First review about sound... fan noise

[tony359]

I spent 15 minutes trying to find the monitor section of CleanMyMac, I couldn't find it. Is CleanMyMacX a different one? I cannot find it to download.

My fan is also inaudible with Cinebench - unless in a very quiet room. With Resolve it gets a tad noisier.

I suspect the two apps are just reading two different sensors? If you point me to your software I'd be curious to try. Or you can try the one I use smcfancontrol here: https://smcfancontrol.macupdate.com/

 

[Edouard Perreault]

I spent 15 minutes trying to find the monitor section of CleanMyMac, I couldn't find it. Is CleanMyMacX a different one? I cannot find it to download.

My fan is also inaudible with Cinebench - unless in a very quiet room. With Resolve it gets a tad noisier.

I suspect the two apps are just reading two different sensors? If you point me to your software I'd be curious to try. Or you can try the one I use smcfancontrol here: https://smcfancontrol.macupdate.com/

Here is the link to CleanMyMacX: https://macpaw.com/mac-cleaner
In free trial version.

 

[tony359]

thanks - I get the same temps as you do. Up to 98C.
If I ask smcfancontrol to show me "unknown sensors", I have literally hundreds of sensors, some read over 100C.

Who knows who is right, smcfancontrol or CleanMyMacX... In any case, both our Macs are the same, the fan speeds up around 80C here or 95C there because the apps show different sensors as "CPU".

With smcfancontrol I am looking at "hottest CPU" by the way.

I'd imagine this would be a source of quite some confusion on the internet...

 

[tony359]

Update, the new version of "stats" now report 108C of CPU when Resolve is caching! 😀
So it seems there is a little confusion on which is the actual CPU temp! I guess Apple are not being too helpful 🙂

 

[Norbert Mikołajczyk]

1st day owner here, my new MM M4 Pro 14/20 is totally silent, I run cinebench r23, r24 (3-4 cycles only, not full 10min), geekbench and rendered some of my 2d animations in after effects. It was totally silent all the time.
My workloads consist of rather short burst so this machine is absolutely mind blowing!

EDIT: Rendered classroom with Blender using gpu cores and still silent, no fan noise at all.
Energy is set to: Automatic
Build Date is: mid February 2025
That's the best Mac I've ever owned, it's 3x faster than MP 7.1 16core I sold last week!

EDIT2: Cinebench R24 multi core test is very demanding and fans spins like crazy, but the gpu rendering is silent, max 1500rpm.

 

[ravenofdoom]

I'm curious to see if Notebookcheck will find the just released Mac Studio m4max and m3ultra keeps the same 24db noise curves at every stage of load as seen in the m2 series mac studios... presumably it should since the chassis appears to be unchanged. To summarize, their review shows the m4 (non-pro) mini was 24 db idle, 31 mid load (gaming), and 45db under (possibly unreleastic) continued stress testing.

I plan to buy one of these two units and place in my media cabinet which has a 3" wide vertical cable cut-out in the back... so there's some heat egress happening, but the cabinet probably remains closer to 80F deg in total. My PS5 slim could not handle being in the cabinet with the front door closed because there's not enough new fresh air coming in within its dedicated slot and so it now sits atop the media cabinet. However, my current NUC7 (with somewhat similar thermals to the m4 mini) remains fine unless it's under max load (e.g., CPU video encoding) for over 3+ hours. My goal is to not have to open the cabinet, and so I'm thinking what may be more important than the noise is the thermal throttling and thermals. The m4 mini is ~ 3-4w idle, 40w load (gaming), and 62 peak... whereas the mac studio m2max is 7.2 / 64 / 112. This should mean that it's generating 2x the wattage and 2x the heat. Granted, it should finish tasks faster (probably not 2x faster), so my thinking is the m4 mini is probably a better choice in my media cabinet to avoid hitting some heat wall which can't be dissipated faster than the cabinet cut-out allows.

 

[Confused-User]

Granted, it should finish tasks faster (probably not 2x faster), so my thinking is the m4 mini is probably a better choice in my media cabinet to avoid hitting some heat wall which can't be dissipated faster than the cabinet cut-out allows.

That's not how it works. Both will throttle down as needed to avoid overheating.

The only significant difference is likely to be the number of cores. The more you have, the less each will be working in order to complete the tasks they have to do. That means they'll be lower down the efficiency curve, using less total energy to complete the tasks. Of course it doesn't always work that way, as some tasks don't parallelize well, so there's little or no benefit of more cores there. Some will use fixed-function hw, so there's no benefit for that either. And the larger machines may have a slightly higher base energy operating cost.

 

[ravenofdoom]

Has anybody gotten their minis with 10Gbe / seen any appreciable increases in temp or fan engagement? I know there’s middling usb c units which take rj45 copper / 10gbe (not via sfp) and tend to run hot, but wasn’t sure if the chipset here is more efficient.

 

[MikePx96]

Anyone else hearing coil whine when the CPU & GPU is under heavy use? It's mostly drowned out by the fan but it's definitely noticeable about 2 feet away. It's a high pitched constant ringing (only under heavy usage). Once the task is completed it goes back to being silent.

 

[Edouard Perreault]

Anyone else hearing coil whine when the CPU & GPU is under heavy use? It's mostly drowned out by the fan but it's definitely noticeable about 2 feet away. It's a high pitched constant ringing (only under heavy usage). Once the task is completed it goes back to being silent.

Maybe you have a faulty unit? I've never heard that on my mini M4, even when I pushed it to the limit!

 

[MikePx96]

Maybe you have a faulty unit? I've never heard that on my mini M4, even when I pushed it to the limit!

That's the sound:

I really would hope it's not faulty. I bought it back in November.

 

[Edouard Perreault]

That's the sound:

I really would hope it's not faulty. I bought it back in November.

Indeed, a small high-pitched sound is audible on your recording, beneath the fan noise. But is it audible enough to pose a real problem? And could software issues result? These are the questions to ask; I have the base M4 model (not the pro like you), but a high-pitched sound in this machine is surely abnormal.
In the worst case, there is always the option of contacting Apple Support or the seller for help and to see if solutions—return or replacement—are possible.