Hi, there. I'm using a new Mac Studio and been wondering: does the cooling fan keep rotating 24/7 or does it eventually stop? I'm just curious. This beast is silent and incredibly fast even in low power mode. Laptops and PCs in general have the cooling fan always on, they just reduce their speed when idle, but the fan keeps rotating. How about the Mac Studio? Thanks for any insight!
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Does the cooling fan stop in low power mode?
- Thread starter rebelo
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It is running 24/7 unless the system is sleeping, however, I have found that it doesn't sleep as much as I would like. Concerning to me not from a power consumption standpoint, but from a dust intake one. I wish the fans would only come on as needed, like the MacBook Pro.
stat menus Also is great for Mac info and control. https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
I run Macs Fan Control on my Mac and it displays the CPU temperature and fan speed. On my M1 Pro MacBook Pro, the fans are off and the CPU temp is 45 degrees. The fans are completely off the vast majority of the time (as in 99%) on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro.
The fans are always spinning on my M1 Max Studio unless it's asleep.
From my understand, no they don't.
The fan is always running, in low speed so almost silent - although of course when putting the system to sleep it does stop......
I just put my Studio in low power mode and the fans are still spinning - they're spinning about 1000 rpm. When I switch Macs Fan Control over to manual, the lowest setting is 1000, so there's no way to turn them off - not that I would want too
How do you put it in low power mode. There isn't such an option on my M1 Studio.
I've only seen the option on MacBooks.
System Settings -> Energy, there's a Low Power Mode - at least in my settings there is.
Interesting. I don't have that option on my M1 Max.
My guess is that it's a hardware feature added after M1.
An interesting note is that my i7-10700 desktop is running cooler than my Mac Studio today, even running three trading programs while only one is running on the Studio. The Studio is running at 45 degrees with fan speed at 1,325 while the PC was running at 33 degrees with similar fan speed.
The reason is that the PC has five large fans and the fans on the GPU (which does little work) so it has a ton of airflow.
My Studio normally runs around 33-39 degrees but there's heat buildup in the basement as the screen door is closed. I could open it and temps would go down but humidity would go to 76% which would make it uncomfortable for me. The temperature isn't warm enough for the AC to kick on in the rest of the house.
I did a quick test regarding my Studio vs. my PC.
My PC (AMD 3700X/RX 7800XT). Idles at 45c, running 10 minutes of the Cinebench multicore test, temps hit 75c Playing some games, CPU temps 60c, and GPU temps 80c.
My M4 Max Studio, was idling around 35c today. Running 10 minutes of the Cinebench multicore test, temps hit 80c. Playing some games (in crossover), temps are 60c.
I just shut down my programs and CPU core temps are 28 to 30 degrees. CPU package draw is 8.3 watts. The primary design goal on this system was to run cool and quiet and I think that I succeeded there.
I does work, but with one caveat. When the MacBook doesn't think the fans are needed, they won't run. Once things heat up enough to start them spinning, (very) roughly around 70ºC, if I recollect, then iStat (or whatever app you're using) fan rules can take over.
Yes istat have known about this since the update to 7.1 and done nothing...
I don't think it's as easy as that. There's a good chance that this is controlled in hardware, or at least is not a variable exposed to developers. There just may not even BE a way to override that!
I really don't have the time to research it, but I'm a nerd, and you've got me curious. I want actual proof, and not to just conjecture off old knowledge.
It turns out that since I last looked at this, TG Pro has been able to do it, but they need to COMPLETELY override Apple's hardware fan control, and comes with a bunch of warnings to make sure you set your settings properly so as not to cook your system.
It seems plausible to me to think that Bjango made the decision not to override Apple's hardware limits, so as to avoid liability issues.
