Mac Studio 2023 fan noise - It's significantly quieter than the previous gen! Base fan speed lowered from 1300RPM to 1000RPM. Still whines a little

[AdamSeen]

I'm not familiar with Topaz Labs and what upscaling looks like in terms of CPU/GPU loading. Is it taking an hour+ of loading all the cores (and or GPU) to get the auto fan setting to spin up into audible whine territory?

My use is more data science, so I tend to load (usually CPU) cores for a few minutes and then they're relatively idle as I'm writing code. But, I'm running a lot of containers these days, so a bunch of cores and RAM would let me give Docker a lot more resources, and basically never have to think about what's running (i.e. manage resources).

It's fairly intense video upscaling, it uses a lot of the GPU and ANE.

I also run docker containers, which apart from build, will tend not to have much effect on CPU. I assume you're training externally? If that's the case, your workload looks to be fairly intermittent and thus the fans will rarely spin up.

 

[TECK]

It became apparent after a multi-hour session on Topaz Labs around 1350RPM.

I installed Topaz Video AI on my M2 Ultra and I'm running four sessions at 4x Upscale with all filters enabled. So far at 15%, I cannot get the fan spin higher than average 1200 rpm?





Edit: Running now in parallel Handbrake also, I cannot manage to get the fans going higher than 1320 rpm, it spikes randomly at this number then drops to 1270 rpm. At 1320 rpm, the M2 Ultra is quiet like a mouse.

 

[AdamSeen]

I installed Topaz Video AI on my M2 Ultra and I'm running four sessions at 4x Upscale with all filters enabled. So far at 15%, I cannot get the fan spin higher than average 1200 rpm?

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I'm staring in parallel Handbrake also, to see if I can force the fans higher.

Try to increase frame-rate of the videos as well (you have to explicitly set it to 60fps at the top). I'm not sure what the optimal workload is for the ultra, but too many will not be better - it will just cause the compute to switch often.

It did take a while for it to get to 1350 and the ambient temperate that day was closer to 26c. You could also try blocking the airflow a little if you really wanted to heat it up.

 

[TECK]

Try to increase frame-rate of the videos as well (you have to explicitly set it to 60fps at the top).

Starting again, with 120 FPS and two encodings.



This definitely helps, I'm reaching 1500 rpm and no whine at all, still very quiet. I'll let it run for a while.



Here it is the actual sound at 1500 rpm:

 

[jtkiley]

It's fairly intense video upscaling, it uses a lot of the GPU and ANE.

I also run docker containers, which apart from build, will tend not to have much effect on CPU. I assume you're training externally? If that's the case, your workload looks to be fairly intermittent and thus the fans will rarely spin up.

That's what I figured. It's mostly builds, data wrangling (becoming more multicore over time, finally), training small models, grid search (one of my more multicore applications), and just not wanting to incur the time cost to switch projects (I'm an academic researcher, so I tend to have several active at once).

If a few P cores and a chunk of RAM are plenty for non-container use (I have M1 Pro and M1 Max MBPs already, so I have a good feel for Apple Silicon with this workload), something like an M2 Ultra can give a lot of cores to Docker/whatever without me ever really thinking about it (assuming lots of RAM).

(Contrast that with my PC that stutters noticeably with Chrome + anything with 32GB of RAM. That's a separate issue, but at least I can buy more [sort of; see intel 13th gen memory limitations with more than two sticks].)

 

[AdamSeen]

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This definitely helps, I'm reaching 1500 rpm and no whine at all, still very quiet. I'll let it run for a while.



Here it is the actual sound at 1500 rpm:

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Your recording has a whine noise. I’m not at my computer anymore, but run that through audacity with spectrograph setting, and I’m pretty sure you’ll see the line around 2.2khz. It doesn’t bother you though, so don’t worry about it.

 

[Skeletor322]

Your recording has a whine noise. I’m not at my computer anymore, but run that through audacity with spectrograph setting, and I’m pretty sure you’ll see the line around 2.2khz. It doesn’t bother you though, so don’t worry about it.

I hear it too. His is very subtle. Far lower than my first studio, and lower than my current one. If mine was at that level, I would not care.

 

[TECK]

Your recording has a whine noise.

This is the Spectrogram output, can you please let me know what line corresponds to coil whine noise? If I understand correctly, there are machines who have zero whine noise. I'm in the 14 days period, I don't mind exchanging the machine, even if low, I definitely do not want to have a whine noise of a $6400 machine.

