M1 Pro and M1 Max CPU Temperature Forewarning

[hopkins802]

Video editors, and anyone using their M1 Pro or Max for anything processor heavy, be careful about your temps!

For some reason, the MacOS lets your CPU cores get up over 100C before any fans really kick in...This is with my power settings set to automatic. They were just sitting there at 1600RPM and the CPU is about to melt. For reference, each left and right fan can max at 5400RPM. They should have at least cranked to 50-70% when getting over 85C. Take a look at these temps during a video render...Too hot for me.

I just downloaded TG Pro and have set a nice fan curve. I still let things get warm (80C), before cranking on the fans, because I like things quiet. But 100C is just way too hot for me. Temps are much more controlled now and I highly recommend that application.

 

[januarydrive7]

This has been discussed ad nauseam on these forums. Your CPU is not about to melt; the cooling system is operating as intended.

 

[Technerd108]

You are fine. The cpu is meant to run up to 100c without throttling or having any thermal problems. The fans come on once it reaches that temperature to make sure it doesn't get any hotter and throttle. You really can't push these cpu's to a point where they throttle or the cooling solution can't keep up. The thermals on these new MBP are really good!

 

[Wando64]

I have a feeling Apple engineers might have spent some time deciding when the fans should or should not kick in.

 

[hopkins802]

Sorry for being cautious everyone, my apologies.

 

[Technerd108]

Sorry for being cautious everyone, my apologies.

You should not apologize. People who make you feel inferior for simply asking a question you should ignore. This is a forum to ask those very questions. Whether it has been addressed before or not it is still a valid question.

We come here to learn and not to insult others. I don't understand the condescending attitudes in many forums in general.

 

[hopkins802]

You should not apologize. People who make you feel inferior for simply asking a question you should ignore. This is a forum to ask those very questions. Whether it has been addressed before or not it is still a valid question.

We come here to learn and not to insult others. I don't understand the condescending attitudes in many forums in general.

I mean yeah, I just imagine these people acting this way If I brought this up in conversation in person. I'd be baffled. I guess it all depends on tone of voice too, which is hard here. Anyway, I come from the PC world and 100C is just insane. But if Apple says its okay to run it that hot, I guess that's okay...I wouldn't want to wear out the fans for no reason.

 

[Wando64]

I mean yeah, I just imagine these people acting this way If I brought this up in conversation in person. I'd be baffled. I guess it all depends on tone of voice too, which is hard here. Anyway, I come from the PC world and 100C is just insane. But if Apple says its okay to run it that hot, I guess that's okay...I wouldn't want to wear out the fans for no reason.

Hey, I am not sure who you are referring to, but I don’t see anything wrong in the replies you have received.
I certainly stand by mine, as I am pretty certain Apple’s engineers will have thought long and hard about when the fans should kick in, and you seem to agree after all.

To put it simply, my advice is that we should trust the manufacturer.
After all, if something were to go wrong with these machines, they’ll be the ones paying the price for their mistakes.

 

[januarydrive7]

I mean yeah, I just imagine these people acting this way If I brought this up in conversation in person. I'd be baffled. I guess it all depends on tone of voice too, which is hard here. Anyway, I come from the PC world and 100C is just insane. But if Apple says its okay to run it that hot, I guess that's okay...I wouldn't want to wear out the fans for no reason.

For clarification -- I wasn't intending to offend, if it seemed so. My point is simply that this has been a contentious subject on these forums, one that industry experts (e.g., @cmaier) have weighed in on with a resounding "no, this isn't an issue --- they're meant to run that way."

A primary issue is that there is a lot of confusion around the topic. Mostly, you'll see hardcore gamers or tech reviewers spewing that 100C is too much, but what they're really commenting on is that once you get to this point, it's likely that thermal throttling is soon to follow. Silicon is not going to melt away at 100C, so whether you're on a Mac or PC, you're not in danger of destroying your CPU. What you will be in danger of (if your cooling solution is not good enough), is thermal throttling -- which, as @Technerd108 pointed out, doesn't seem to be an issue with these machines, as they can very easily maintain optimal max, non-detrimental temps (of around 100C). Previous generations were unable to do this (both due to the silicon designs in them being more power hungry, and the thermal designs being more restrained), so if you hit 100C on an older Mac, you'd be seeing thermal throttling very soon after (as frequency would necessarily need to be reduced to remove heat at an appropriate rate).

