single noise. I’ve only heard the fans once while using Handbrake.
  - no1lives4ever 5y ago
    The 16” M1 Pro also has amazing battery life. I regularly use mine for a whole day’s work on battery, while with the i9 16” battery rarely lasts more than 3-4 hours under similar loads.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
duped 5y ago
Everyone else just cares about thermals and burnt laps
- mschuster91 5y ago
  I have hit more cases of "burnt a body part" with Windows machines than with Apple laptops. Apples tend to run with more warm surface area because the aluminium spreads all the heat on the entire surface, but high-power Windows laptops can be downright nasty if you manage to touch the area around the fan outflow because all the heat concentrates there to form an incredibly hot spot.
dev_tty01 5y ago
Once you have a a super quiet Apple designed machine, you will also care about fan noise.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  My iMac once was super quiet, but many years later is less so. Unfortunately, I cannot clean its fans, which would probably reduce the noise levels quite a bit.
  - bzzzt 5y ago
    You can take it to an Apple certified repair center to get it cleaned. But keep in mind the noise could also be caused by worn out fan bearings. You'd need to replace the fans to get the noise level back to 'as new'.
    - _ph_ 5y ago
      Yes, its just between 100 and 200€ of service charge, as they have to unglue and glue back together the machine. And carrying an 27" iMac is also a challenge - you don't want to have it damaged in transport. This all is possible, but it shouldn't be necessary. Didn't stop me from buying and loving my iMac, but it is not good design. I am planning to get a Mac Studio as the replacement for that iMac, but I would be happier, if easy cleaning of the fans would be possible.
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    Can't you just pop the screen off and clean it? I had an iMac; the glass is held on magnetically and there are a dozen-or-so Torx screws behind the bezel.
    - _ph_ 5y ago
      No, that was an earlier design. On later iMacs, the magnets were replaced with glue. So to perform any service on the machine, the repair shop has to cut through the glue and after the work glue the Mac back together. Which, for a desktop, is pretty unforgivable in my eyes.

eyelidlessness 5y ago

They stepped up the game with the original retina MBPs too (first shrink of the “unibody” case), but it couldn’t keep up with the high end mobile Intel thermals. That model was (enviably) quiet compared to my previous gen MBP.

sgjohnson 5y ago
Heh, I have a last gen MBP 16” with i9. It’s basically never an i9, because once it hits 70°C it starts throttling quite rapidly and then stays stuck between 1.0 and 1.4 GHz clock speed for at least 5 minutes, and what good is an i9 running at 1 GHz? Their laptop cooling has been absolute dogshit for the past (at least) 10 years. It’s more of an inadequate cooling combined with Intel releasing CPUs that run just hotter and hotter. I can’t wait to upgrade to a 16” MBP with an M1 Max (or next gen if they release it by then). There are still some essential tools in my workflow that don’t work all that great on ARM.
- donut2d 5y ago
  So I had a thermal problem with my 2018 15" i7 MBP that sounds very similar to what you describe. Temps hit 60° and then get heavily throttled. It started happening after a repair to the keyboard. After dealing with that for 6 months I brought it in to Apple and they fixed the issue by replacing the mainboard, I think. Since it's very rare I see throttling for my use cases (compiling, some gaming).
- no1lives4ever 5y ago
  If your i9 16” throttles down to 1 or 1.4ghz, then most likely it is clogged with dust. Open the bottom cover and clean both the heat sink and the Fan blades properly. I need to do this to my 16” i9 once every 3-4 months to prevent it from throttling under load. Interestingly, sharing an external screen using google meet and running something like npm install will easily throttle the CPU even if the CPU usage never shows anything above 15% of use.