Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
i don’t have my Mac Studio yet, but I did see some posts on the net showing some units with “Made in Malaysia” and others with “Assembled in China,” so perhaps that could explain different sources for the power supplies in the tear downs? Or it could be due to Max vs Ultra.

Edit: MCMC Label on the ”China” unit = Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Comission.

Macstudiochina.png
Macstudiomalaysia.png
 
Last edited:
Has anyone else noticed the power supplies in the Max Tech Mac Studio teardown (an M1 Ultra) and the iFixit Mac Studio teardown (a M1 Max) are different? According to the Apple Spec page the electrical specs of both models are the same (370W).

So are the power supplies different because one is a M1 Ultra and the other is a M1 Max even though they have the same total wattage specs? Or are they meant to use the same power supply board and there was a design change to the power supply board late in preproduction, and some of both models were built with an older version of the power supply board? It's pure speculation, but if so, that could possibly explain why some units have the high-pitched whine and others don't have it at all.

View attachment 1989115

View attachment 1989118
I'm looking at the Mac Ultra teardown and everyone has a different power supply. Apparently there are two kinds. ?
 
  • Wow
Reactions: George Dawes
I look at the Mac Ultra teardown and everyone has a different source. Apparently there are two kinds. ?
But they can be made in two places with exactly the same parts, and that should be expected. And we have now seen both units made in China and Malaysia reported to have the whine problem.

I hadn't seen any reports that there are, or have been, 2 different power supply designs. Since we have some units with the high pitched sound and some units completely without it that becomes highly suspicious to me. It certainly raises the question that the whine could depend on which of the power supply designs a unit has.
 
Last edited:
But they can be made in two places with exactly the same parts, and that should be expected. And we have now seen both units made in China and Malaysia reported to have the whine problem.

I hadn't seen any reports that there are, or have been, 2 different power supply designs. Since we have some units with the high pitched sound and some units completely without it that becomes highly suspicious to me. It certainly raises the question that the whine could depend on which of the power supply designs a unit has.
Here again, they describe the difference as more of a duty issue. I'm from Europe and my Mac says China on it. Maybe there are two suppliers... The whistling could be a problem, but from listening to the new sound samples, it sounds like a bearing, fan problem.

 
Here again, they describe the difference as more of a duty issue. I'm from Europe and my Mac says China on it. Maybe there are two suppliers... The whistling could be a problem, but from listening to the new sound samples, it sounds like a bearing, fan problem.

Like I said, it's easy to tell whether it's a power supply problem or a fan bearing problem. Just do the tests I suggested. Simple. I just don't have a unit with the problem to test.
 
Last edited:
My ultra has no high pitched sound, so I'm only speculating from the various recordings I've heard.

But it sounds more like power supply whine than fan squeal to me. In the recordings I hear a more pure sinewave-like sound that could be a sub-harmonic of the switching rate. I've also heard it chirp a little, which again seems more like a power supply issue. It could be from a coil (usually) or a capacitor (not as likely when new). Changing the fan speed could still effect the volume. You may recall the 2018 Mac Mini (I believe that was the model) had quite a problem with coil whine initially.

It would be tell-tale to know if the volume or pitch of the sound changed with the load put on the power supply since the fan speed virtually never changes under load. That should be tested by both running the CPU/GPU harder and also by exercising the SSD with a somewhat sustained speed test or something similar. If you hear the high-pitched sound change in either situation it's almost certainly coming from a power supply component.

Yes this is definitely coil whine and I hope people going forward are specific about the fan noise vs. this because coil whine is a LOT more annoying in a silent environment. Coil whine from a $5,000+ computer is very unacceptable.

It's concerning someone mentioned their Studio developed this after a week or so because I've never heard of that happening - either it's present from the start or it isn't (until maybe many many years down the road when a component starts to fail). If it's ran hard for a week and stars appearing there's a manufacturing defect in this product, IMO.

I have a fully-specc'd out Studio slated for delivery in about a month and this is very concerning... given the long lead times I'll probably try to take it anyway and just return it if it has the problem but I will stress-test the hell out of it to burn-in the components and make sure, coil whine is an absolute deal breaker for me. I will probably fall back to using a hackintosh until the Mac Pro comes out if that's the case but I need thunderbolt for audio interface(s) and ~5TB of SSD space and so I'm holding-off on buying a pci-e RAID card and m.2 drives until I know one way or the other... a lot of the software I use is annoyingly picky about being on external drives, even if they're fast.