 

[hopkins802]

Hey, I am not sure who you are referring to, but I don’t see anything wrong in the replies you have received.
I certainly stand by mine, as I am pretty certain Apple’s engineers will have thought long and hard about when the fans should kick in, and you seem to agree after all.

To put it simply, my advice is that we should trust the manufacturer.
After all, if something were to go wrong with these machines, they’ll be the ones paying the price for their mistakes.

I do partially agree! I agree that Apple’s engineering team is looking out for the user when it comes to experience (quiet fans) and performance (little to no throttling), but what about longevity?

 

[Analog Kid]

Sorry for being cautious everyone, my apologies.

Nothing wrong with being cautious, but your comments were a bit sensational and weren't phrased as questions but warnings. The CPU isn't about to melt, for example. And it was a bit presumptuous to prescribe what the fan speed "should" be if you didn't engineer the MacBook Pro. Nothing wrong with being colorful in your descriptions either, but you're more likely to get colorful responses back.

I think the advice is to not assume that you can manually set a better cooling profile than Apple did... I put this in the same category of manually managing charge profiles. Sure, Apple had to make some assumptions about how users would want to use their equipment, and you might be different than they assumed, but they aren't stupid or out to undermine your system. There's just as much chance that overriding Apple's defaults leads to worse outcomes as better.

Temperature in particular is a tricky thing-- it depends quite a bit on where you measure it and at what temperature the device was designed to operate... It's hard to carry profiles from system to system.

 

[oz_rkie]

Hey, I am not sure who you are referring to, but I don’t see anything wrong in the replies you have received.
I certainly stand by mine, as I am pretty certain Apple’s engineers will have thought long and hard about when the fans should kick in, and you seem to agree after all.

To put it simply, my advice is that we should trust the manufacturer.
After all, if something were to go wrong with these machines, they’ll be the ones paying the price for their mistakes.

Well, I would not be so eager to trust manufacturers. I am not saying that in this case 100C is not fine or anything, it probably is within spec. But just to remind those who do not know or might have forgotten, just a couple years ago with their i9 based intel macbook pros, the same Apple engineers were fine to let the chip throttle just to keep the system quiet. Yes, that was a hot intel chip but the point is Apple has many times in its history favored form (noise in this case) over function. Again, not saying that in this instance with the ARM chip that 100C is not within spec, but just not to rush to 'trust' Apple

 

[hopkins802]

Nothing wrong with being cautious, but your comments were a bit sensational and weren't phrased as questions but warnings. The CPU isn't about to melt, for example. And it was a bit presumptuous to prescribe what the fan speed "should" be if you didn't engineer the MacBook Pro. Nothing wrong with being colorful in your descriptions either, but you're more likely to get colorful responses back.

I think the advice is to not assume that you can manually set a better cooling profile than Apple did... I put this in the same category of manually managing charge profiles. Sure, Apple had to make some assumptions about how users would want to use their equipment, and you might be different than they assumed, but they aren't stupid or out to undermine your system. There's just as much chance that overriding Apple's defaults leads to worse outcomes as better.

Temperature in particular is a tricky thing-- it depends quite a bit on where you measure it and at what temperature the device was designed to operate... It's hard to carry profiles from system to system.

This is all very true. Maybe I’m just too accustomed to the never ending tinkering in the PC world. It just makes me nervous about the longevity if temps of the CPU, GPU and RAM are often in the 80-90C range.

 

[quarkysg]

Well, I would not be so eager to trust manufacturers.

I would think almost all (if not all) manufacturers will not want to deal with faulty devices during their warranty period, so engineering's job is to ensure that they last at least past warranty and usually longer. If any component has a design limit, almost all engineers will design with those limits in mind based on the engineering constraints they are given.

