MacBook Air 2020 and LG UltraFine 5K Display

[Florida Gator]

Hey all! I have read several reviews from users that have hooked their 2020 MacBook Airs up to 4K displays, but I have an Air (with 16GB of memory) on order I hope to hook up specifically to a LG UltraFine 5K display. I know Apple says it will power the display fine over Thunderbolt 3, but I wanted to check to see if anybody here is actually doing it with their 2020 Air.

A 5K display is a beast to power and I just want to make sure that it won't be choppy and my Air's fan won't constantly go crazy. I have access to a Blackmagic eGPU for a good price, but don't want to waste the money if unnecessary.

Thanks!

 

[morg0052]

I have a 2018 i5/16gb/512 and it does work with the 5k, but I would say its a bit of a stuggle with it. Would love to hear how someones experience is with the 2020 as well.....

 

[jgorman]

This reviewer has the LG 5K. He used it when he tested iMovie. He is speaking Japanese, but his slides and UI have English.

 

[mr_jomo]

Finally got around to testing this yesterday:

• Connected perfectly and found USB-C peripherals connected to the Ultrafine 5K with no issues.
• MBA felt a little bit laggy when working of the 5K, but might just have been bias on my part.
• No heating or fan noise when in open configuration.
• In clamshell mode, fan started ramping up quite fast when I ran 3-4 apps and 5-6 tabs in Microsoft Edge.

MBA configuration is base i3 model.

 

[deeddawg]

• In clamshell mode, fan started ramping up quite fast when I ran 3-4 apps and 5-6 tabs in Microsoft Edge.

How's the behavior in Safari?

I use Edge sometimes on my work laptop (lenovo) and Edge seems to really hammer the system; lenovo's fans start spinning up quick with just a tab or two open in Edge.

 

[onyx_eagle7]

I have a work provided 2018 MBA i5 8GB RAM 256GBSSD and it works fine unless I tax it too much. Using MS applications such as Teams (which is not super optimized for e.g.) or Chrome can push it when powering the 5K. But it still does fine. I also have a 2016 15" MBP and that has no issues whatsoever. I can tell the difference easily.

 

[morg0052]

So I have connected by i5/16/1tb to LG Ultrafine and with Remote Desktop going, slack open and FaceTime fans do come on, but I would not say really loud, just a slight noise. Runs things much more smoothly than my 2018 did though, not much gutter at all with camera and windows moving around better. So all in all, first report, a good one.

 

[morg0052]

well day 2 and not going as well.... I have been running excel, outlook, iMessage, ical, Things, and Remote Desktop from my air to 5k LG and the fans get running quit a bit and loud. Can really here them working. I will say the 2020 Air runs the display much better than the 2018 air, but certainly much louder as well. Not sure what to do...

 

[deeddawg]

well day 2 and not going as well.... I have been running excel, outlook, iMessage, ical, Things, and Remote Desktop from my air to 5k LG and the fans get running quit a bit and loud. Can really here them working. I will say the 2020 Air runs the display much better than the 2018 air, but certainly much louder as well. Not sure what to do...

you're on day 2 - check what processes you have running - especially if you didn't leave it open and active overnight.

takes a couple days or more to index stuff including photos. Usually recommended to give it three or four days, perhaps even a week before making judgements.

Run Activity Monitor and the Energy tab -- see what's going on.

 

[morg0052]

thanks for that. I have not bothered to do photos and that sort of thing, just been adding the necessities so far so could test. I have been leaving computer on over night though. so that should be done by now. I will say, sometimes it is totally quit (like now), for extended periods and then the fans will go wild. With doing nothing differently... not sure what to make of it yet...

 

[deeddawg]

I will say, sometimes it is totally quit (like now), for extended periods and then the fans will go wild. With doing nothing differently... not sure what to make of it yet...

Look to Activity Monitor for clues - both the CPU and Energy tabs.

With mine I had a sync process going crazy the first day - essentially a private-cloud setup with my home NAS that works like Dropbox or OneDrive - keeps a 200GB folder of photos synced between my MBA and MBP15 via my NAS. The sync job somehow got confused with the restore from Time Machine. Soon as I cleared it and set it up again it calmed down and began behaving itself.

While you likely don't have something like that, the point is use Activity Monitor to give you a hint at what may be hitting the CPU - either via %CPU, CPU Time, or Energy Impact.

 

[morg0052]

thanks
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Apple Mail is using anywhere between 50% and 120% of cpu usage, that does not seem normal or correct? Maybe a bug in there? Or just need to go to all outlook?
[automerge]1589389541[/automerge]

 

[deeddawg]

Apple Mail is using anywhere between 50% and 120% of cpu usage, that does not seem normal or correct? Maybe a bug in there? Or just need to go to all outlook?

Something's amiss.

I find Mail to be very low impact.

Looking at mine right now (mail's been up in background all day) it's ranging from 0.1 to 0.6% CPU - I have it configured with six accounts - iCloud, 2 gmail, 3 microsoft exchange

 

[morg0052]

I will monitor that for sure, for now I just used outlook for my exchange and my gmail and has calmed things way down. Will see, but working great with no fans!

 

[morg0052]

I have figured out that the fans and temps really don't like Slack calls, but other than that things have been working much better, very to no fan noise running the 5k display and does a really nice job actually. One thing I would wonder is if the i3 would run the display just as well and maybe not get as hot? But I'm guessing the i3 chip may not run the display as well....

 

[mr_jomo]

Went back after the new macos update and re-tested on my LG ultrafine 5K in clamshell mode.

Fan was less active and much less aggressively so. Tested with both Safari and Microsoft Edge, 1080p youtube, 4-5 office 365 tabs and a couple of office apps all running at the same time.

Think the setup went from unusable to an acceptable desktop replacement with the new thermal and fan performance.

 

[hungryghosty]

Went back after the new macos update and re-tested on my LG ultrafine 5K in clamshell mode.

How does it run with the laptop open and using it's keyboard/trackpad when connected to an external monitor?

Does that increase the fan noise noticeably over it running in clamshell mode?