The two power supplies being vastly different is also very odd, unless they are specific to the Max / Ultra. That much variation does suggest a revision, if the CPU is not the differentiating factor.

edit:

Ramping down the fans to 1100rpm and then running 3D rendering tests (or gaming) should max out the CPU / GPU and provide some variation as to what's being drawn on the screen. This will demonstrate coil whine effectively because the Fan Noise won't mask it. Changing fan speed will have no effect on Coil whine unless it's heat-related which wouldn't become apparent until you have the thing fully-loaded for quite a while. Changing the viewport quality / camera direction in a 3d rendering app, or your POV in a game from a stressful scene to a less stressful one graphically will make it apparent because you'll hear a slight variation in the pitch of the whine - more stressful power consumption tends to produce a 'pulsating whine' like the chirping heard in one of those clips.

Some recent SSDs have also been somewhat poorly manufactured and produce this same type of whine when heavy disk I/O is going on so it might be worth testing that also, or in tandem with a fully-loaded cpu/gpu/possibly vieo encoders.

There's no excuse for this thing making coil whine noise like that unless someone really messed-up somewhere in the design phase, or one of their suppliers is producing garbage that QC isn't catching. Their engineering staff has to be testing these at home or in a very quiet room and should have picked-up on it.
 
Last edited:
Wouldn't coil whine be somewhat easily verified? I recall someone reporting Mac Fans Control can turn off the Mac Studio fans to 0 rpm. Unless of course if the whine only happens when fans are spinning.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cape Dave
Damn, I'm not gonna lie, this thread makes me anxious. Now I don't know whether to cancel my order or not.
Remember, people are generally going to comment/complain when there's an issue.
FWIW, my base model Studio is extremely quiet. I can just about hear fans spinning, but definitely no high pitched whine.
 
Wouldn't coil whine be somewhat easily verified? I recall someone reporting Mac Fans Control can turn off the Mac Studio fans to 0 rpm. Unless of course if the whine only happens when fans are spinning.

Yes, as I said before if the pitch (frequency) or volume changes with a heavy CPU/GPU load or SSD usage then it's power supply whine because the fan speed will not change more than about 25 rpm no matter how hard you push the CPU/GPU in any benchmark or usage test I've seen (but you can easily keep an eye on that too to make sure while changing the loading). Whether whine from the power supply is due to a coil (usually) or capacitor (less likely when new) would be difficult to tell externally, but that doesn't really matter to us at this point. I think we'd all like to know whether the problem is from faulty fans or the power supply.

I find it very suspicious that we have pictures of two different power supply designs in the two tear-downs. While its possible they created different power supplies for the M1 Max and the Ultra (which would require more current for some supplies) the fact that both are rated at the same 370W makes it seem doubtful they designed 2 different power supplies for that reason.

It's speculation, but it seems possible they did a redesign of a common power supply late in the game, but still produced some units with the 1st design. That could explain why we have whine in some Studio's and none at all in other units. If I recall the M1 Max's have been much more susceptible to whine than the Ultra's, and that could be where most of the boards with the 1st design ended up because production volumes were probably higher initially for the less expensive Max. Again, this is all speculation based on just now realizing there either still are, or have been, two different power supply designs in production units. Just speculation with too few facts.
 
Last edited:
All in all I am just holding any orders of Mac Studio for my company, for now at least. This power supply "issue", the seemingly lack of software optimization, the imminent WWDC with Mac Pro announcement, the really long wait time for 64GB+ configs... the clouds will be clearer 2-3 months from now.
 
Remember, people are generally going to comment/complain when there's an issue.
FWIW, my base model Studio is extremely quiet. I can just about hear fans spinning, but definitely no high pitched whine.
Yes, I'm aware of that. I also don't expect it to be silent, but I can't stand high-pitched coil whining.
My current computer, a 2016 MacBook Pro, also produces some fan noise (~30dB(A)) or even a lot (up to 65dB(A)) when put to the task, which doesn't bother me.

Yes, as I said before if the pitch (frequency) or volume changes with a heavy CPU/GPU load or SSD usage then it's power supply whine because the fan speed will not change more than about 25 rpm no matter how hard you push the CPU/GPU in any benchmark or usage test I've seen (but you can easily keep an eye on that too to make sure while changing the loading).

This would be great, since it potentially could be fixed in firmware. However, if it's a hardware flaw or if the chassis is simply too perforated to account for enough sound dampening, there's nothing much that can be done.