 

[AdamSeen]

This is the Spectrogram output, can you please let me know what line corresponds to coil whine noise? If I understand correctly, there are machines who have zero whine noise. I'm in the 14 days period, I don't mind exchanging the machine, even if low, I definitely do not want to have a whine noise of a $6400 machine.

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You see the flat lines at 3.3, 1.9, 1.5 and 0.8kHz? They will all be contributing to the noise. Although yours looks different to mine (check first post and links)

It might be worth getting a sample without any whine to compare against to make sure your mic isn’t picking anything else up.

I think the general consensus from the m1 generation is that many have it, many don’t notice it (you didn’t until I pointed it out) and if you go through the process again you might not get a better result. But I’d be keen to see you try, as you share your results here which helps everyone.

 

[TECK]

It might be worth getting a sample without any whine to compare against to make sure your mic isn’t picking anything up.

Here it is a recording at 1000 rpm, with my M2 Ultra at idle. Please let me know your thoughts, all recordings were done on a iPhone 12 Pro with Voice Memos app. What I'm trying to determine is if there are M2 Ultra machines with no coil whine.

 

[AdamSeen]

Here it is a recording at 1000 rpm, with my M2 Ultra at idle. Please let me know your thoughts, all recordings were done on a iPhone 12 Pro with Voice Memos app. What I'm trying to determine is if there are M2 Ultra machines with no coil whine.

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I think there’s something else in your room causing the whine. Aircon? Other electricals? You should figure those out first because you have lots of solid lines across the spectrum. Compare that to my room recordings in the first post, which is how a quiet room should look

 

[TECK]

I think there’s something else in your room causing the whine.

I have the APC and cable modem fans that generate additional noise, I've just shutdown the Mac and I can hear the background noise. I cannot disable the APC as my area is prone to very frequent intermittent electrical failures, which could very well fry all my electronics. Also, the neighbor is listening to TV always super loud 24/7, literally at 3AM you can hear it into living room where I have my Mac.

 

[designerdave72]

I have the APC and cable modem fans that generate additional noise, I've just shutdown the Mac and I can hear the background noise. I cannot disable the APC as my area is prone to very frequent intermittent electrical failures, which could very well fry all my electronics. Also, the neighbor is listening to TV always super loud 24/7, literally at 3AM you can hear it into living room where I have my Mac.

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If I can hear your neighbour’s TV more than your Mac I’d be inclined to replace your neighbour!

 

[AdamSeen]

I have the APC and cable modem fans that generate additional noise, I've just shutdown the Mac and I can hear the background noise. I cannot disable the APC as my area is prone to very frequent intermittent electrical failures, which could very well fry all my electronics. Also, the neighbor is listening to TV always super loud 24/7, literally at 3AM you can hear it into living room where I have my Mac.

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As you can see your room is quite noisy - It would be very hard to isolate the Mac Whine noise, even if you had it. So hopefully you're going to keep it?

 

[TECK]

So hopefully you're going to keep it?

Yes, I will keep the current Mac.

 

[Shazaam!]

I guess my question is — if you use software like Mac Fan Control to return the M2 fan speed to the M1 1330 rpm, does the whine still exist? In other words, is the noise/whine reduction only a factor of the M2 running at a slower fan speed?

 

[sauria]

Starting again, with 120 FPS and two encodings.

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This definitely helps, I'm reaching 1500 rpm and no whine at all, still very quiet. I'll let it run for a while.

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Here it is the actual sound at 1500 rpm:

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Very helpful data. Thanks

 

[Ismelito]

I had wining and hard drive noises with my Mac Studio M1 Max. I ended up selling it and buying the new M2 Max one (for around 400€ more) and it's completely silent, even with the 1TB hard drive.

 

[Pressure]

I had wining and hard drive noises with my Mac Studio M1 Max. I ended up selling it and buying the new M2 Max one (for around 400€ more) and it's completely silent, even with the 1TB hard drive.

NAND flash don't make noises 😅

 

[Ismelito]

NAND flash don't make noises 😅

0:00:13

I can assure you that they do make noises.

 

[Adult80HD]

0:00:13

I can assure you that they do make noises.

LOL with all of the background noise there and a naked drive, there's no proof the noise is coming from that NVMe drive.