2019 i9 16" - Idle and light load temps? + other questions

[giv-as-a-ciggy-kent]

Thinking of getting an i9 2019 16" Macbook Pro. I'd like the ability to dual boot to Windows and it will be a huge upgrade from my 2012 Unibody (non-retina) 15". As we know, Intel Macs have temperature issues compared to Apple's CPUs.

My question is, what kind of temperatures can I expect out of the box idling/under light loads? And if I turn up the idle fan speed a bit?

My 2012 15" non-retina is sitting at 54 degrees with nothing much going on, quickly ramps up as load increases. Would expect lower idle temps considering the much newer architecture and more refines process node.

The machine I'm looking at is an i9, 32GB Ram, 512GB SSD and base 5300M graphics for about 1000$ from a professionalr efurbisher. Was hoping for 1TB and upgraded graphics, but none ever seem to pop up. Is this an OK machine for the price?

 

[casperes1996]

Unless dual booting windows on the same machine is that strong a requirement I’d get an M based 15” MacBook Air. Faster quiet and cooler. Then just a secondary windows machine if needed or use VMware or parallels to run arm Linux virtualised on the Mac.

 

[andrewv69]

I've been using one for the last few years and it is still holding up great. casperes is right that newer Macs are faster but if you need the dual boot and can't be bothered to juggle two machines, the A2141 is the best option.

Temps tend to run hot out of the box, about 55 to 60 degrees C during light use if I remember right. I'd really recommend against increasing idle speed, because the cooling system in this machine is very underpowered.

Regardless of what you do with it, controlling temps and fans is critical. The i9 loves to turbo boost for every little task, even browsing normally can see 80+ degrees C temps. Any kind of workload and the Turbo boost will happily jump right into the thermal ceiling. Apple's default settings result in overall worse performance imo - it ends up in a cycle where the heat and fans are "spiking" whenever they can - turbo boost til it overheats, so it throttles, and as soon as it can it turbos again, so it throttles for longer, etc and just ends up heat saturated and stuck in throttling mode. Same with the fans - they only kick on when it's already too hot (80+ degrees C), and turn off during the throttling phase. After a few minutes it is a hot and noisy mess, and performed worse than if the CPU didn't run so hard and the fans kept up. It goes back to that old adage, slow and steady wins the race.

As to exact config, I'd strongly recomment the 5500M if possible. The most common reason for wanting the Windows dual boot for playing games, and the 5500m is a noticeable upgrade. Though if you want to increase idle speed it sounds like your use case might be more niche than that. The CPU doesn't really matter too much, the i9 is overkill since it is thermally limited by the chassis, but an i7 and 5500m combo is fairly hard to find. Thankfully the prices on these keep going down as more people upgrade, just keep an eye out for a few more weeks and one will probably pop up.

 

[casperes1996]

Regardless of what you do with it, controlling temps and fans is critical. The i9 loves to turbo boost for every little task, even browsing normally can see 80+ degrees C temps. Any kind of workload and the Turbo boost will happily jump right into the thermal ceiling. Apple's default settings result in overall worse performance imo - it ends up in a cycle where the heat and fans are "spiking" whenever they can - turbo boost til it overheats, so it throttles, and as soon as it can it turbos again, so it throttles for longer, etc and just ends up heat saturated and stuck in throttling mode. Same with the fans - they only kick on when it's already too hot (80+ degrees

On my intel iMac I often disable turbo boost for a few reasons. One is to lower power draw for continuously running tasks like games that don’t push all cores and where I am generally gpu constrained anyway but the game busy waits the cpu. Second is that it frees up more cooling capacity to run said gpu faster. You sometimes get better frame rates this way. Other times you lose a frame or two every second but at 30W less power draw.

I use turbo boost switched on macOS and a program I can’t remember the name of on windows but logo is a T in a traffic sign kind of symbol.