It's speculation, but it seems possible they did a redesign of a common power supply late in the game, but still produced some units with the 1st design. That could explain why we have whine in some Studio's and none at all in other units. If I recall the M1 Max's have been much more susceptible to whine than the Ultra's, and that could be where most of the boards with the 1st design ended up because production volumes were probably higher initially for the less expensive Max. Again, this is all speculation based on just now realizing there either still are, or have been, two different power supply designs in production units. Just speculation with too few facts.
It's weird though that none of the YouTube pseudo-reviewers - who clearly got their units long before the general populus - really noticed anything in their hardcore testing and bench-marking. It could however be that they got better units from a later batch.

My Mac Studio order is scheduled to ship in mid-June. So it's most likely not even on the production line yet. I am hoping that by then I won't have the issue.
The same here. Mine is scheduled to arrive mid to end of May.
 
Anyone who would be bothered by coil whine should return the Studio, as it can develop over time and after the return period. I don't see Apple covering this under warranty. The more returns they get will also send a message that this isn't what we expect from $2000+ Apple product.
 
Neither the CPU nor the GPU has any effect on the whistling. With the GPU, there is a subtle chirp that is completely different.
I remember the Vega 56, there was definitely more chirp in the renders.

studio GPU.png
 

Attachments

  • studio GPU.wav
    1.5 MB
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: jtkiley
Here is the CPU benchmark. I clogged the holes, one half at a time. Towards the end I uncovered everything and the fan made even more noise/whistling.

studio CPU clogging of holes.png
 

Attachments

  • studio CPU clogging of holes.wav
    6.5 MB
  • Like
Reactions: jtkiley
On my first unit I could lower "FAN 0" to 1151RPM and the whine would go away. If both fans were lowered to the same it would come back.

On the second unit(the one that was silent for 12 days then the whine started) it was less speed dependent, the only way I could get the whine to go away was when the fans were not being powered. Raise the speed to say 2000RPM (above that the fan noise starts to cover the whine) then resume automatic control. The whine would go away while the speed of the fans was coming down. Then as soon as the controller would start to power the fans near 1300RPM you would get morse code type whine then constant whine would resume.
 
On my first unit I could lower "FAN 0" to 1151RPM and the whine would go away. If both fans were lowered to the same it would come back.

On the second unit(the one that was silent for 12 days then the whine started) it was less speed dependent, the only way I could get the whine to go away was when the fans were not being powered. Raise the speed to say 2000RPM (above that the fan noise starts to cover the whine) then resume automatic control. The whine would go away while the speed of the fans was coming down. Then as soon as the controller would start to power the fans near 1300RPM you would get morse code type whine then constant whine would resume.
The whistling changes with increasing fan speed until it is no longer audible and "fades away". One of the test sites proved it. But anything at 1300 rpm is already extremely noisy without whistling.
 
Are these whine sounds coming from 120V, 220V, or both type of devices?

I ordered a Studio that won't arrive until July. I'm hoping this issue is fixed by then. The question is to return and rebuy vs replacement with AppleCare in case you keep getting bad units and lose the return window.
 
Are these whine sounds coming from 120V, 220V, or both type of devices?

I ordered a Studio that won't arrive until July. I'm hoping this issue is fixed by then. The question is to return and rebuy vs replacement with AppleCare in case you keep getting bad units and lose the return window.

It's both. Early on, the reports were 220V, but now plenty of us in the US have issues, too.

Yeah, that's the tough question, and I have about three days to make a call on that. Right now, I'm leaning toward an equivalent spec MBP, but I already have a base MBP, so I'd have to sell that, too. There aren't any great answers from what I can tell.

But, if I had an order in and the issue were merely hypothetical, I'd see what happens. Plenty of folks don't have an apparent issue.
 
It's both. Early on, the reports were 220V, but now plenty of us in the US have issues, too.

Yeah, that's the tough question, and I have about three days to make a call on that. Right now, I'm leaning toward an equivalent spec MBP, but I already have a base MBP, so I'd have to sell that, too. There aren't any great answers from what I can tell.

But, if I had an order in and the issue were merely hypothetical, I'd see what happens. Plenty of folks don't have an apparent issue.
Thanks for the clarification on the voltage. Same boat here: Bought 14" MBP to replace older MacBook Air. Don't really need a 2nd laptop to mainly use as a desktop, but it would give the same performance. However this 14" gets used everywhere (kitchen, living room, travel, etc.), so it's nice to have my photo editing machine separate. It already had someone spill a beer on it in the first month! 16" MBP would be about $1K more but available late May vs late July for Studio. Is silence worth $1K?
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.