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Bugstar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 16, 2018
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Hi,

I just received my 2018 MacBook Pro i7 Model and highly regret it. Even though I'm not a power user I do use Parallels with a Windows 10 VM from time to time, but mostly use the device as a regular office workhorse.

My issue is, that the i7 picks up heat very quickly. Already the boot up sequence loading some minor background services (little snitch firewall, cloud sync, etc) causes the CPU to spike to 100°C and kicks the fan off within these 20s ish sequence.

Using Windows 10 with a running task like a system update under Paralles causes the CPU to run at 100°C average, causing tremendous fan noise. Btw, the CPU load is at just around 50% causing this temperature.

If I compare it to another old MacBook Air, there is no - felt - performance gain by i7, but a lot of heat and noise.

Since I can return it, is it worth to go with the i5 instead or does it suffer the same design issues?

Regards,
Bugstar
 
I'd definitely return it and get something less power-hungry if I were that concerned with heat generation for said usage. i5 is an option to consider, and if that doesn't fare much better I'd wait for the new Air.
 
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I'm still curious wether this is a i7 CPU issue and the i5 MacBook Pro won't have it, since this is my 3rd MacBook Pro in a row and I always appreciated the performance even for regular office use cases incl. some use of Parallels etc.

My previous (2nd) MacBook Pro was an i5, too. I do recall having some issues with the i7 in my 1st MacBook Pro a couple years ago. Therefore my hope would be, that the 2018 MacBook Pro with the i5 could solve the temp/fan issues?

Does anyone have the i5 in it's MacBook Pro and can share some experiences with heat/temp as a smal power user?

Regards,
Bugstar
 
Just did some research. The i7 has according some HW-review webpages a significant higher temperature increase due to its 6 cores. Whereas the i5 has 4 cores and slowly reaches similar temperature. Due to the 4 cores the i5 "Coffee Lake" has about similar performance results then previous i7.

Still wondering whether the i5 will run that quickly hot as the new i7 does or previous i7 did, too!?
 
Just did some research. The i7 has according some HW-review webpages a significant higher temperature increase due to its 6 cores. Whereas the i5 has 4 cores and slowly reaches similar temperature. Due to the 4 cores the i5 "Coffee Lake" has about similar performance results then previous i7.

Still wondering whether the i5 will run that quickly hot as the new i7 does or previous i7 did, too!?

You're misinformed. The i7 inside the 13" MBP has 4 cores only while the i7 in the 15" has 6 cores. There is no i5 CPU in the 15" model BTW. I would highly guess that the i5 is just as hot as the i7 due to having the same amount of cores and TDP
 
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I just received my 2018 MacBook Pro i7 Model and highly regret it. Even though I'm not a power user I do use Parallels with a Windows 10 VM from time to time, but mostly use the device as a regular office workhorse.

This has been normal on the 2013 rMBP i7 Macbook as well..
Even my work 2018" 13" i5 reaches these temp during boot and under load. You'll likely get similar results with the 13" and Parallels too..

If you're concerned about 50% and heat, use something like Turbo Boost Switcher to disable Turbo Boost.
Personally I've been using that tool ever since the 2011 Macs to keep fan noise and heat down in every day use. I manually switch it on for certain tasks like video rendering to speed it up a few secs.
 
A little confused, what system do you have now, 13" or 15"? And by "go with the i5" are you saying the 2018 MacBook Pro 13" which comes with an i5 quad core instead of a 13" MBP with i7? Or some other i5 based systems like an Air? The 2018 15" MacBook Pro only come with 6-core i7 and i9 processors.
 
Hi,

I just received my 2018 MacBook Pro i7 Model and highly regret it. Even though I'm not a power user I do use Parallels with a Windows 10 VM from time to time, but mostly use the device as a regular office workhorse.

My issue is, that the i7 picks up heat very quickly. Already the boot up sequence loading some minor background services (little snitch firewall, cloud sync, etc) causes the CPU to spike to 100°C and kicks the fan off within these 20s ish sequence.

Using Windows 10 with a running task like a system update under Paralles causes the CPU to run at 100°C average, causing tremendous fan noise. Btw, the CPU load is at just around 50% causing this temperature.

If I compare it to another old MacBook Air, there is no - felt - performance gain by i7, but a lot of heat and noise.

Since I can return it, is it worth to go with the i5 instead or does it suffer the same design issues?

Regards,
Bugstar

Well, I bought MBP 13" with i5 without touchbar one year ago. I heavy user, I do programming on (project compiling and so on) it and time to time play Civilization 6, the performance is perfect. Temperature is acceptable, even if it uses 100% of CPU. Not more than 80°C ON THE CORE.

The thing is that MPB 13" i5/i7 without touch bar has only two core processor and with touchbar has quad core processors. That's why in first case on fan and second two.

The difference between that two processors (i5/i7) is minimal, difference only in battery life. I do recommend to my friends buy i5 version.
 
I just got the 13" MBP i5, and I'll say you should *definitely* have gone with the i5. Whether it's worth it now to switch, I can't tell you. But I can tell you that the i5 and the i7 are the same chip, with only minor differences in frequency and cache. You can detect a performance difference in benchmarks, but in any normal workflow you can't really perceive or benefit from the difference. (and any workflow that *can* benefit from the difference, shouldn't be run on a laptop in the first place)

The i5 still throttles though, but possibly not enough to have much of an impact on performance. And I suspect you could take it away completely with a fan control program, but I haven't tested it yet. But it only throttles under heavy load. When I do office tasks or other lighter things, it's perfectly cool and quiet. Seriously though, if that's your workload you shouldn't really worry about throttling at all. The only thing is that you've paid extra for zero performance gain. That's a reasonable concern, throttling really isn't.
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A little confused, what system do you have now, 13" or 15"? And by "go with the i5" are you saying the 2018 MacBook Pro 13" which comes with an i5 quad core instead of a 13" MBP with i7? Or some other i5 based systems like an Air? The 2018 15" MacBook Pro only come with 6-core i7 and i9 processors.
There's no 2018 15" i5 model, so you can rest your confusion.
 
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