But engineers are also humans, and humans are good are making mistakes, especially when faced with mountains of variables. But generally, most will want to do the best they can.

I guess I'm just a glass half full kind of person

 

[hopkins802]

I would think almost all (if not all) manufacturers will not want to deal with faulty devices during their warranty period, so engineering's job is to ensure that they last at least past warranty and usually longer. If any component has a design limit, almost all engineers will design with those limits in mind based on the engineering constraints they are given.

But engineers are also humans, and humans are good are making mistakes, especially when faced with mountains of variables. But generally, most will want to do the best they can.

I guess I'm just a glass half full kind of person

Oof, hopefully they’re manufacturing them to last longer than their warranty period! Isn’t that like.. 1 year? Haha. I mean I have Apple Care for the next 3 years, but I had to pay for that. That’s where my caution comes from. This is a $4200 laptop. Not trying to just fry it in two years.

 

[quarkysg]

Oof, hopefully they’re manufacturing them to last longer than their warranty period!

Lots of conspiracy theories floating around saying manufacturers have planned obsolescence for their product in that they engineered them to failed after a while.

If you ask me, this is more difficult to engineer (i.e. planned obsolescence, in that how do you make sure a device will fail past warranty?) compared to engineering something that can last a lot longer, so I'm not worried. Especially when it comes to Apple's gear. My 2010 iMac 27" is still purring along nicely, albeit with a swapped GPU (which failed after 8 years of use in a hot and humid environment), and that thing runs hot!

 

[hopkins802]

Oof, hopefully they’re manufacturing them to last longer than their warranty period! Isn’t that like.. 1 year? Haha. I mean I have Apple Care for the next 3 years, but I had to pay for that. That’s where my caution comes from. This is a $4200 laptop. Not trying to just fry it in two years.

Word! I think I’m just going to chill out on the fan curve, but still make the fans kick on around the cpu hitting 95C. I just don’t like them at 100C.

 

[Analog Kid]

This is all very true. Maybe I’m just too accustomed to the never ending tinkering in the PC world. It just makes me nervous about the longevity if temps of the CPU, GPU and RAM are often in the 80-90C range.

Yeah, I think this is probably the best answer to the question "why doesn't Apple allow people more freedom to control their hardware?" Because they'll use it...

I mean, there's ways of opening your hood and changing your engine timings but I'm not sure it's a good idea for anyone but a hobbyist with time and money to spare. There's probably not a lot of ways that making your CPU less hot will be a problem, other than running your battery down a bit faster and making a bit more noise, and maybe wearing the fan bearings a bit faster, but I also don't think you're going to gain much.

You do run the risk of overriding settings that Apple has put or will put in place to keep the CPU safe. For example they could, potentially, start spinning the fans up before a temperature rise based on what internal cores they apply power to and internal clock rates. Or maybe Apple controls fan speeds based on rates of change rather than levels. It'll take time for the thermals to radiate from the heat sources to the temp sensor. I don't know what TG Pro does or how it interacts with the firmware, but if it interferes with Apple's own ability to control cooling you might be getting much higher intermittent junction temps even if the temp sensor doesn't show them. Or not. Who knows? That's the point.

 

[oz_rkie]

Lots of conspiracy theories floating around saying manufacturers have planned obsolescence for their product in that they engineered them to failed after a while.

If you ask me, this is more difficult to engineer (i.e. planned obsolescence, in that how do you make sure a device will fail past warranty?) compared to engineering something that can last a lot longer, so I'm not worried. Especially when it comes to Apple's gear. My 2010 iMac 27" is still purring along nicely, albeit with a swapped GPU (which failed after 8 years of use in a hot and humid environment), and that thing runs hot!

