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Mac Studio Owners Complain of Irritating High-Pitched Noise
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I have a Mac Studio M1 Max, it has the high-pitched whining sound. I can hear it in my quiet office. With a powered on WD Elements HDD next to it, it is barely audible.
Ugh. My M1 Max Studio was just delivered and it has the fan whine. It is not subtle. It sounds like an old spinning hard drive. I'm surprised at how loud the normal fan noise is (about the same as my Dell mini tower) at idle, but the whine on top of that is intolerable. After months of reviews saying how silent it is I am very disappointed, in both Apple and the reviewers.
It looks like a nice machine, but the noise is a deal killer. Back it goes. Sigh.
[update]
After calling for a refund, the person on the other end said they had just processed half a dozen return requests for the fan noise. Apple knows this is a problem. When or how it gets fixed is another matter. I must have watched a dozen youtube reviews and they all gushed about how silent the machine is. ??? Something up there.
It looks like a nice machine, but the noise is a deal killer. Back it goes. Sigh.
[update]
After calling for a refund, the person on the other end said they had just processed half a dozen return requests for the fan noise. Apple knows this is a problem. When or how it gets fixed is another matter. I must have watched a dozen youtube reviews and they all gushed about how silent the machine is. ??? Something up there.
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Sure, so then write "sinusoidal."
Or "sine." Or "sinusoidal wave."
I have never seen sinusoidal abbreviated to "sinus."
Ultra 20/48 core, 64 GB RAM. Just started making the whining noise this morning. I am 4 days beyond the 14 day return period.
The whining noise is incredibly annoying. NFW I can have a machine that makes this noise - imagine having a loud mosquito sitting in your ear. I tried the Fan Control app. 1100 is better than automatic, but even at 1100 it still makes the noise. I will call Apple today.
I broke the rule: never buy a 1st gen Apple product. Oops. Wish I had held off.
The whining noise is incredibly annoying. NFW I can have a machine that makes this noise - imagine having a loud mosquito sitting in your ear. I tried the Fan Control app. 1100 is better than automatic, but even at 1100 it still makes the noise. I will call Apple today.
I broke the rule: never buy a 1st gen Apple product. Oops. Wish I had held off.
I bought the Mac Studio M1 Max with baseline CPU/GPU, 32gig ram, 2tb SSD, and had the issue with the whine. It was still present at 1100 RPM of the fan.
I actually brought it to an Apple store, and they told me they could not reproduce the issue and all the hardware was normal and would not do anything about it. I'm guessing the room they tested it in was not as quiet as my home office since it's only audible when there is no other noise.
Debating if I should return it and wait another 6-8 weeks in hopes that another new one won't have the same issue...
I actually brought it to an Apple store, and they told me they could not reproduce the issue and all the hardware was normal and would not do anything about it. I'm guessing the room they tested it in was not as quiet as my home office since it's only audible when there is no other noise.
Debating if I should return it and wait another 6-8 weeks in hopes that another new one won't have the same issue...
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Crazy. I bought the exact same model and specs, took it to the apple store last week and had the same result. Very disappointing. tomorrow is my last day to return it with the 14 day window. For the price this machine should be perfect. I have a friend with a studio and it’s dead silent. Sounds like faulty fans in some models.
If you have a friend that has a silent Mac Studio, and have also been unable to reproduce the sound at the Apple Store.
Try one more experiment, take your machine to your friends house, and plug your Mac Studio into his setup.
If it is silent at both the Apple Store and your friend's place, then it might be a power related issue at your place.
Try one more experiment, take your machine to your friends house, and plug your Mac Studio into his setup.
If it is silent at both the Apple Store and your friend's place, then it might be a power related issue at your place.
Hi Sun Baked, very good thinking, in this case solution is to supply Mac Studio through UPS, I'm testing it now I had a peak when running at 1100 rpm and it's still here using UPS, I can't test anything more since my unit works very well.
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UPS normally does not intervene unless there is an over/undervolt condition or a power cut, so you’d be getting straight wall power all other times.
Very few people have consistent voltage in their homes. Even a fluctuation of a few is enough to cause all sorts of issues, especially if you're working with audio. Power conditioners are life-savers.
He is really annoying to me. It's not his hate of apple, he's just super annoying.
The Apple Store is worthless for this issue. They tested the machine on the countertop in the store with all the store background noise. You will never hear the noise that way.
No power issues in my house, every other mac I have runs perfectly fine. My friend could also hear the noise, I'm not crazy... ? Same issues presented themselves at his house.
Not sure how good this test is, but I used Macs Fan Control and set the fans to 1100 and it is much quieter. I then ran the Heaven Benchmark full screen on Studio Display and the highest temp I saw was a GPU cluster at 51C. I then switched the fan to automatic (starts at 1330rpm) and ran Heaven again - there was really no difference in temp on any sensor, and the fan was never increased above ~1330rpm.I’m sure most people like me set their fans to a faster speeds not a slower speeds because heat is the enemy.
Interestingly as the fan goes from 1100 to 1330 I hear a whine on the way up that then disappears. It makes me wonder if Apple knew there was some sort of "whine noise" issues below 1330 and that is why they default to 1330. On my Studio Max, it appears to be around 1200 where it is more noticeable. For now I'm going to live at 1100 and keep an eye on temperatures when stressing the machine and see how that works out...
Yes you’re right about the use of battery/inverter, but the main is filtered and regulated including surge protection to supply equipment and battery charger that’s better than raw main.
Impact of fan speed on component temperature listed by Macs Fan Control 1.5.12 Free (Mac13.1)
Here under are results using ClamXAV (to try to have linear use).
Here under are results using ClamXAV (to try to have linear use).
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Yeah. I am on my second model. Better then the first one. But still , i can hear the whine. No review mentioned is. Fishy very much
I am tinking the same. Its like they new they messeg up with the fans and they just lockef them. I mean, do you any other desktop machine that has fixed fan rpm????
It went quiet (no pun intented) in this thread. It surprises me a bit. Since more people should have gotten their mac studios and i am sure there are more problems….
Some are still coming in bad, you just have to read all the threads about it, not just this one. The threads in the Studio forum have more information. A recent poll thread added up to 30% bad. I bet it's not that bad but it does mean there is definitely a problem.
Today got my CTO Studio with an M1 Ultra. Unfortunately it has the whine, so this is not limited to M1 Max configurations. Tried to change the fan speed using Macs Fan Control but even at 1100 rpm it is still audible, in fact it is even worse. I decided to try to get used to it while it is in the return period. If not, I may return it. It is unfortunate, because it is much faster than the iMac 2015 it is supposed to replace, which also was CTO with the highest CPU configuration. The Studio is 6 times faster for my workflow.
I don't think this is coil whine from the SSD. The dB and the frequency of the whine definitely changes with different fan speeds and it is a continuous whine unlike SSD coil whine. Most probably the fans used in the device are not very good quality and the sound comes from the bearings.
I don't think this is coil whine from the SSD. The dB and the frequency of the whine definitely changes with different fan speeds and it is a continuous whine unlike SSD coil whine. Most probably the fans used in the device are not very good quality and the sound comes from the bearings.
Is the whine constantly there or just sometimes? Mine is not all the time there. Only when the fans readjust rpm