Macs are SLOWER than PCs. Here’s why.

[maflynn]

My anecdotal experience suggests that the biggest factor is not paste application, but paste quality. Better paste = lower temps.

Yes, and that's the point I was making, I think the other member missed what I was trying to say. That's one video, I came across other videos as well. The point is, that people have complained about how poor a company applied the thermal paste, but in the end it has very little impact on the heat. More likely, is the quality of the thermal paste, manufacturers typically do not use premium thermal paste, but those who go through the effort of re-pasting will get the best that money can buy.

 

[blackcypher]

My anecdotal experience suggests that the biggest factor is not paste application, but paste quality. Better paste = lower temps.

I think I can fairly agree with that. Not as a rule, but more often true than not.

 

[pshufd]

I think I can fairly agree with that. Not as a rule, but more often true than not.

One of the high end Windows laptops that I looked at had an option for better quality thermal paste.

 

[blackcypher]

One of the high end Windows laptops that I looked at had an option for better quality thermal paste.

While I think that's a good thing, thermal paste as a whole isn't something any company should cut corners on. As Linus pointed out, CPU manufacturers are cramming in more stuff like cores and heat generation is going to naturally go upwards.

While I'm not saying they should engage in using electrically conductive paste, there are other reasonably decent alternatives that perform close enough and aren't corrosive towards certain kinds of metals that shouldn't break the bank, and is fairly cheap from a per-application basis.

The rest can be invested into the actual heatsinks themselves. For example Razer markets their Vapor Cooling Chamber as something positive. Does it really work? Is it just hype? How does it compare to not using it? It's hard to know for certain. But I do appreciate the company for at least trying new ideas.

 

[ikir]

I know I'll get a lot of push back on the video, after all I am posting this here at MacRumors - an apple fan site.

I'm sure I'll see complaints of click bait, windows fanboyism, since Linus is entrenched in the windows world. Yet, This topic is more about the MBP and its cooling and performance then about windows machines hence the reason its in the MBP forum.

With that said, I agree with a number of his points.

Long term health of the components and logic board is questionable in my opinion. Yes the CPU is rated at 100c, but that doesn't mean it should consistently be near that temp.

Many other companies have designed cooling solutions to accommodate the hotter running CPUs.

the MBP quickly approaches 100c and where as many other windows machines run much cooler

Apple's cooling profile is more designed to not have the fans running for as long as possible instead of improving performance.

I know of at least one member here at MR, that has stuggled to find a MBP replacement in the windows world that mimicked Apple's fan profile. He hates fan noise and wants a PC that works like a mac. I'm not knocking him, but I think Apple is largely alone with the fan profile skewed towards quiet instead of cool and faster.

Just trolling. Macs are fast thanks to lighter OS, super fast SSD (they had PCIe SSD long before it was a thing), faster Thunderbolt 3, great overall specs compared to most PCs, Metal and other specs makes the Macs fast even when they age. I work for a big company full of slow PCs and I also work as a freelance Mac expert, I can confirm that most Macs, if the user is not an idiot are longstanding machines, fast even after years.

 

[pshufd]

Just trolling. Macs are fast thanks to lighter OS, super fast SSD (they had PCIe SSD long before it was a thing), faster Thunderbolt 3, great overall specs compared to most PCs, Metal and other specs makes the Macs fast even when they age. I work for a big company full of slow PCs and I also work as a freelance Mac expert, I can confirm that most Macs, if the user is not an idiot are longstanding machines, fast even after years.

It depends on what you're doing. If you're doing compute-intensive processing using hand-coded assembler, then the OS really doesn't matter very much. But that's working close to the metal.

If you want really high-performance computing, look at Exadata.

My son does Genomic Pipeline Processing and the system that they have is a big Dell server. It's got a ton of storage, RAM and SSD. I don't think that there are any Apple systems close to the processing power of their server. They do use MacBook Pros, though, to develop software, systems and to run their pipelines.

They use Windows, Linux and macOS which is why they hand out Macs. The other operating systems can run under BootCamp or as VMs.

 

[cram501]

Just trolling.

You can watch the video and easily verify what he is explaining is true. There is no hidden magic and hand waving involved. It is an aspect of how Apple controls the fans and the temperature. A lot of people like the delay in the fans ramping up and considering the minimal space in a MBP, they maximize what they can. I didn't view it as a negative.

I work for a big company full of slow PCs and I also work as a freelance Mac expert, I can confirm that most Macs, if the user is not an idiot are longstanding machines, fast even after years.

If the PCs are slow in your big company, that blame should be placed on the company for what they purchased and how they configure them. Way too many people blame a poor configuration or hardware choices on the operating systems.

You can say the same thing for PCs: "I can confirm that most PCs, if the user is not an idiot are longstanding machines, fast even after years.". There is nothing magical about it as long as you configure your hardware properly. Some PCs and Macs have poor hardware and will never be fast (slow spinning disks, slow/minimal memory, etc...).

MacOs, Windows, Linux, MS-DOS... they are all just a tool and will all operate well if maintained and configured properly as long as the hardware lasts.