M3 Pro/Max Owners Coming from M2: Are Temps Better?

[Makisupa Policeman]

While I do love my M2 Pro 14”, I will say it does get suprisingly warm even under fairly light load. Certainly not Intel-level heat but it does not have the icy veins of the M1 Air, for example, either.

My (uneducated) guess is that there’s probably something to that whole “heatsink” controversy.

Anyway, for those who may have upgraded from M2 to M3 (which I realize is probably relatively few):
have you noticed your M3 machine doing better at dissipating heat? Or: for those who upgraded to M3 from something else, do you notice your M3 machine getting fairly warm under light to moderate workload?

It might be a little crazy but I’m considering upgrading to M3 Pro despite having my M2 less than a year; there are some great deals on M3 and they’re already hitting the refurb store. But if it turns out that they don’t really run any cooler than M2 despite the modest performance gains, it will probably be a bit easier to come to my senses 😂

 

[Paul Deemer]

While I do love my M2 Pro 14”, I will say it does get suprisingly warm even under fairly light load. Certainly not Intel-level heat but it does not have the icy veins of the M1 Air, for example, either.

My (uneducated) guess is that there’s probably something to that whole “heatsink” controversy.

Anyway, for those who may have upgraded from M2 to M3 (which I realize is probably relatively few):
have you noticed your M3 machine doing better at dissipating heat? Or: for those who upgraded to M3 from something else, do you notice your M3 machine getting fairly warm under light to moderate workload?

It might be a little crazy but I’m considering upgrading to M3 Pro despite having my M2 less than a year; there are some great deals on M3 and they’re already hitting the refurb store. But if it turns out that they don’t really run any cooler than M2 despite the modest performance gains, it will probably be a bit easier to come to my senses 😂

Nothing gonna run cool in a 14" inch due to space constraints. A Pro chip will run cooler than a Max obviously. But if you want cool the 16" can't be beat. I have the Base Max in the 16" inch and fans never come on during light use like movies or surfing the web. So a Pro in a 16" inch is going to be super cool.

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

Nothing gonna run cool in a 14" inch due to space constraints. A Pro chip will run cooler than a Max obviously. But if you want cool the 16" can't be beat. I have the Base Max in the 16" inch and fans never come on during light use like movies or surfing the web. So a Pro in a 16" inch is going to be super cool.

For sure, I’ve heard that pretty consistently since the 16” has a much larger heat dissipation area vs. the 14”.

Sorry for the incoming rant but: I’ve tried the 16” in the store a few times and my old boss had one. And as much as I love the big beautiful screen I have to say it just isn’t for me. The weight is no issue; it’s barely heavier than the 16” Intel and I had no problems with those. It’s more the unwieldy feeling that I get holding it in my lap due to being a thicker, more square design. Plus, the keyboard being set so far back from the giant trackpad means my wrists dig into the thick edge of the case and it gets uncomfortable quickly.

The 14” is just the perfect balance of screen size vs. portability for me. Guess I have to compromise a bit on temps!

 

[1096bimu]

M3 pro is ice cold with light loads, also evident by the endless battery life it has
Just looking at power consumption I believe it's comparable to an M2 for light loads

For the M3 generation they made the M3 max significantly more powerful
but for the Pro it's barely any faster but they made it more efficient, still I would say it's a waste of money to upgrade from M2 pro, in some cases you might even get a reduction in performance.

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

M3 pro is ice cold with light loads, also evident by the endless battery life it has
Just looking at power consumption I believe it's comparable to an M2 for light loads

For the M3 generation they made the M3 max significantly more powerful
but for the Pro it's barely any faster but they made it more efficient, still I would say it's a waste of money to upgrade from M2 pro, in some cases you might even get a reduction in performance.

It does seem maybe like M3 improved on that front significantly. I wonder if it went back to the heating dissipation design used on M1, since there’s probably no longer as significant of supply issues or whatever Apple blamed it on haha.

And to your second point, I know… I’m trying to be rational on that, I’m definitely going to lose money overall and gain pretty modestly at best. I think I can live with the M2 temps—I run in low power mode on battery (which is the case on my lap 99% of the time) and that helps.

Im also considering maybe trying out TG Pro to control the fans manually. I know people will say you shouldn’t mess with the built in fan curves. But I don’t think it’s a big deal since the goal is for them to come on sooner not later.