I was not really referring to stuff like planned obsolescence or anything. I don't think thats something to worry about. (I have a 2014 mac mini that still works pretty much as well as it did on day 1). Point I was mainly making was that many manufacturers (and Apple in particular) have somewhat favored form over function a lot. I don't know a lot about the boost characteristics of the m1 chips, but in general modern chips can usually boost a fair bit given thermal and power headroom (if allowed to do so). So, if Apple (or other laptop makers) have picked a fan curve where they prioritize noise levels over thermal performance, that could mean some performance might still be gained if you are happy to live with some additional noise.

In fact, if I am remembering correctly, there was a similar experiment done by Linus on the m1 macbook air where I think he applied new thermal pads or something for better contact with the heatsink and the chassis and pretty much closed the gap between the m1 air and the m1 macbook pro. No fan in the macbook air ofcourse but the point I am trying to make is, Apple probably made an engineering decision to target lower chassis temperatures (probably rightly) but there was more performance to be had if they let the chassis get a bit warmer and dissipate more heat from the chip.

 

[quarkysg]

Point I was mainly making was that many manufacturers (and Apple in particular) have somewhat favored form over function a lot.

I can understand why, as there is a demand for it. For example, thin and light is very much what consumers wants for mobile devices, especially for petite ladies IT workers. Many a times, the number one requests from my lady colleagues is that they want something light.

In fact, if I am remembering correctly, there was a similar experiment done by Linus on the m1 macbook air where I think he applied new thermal pads or something for better contact with the heatsink and the chassis and pretty much closed the gap between the m1 air and the m1 macbook pro.

I think I remember watching that video and Linus' conclusion is that he agrees with Apple's engineering decision, as (IIRC) using the entire MacBook Air's chassis as the heatsink will likely violate some safety regulation in terms of heat.

At the end of the day, engineering is always about compromises.

 

[oz_rkie]

I can understand why, as there is a demand for it. For example, thin and light is very much what consumers wants for mobile devices, especially for petite ladies IT workers. Many a times, the number one requests from my lady colleagues is that they want something light.


I think I remember watching that video and Linus' conclusion is that he agrees with Apple's engineering decision, as (IIRC) using the entire MacBook Air's chassis as the heatsink will likely violate some safety regulation in terms of heat.

At the end of the day, engineering is always about compromises.

Yeah, I don't think I disagree with this either. One thing I do dislike about the way Apple does things is, deny the end user any freedom whatsoever to change their chosen defaults.

This is why I prefer windows/linux devices even though I do use a macbook daily. If I don't like the way something is working I can just change it (for the most part) in a windows device. On an Apple device, not so much. I don't fully buy their argument about 'it will make things confusing for the average user'. Even something like a switch option like 'favor performance' vs 'favor acoustics' would be an improvement over having nothing.

 

[Analog Kid]

So, if Apple (or other laptop makers) have picked a fan curve where they prioritize noise levels over thermal performance, that could mean some performance might still be gained if you are happy to live with some additional noise.

You can always go into SysPrefs and set the power mode to "High Power" which is described as possibly causing more fan noise but optimizing for demanding tasks. OP specifically says they kept it set to "automatic", so they know about it and chose to leave it at default and hack around Apple's performance settings-- which may also leave performance on the table if Apple decides how to use their cores based on that setting.

You can even choose your setting separately for battery and wall plug.

In fact, if I am remembering correctly, there was a similar experiment done by Linus on the m1 macbook air where I think he applied new thermal pads or something for better contact with the heatsink and the chassis and pretty much closed the gap between the m1 air and the m1 macbook pro.

How did it affect longevity when measured across a million units over 3-5 years? Is it possible that the gap was there to avoid stress on the component if the chassis flexed? Did this Linus person measure performance a year after the mod, or just for as long as it took to make a YouTube video with a splashy title like "Apple Underdesigned the Macbook Air. Intentional?!"

Yeah, I don't think I disagree with this either. One thing I do dislike about the way Apple does things is, deny the end user any freedom whatsoever to change their chosen defaults.

This is why I prefer windows/linux devices even though I do use a macbook daily. If I don't like the way something is working I can just change it (for the most part) in a windows device. On an Apple device, not so much. I don't fully buy their argument about 'it will make things confusing for the average user'. Even something like a switch option like 'favor performance' vs 'favor acoustics' would be an improvement over having nothing.

Or "low power" vs "automatic" vs "high power"?

I disagree that more settings isn't more confusing. The temperature readings here seemed to confuse the OP. The fact that the setting exists in the bowels of System Preferences to control the power profile completely slipped your notice.

Even for a fairly literate, moderately power-like user such as myself I find switches and options frustrating. There is more than enough performance in my computers now. I could spend the time to test and learn what all the settings control, and then try to make sure I'm always tweaking things to give me that extra percent of performance or battery life depending on the situation, or I could spend the little bit of performance to get back some time by no longer needing to worry about that stuff. I'll choose the latter. I think most people should. If you have to spend 3 minutes checking all your settings to cut a video encode job by 35 seconds, you're losing.

 

[hopkins802]

Yeah, I think this is probably the best answer to the question "why doesn't Apple allow people more freedom to control their hardware?" Because they'll use it...

I mean, there's ways of opening your hood and changing your engine timings but I'm not sure it's a good idea for anyone but a hobbyist with time and money to spare. There's probably not a lot of ways that making your CPU less hot will be a problem, other than running your battery down a bit faster and making a bit more noise, and maybe wearing the fan bearings a bit faster, but I also don't think you're going to gain much.

You do run the risk of overriding settings that Apple has put or will put in place to keep the CPU safe. For example they could, potentially, start spinning the fans up before a temperature rise based on what internal cores they apply power to and internal clock rates. Or maybe Apple controls fan speeds based on rates of change rather than levels. It'll take time for the thermals to radiate from the heat sources to the temp sensor. I don't know what TG Pro does or how it interacts with the firmware, but if it interferes with Apple's own ability to control cooling you might be getting much higher intermittent junction temps even if the temp sensor doesn't show them. Or not. Who knows? That's the point.

That’s a good point. Guess I’ll just have to trust the Apple gods and see what happens.

 

[oz_rkie]

Even for a fairly literate, moderately power-like user such as myself I find switches and options frustrating. There is more than enough performance in my computers now. I could spend the time to test and learn what all the settings control, and then try to make sure I'm always tweaking things to give me that extra percent of performance or battery life depending on the situation, or I could spend the little bit of performance to get back some time by no longer needing to worry about that stuff. I'll choose the latter. I think most people should. If you have to spend 3 minutes checking all your settings to cut a video encode job by 35 seconds, you're losing.

You might find it frustrating. Others might not. Having those additional switches and toggles don't hurt users that don't care about those 'finer details' such as yourself. However, not having them hurts users that would have made use of them. I would prefer if they let the user decide. Spending 3 minutes in your example to cut 35 seconds of every video encode job there after is actually a pretty big win.

 

[Analog Kid]

You might find it frustrating. Others might not. Having those additional switches and toggles don't hurt users that don't care about those 'finer details' such as yourself. However, not having them hurts users that would have made use of them. I would prefer if they let the user decide. Spending 3 minutes in your example to cut 35 seconds of every video encode job there after is actually a pretty big win.

Having them does hurt me. It makes it harder to find the few things I actually care about. It makes it more likely that I forget to change them back to a different mode under different conditions.

And I'm not sure that the people who make use from them actually benefit from them... As here, often it's people playing with things they don't understand and parroting what they see on YouTube or Reddit.

If one change saves you a few seconds every time, and you do it a lot, and you can make productive use of those seconds, and you never need to change it back, then that's a win. If the details mean you're constantly manually tweaking things and spending 3 minutes every time to save time on the encode, then reduce noise for the editing, then extend battery when undocked, then burn the battery when undocked for this one important job but then save battery for the rest of the trip, then it's a serious loss.

If you think you'll get better performance, just go to system preferences and choose "High Power". It's enough. Some people find manipulating setting to be fun and yes, Linux is probably better for those people. My computer is a productivity tool, and the more time I spend tweaking it the less productive I'm being.