 

[Paul Deemer]

Also don't forget that the memory bandwidth has changed. On the M2 Pro it was 200gps and the M2 Max was 400gbs. On the M3 Pro they downgraded it to 150gbs, the M3 Max base has double at 300gps and the Full M3 Max is 400gbs which is 75% more memory bandwidth vs the M3 Pro. Just another way Apple is trying to sucker you in to the higher tier configurations.

 

[3SQ Machine]

What did you end up doing?

 

[SingleMaltWithNoIce]

Anyway, for those who may have upgraded from M2 to M3 (which I realize is probably relatively few):
have you noticed your M3 machine doing better at dissipating heat? Or: for those who upgraded to M3 from something else, do you notice your M3 machine getting fairly warm under light to moderate workload?

Hi - I got me a MacBook Pro M3 Pro last December, upgraded fom my MBPro i9 15". I considered both the M2 Pro and M3 Pro at the time (M2 Pro had better deals especially in the Apple's certified refurbished store) but went for the M3Pro chip in the end. To your question about the machine gets warm, I haven't noticed any real issues with that so overall I would think that that the answer is no, heat issue is not a problem.

However, a lot depends on what you define as 'light to moderate workload'. For me, my usage comprises mostly of working with office documents (large to very large spreadsheets, >>1000 lines), video calls, YouTube videos (no gaming, so not graphic intensive), some photo processing and a bit of coding. Not everything at the same time obviously. I haven't noticed any excessive heat being generated as such or felt the machine get particularly warm in the few months that I have had it.

Hope this helps.

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

What did you end up doing?

I got an M3 Pro 11/14 with 18GB RAM and 1TB storage, against my better judgment and wallet. I found a really good deal that came with AppleCare+ for much less than the price of even the refurbished models.

So far the temps do seem a little better—runs about 5C cooler during similar loads to M2 but also seems to dissipate better so it “feels” cooler even when it isn’t. Overall effect is like having a 10C cooler machine. Not a huge difference like Intel, probably not quite as good as M1 temps either, but enough so that I feel like it’s not getting too warm or uncomfortable on my lap.

 

[3SQ Machine]

I got an M3 Pro 11/14 with 18GB RAM and 1TB storage, against my better judgment and wallet. I found a really good deal that came with AppleCare+ for much less than the price of even the refurbished models.

So far the temps do seem a little better—runs about 5C cooler during similar loads to M2 but also seems to dissipate better so it “feels” cooler even when it isn’t. Overall effect is like having a 10C cooler machine. Not a huge difference like Intel, probably not quite as good as M1 temps either, but enough so that I feel like it’s not getting too warm or uncomfortable on my lap.

Congrats! That's an interesting custom config. Did you grab it at one of the retailers offering custom builds?

I noticed that the 11/14 M3 Pro with 36gb Ram just hit the refurb store for around $2200. While I feel pretty settled on my base M3 Max 14 since I got a good deal on it, I keep eyeballing that M3 Pro refurb since I really wanted the ram more than blazing performance. For that price, I would save close to $400 if I went with it and that's not nothing.

If you don't mind sharing any performance observations, that would be great. I've got another month in my return period.

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

Congrats! That's an interesting custom config. Did you grab it at one of the retailers offering custom builds?

I noticed that the 11/14 M3 Pro with 36gb Ram just hit the refurb store for around $2200. While I feel pretty settled on my base M3 Max 14 since I got a good deal on it, I keep eyeballing that M3 Pro refurb since I really wanted the ram more than blazing performance. For that price, I would save close to $400 if I went with it and that's not nothing.

If you don't mind sharing any performance observations, that would be great. I've got another month in my return period.

Yes, I grabbed it from a 3rd party reseller but it was sealed and brand new. Wasn't expecting them to throw in AC+ but it was a nice bonus.

The machine IME so far runs extremely well. Everything is blazing fast and I've rarely gotten any lag or beachballing (only for the first time tonight but it because I was accessing my huge music library on an external drive via a TB hub connection). I have not really pushed the machine too hard so far but I've found that 18GB RAM is more than sufficient for my use case, which is basically word processing/spreadsheets, browsing/content consumption, light to moderate photo/video/music editing, and some more niche software for things like data archiving and preservation, file tagging, and file comparison tools (I have a huge backlog of junk duplicate files from poor backup habits that I'm trying to clean up on my external drives right now).