My 2019 MacBook Pro gets HOT and the fan runs 12+ hours a day!

[Hieveryone]

I downloaded a software program that gives me real time information in graphs and charts, and at the same time I stream 5 live stations (mostly news), as well a couple web pages that push live information in real time, and of course browsing Twitter, Facebook, forums, YouTube, and so on

I do this for AT LEAST 12 hours a day and the fan runs the whole time

Is this ok?

 

[Kung gu]

yes, its OK. It would happen on any other laptop as well. Remember, ur macbook fans up to dispel the heat, if it did not ur laptop would be cooked.

 

[leman]

Post an activity monitor CPU tab screenshot, sorted by CPU %.

 

[BluAffiliate]

This is a good thing.

 

[Hieveryone]

This is a good thing.

But overall is it ok for the laptop? To be running it like this?

 

[darwichee90]

I love how everyone is trying to advertise this as a feature, like it´s a good thing and completly ok for a $2000+ laptop.

 

[leman]

I love how everyone is trying to advertise this as a feature, like it´s a good thing and completly ok for a $2000+ laptop.

If he continuously runs CPU-demanding software (from what it sounds), then yes, it’s a feature, and it’s called “working as it’s supposed to”. The price of the computer does not make any difference in this.

 

[jerryk]

I downloaded a software program that gives me real time information in graphs and charts, and at the same time I stream 5 live stations (mostly news), as well a couple web pages that push live information in real time, and of course browsing Twitter, Facebook, forums, YouTube, and so on

I do this for AT LEAST 12 hours a day and the fan runs the whole time

Is this ok?

15" Macbooks Pros run their fans whenever they are turned on. The speed will vary based on the load. When the system is idle the fans run around 2000 rpm and ramp up from there as the needed.

So the fans spinning is normal. If they stop, that is a problem.

 

[Howard2k]

If he continuously runs CPU-demanding software (from what it sounds), then yes, it’s a feature, and it’s called “working as it’s supposed to”. The price of the computer does not make any difference in this.

What about a $2,500 laptop? Or $3,000? How much DO we need to spend to bend the laws of physics?

 

[Hieveryone]

Ok well I understand that it's working correctly with the fans running continuously, but now what I'm asking is that is this ok for the computer to run it like this?

I mean I've never used a computer this hard before

 

[jerryk]

Ok well I understand that it's working correctly with the fans running continuously, but now what I'm asking is that is this ok for the computer to run it like this?

I mean I've never used a computer this hard before

It has been designed to work hard and keep temps under control while under high load.

It not unusual for me to train Neural Network models on my 2018 MBP. The training can run for 2 hours and the whole time the fans are running wide open (approx 4500 rpm) and sounds like a plane taking off. Looking at the curves the system will decrease clock speed to run cooler as needed.

I have been doing this for a year with no ill effects.

 

[Webster's Mac]

The fans run 24/7 at an idle RPM (except for some newer machines...not sure if the 2019 model is one of them). All of the older unibody MBPs run their fans all the time. It's at a near-silent idle speed though. Increasing fan speeds due to load is completely normal. Now if they are running at their maximum speeds all of the time, regardless of load, that could indicate a problem. But if you open more windows or fire up a game and THEN they get loud, that is normal and will not harm the laptop.
[doublepost=1565806751][/doublepost]

I love how everyone is trying to advertise this as a feature, like it´s a good thing and completly ok for a $2000+ laptop.

Because it is.

You can throw as many thousands of dollars as you want at these machines, but nobody...not you, not Apple, not the president, etc can escape physics. Ultra thin laptops with powerful CPUs will run crazy hot and the fans kick in more aggressively to cool them off.

Why do you think gaming laptops are so thick? It's so that they can cool those CPUs/GPUs better But you pay the price in thickness. Thicker laptops with bigger/better fans and much larger heatsinks will cool themselves much better than razor thin ultrabooks (which Macbook Pros are).

 

[Ploki]

These chips are hot as hell.
I bet the 13" would handle that load with ease and not run half as loud. (my experience anyway).

what he described is not such a big load.

comparison:
same Logic Pro project on:
15": fans at 3000rpm
13": fans at 0 rpm

when GPU kicks in on the 15"ers, it becomes worse. there's no way you won't hear fans with an app that activates the discrete gpu.

 

[niray9]

It not unusual for me to train Neural Network models on my 2018 MBP. The training can run for 2 hours and the whole time the fans are running wide open (approx 4500 rpm) and sounds like a plane taking off.

Are you happy with performance+heating/cooling when training Neural Network models on the 2018 MBP?

I recently got the 2018 2.6/16/512, but am not sure if the 32gb makes more sense, however the price delta is almost $680(including taxes) for me for a refurbished one with 32Gig from Applestore(I got a good deal from Costco on the 2018/16gb). So, the value of the 32gb is really poor.

In addition, the GPU is not powerful enough and if deeplearning needs to be done using CUDA the AMD GPU doesn't support that. Also, from Mojave, Nvidia drivers not available if NVIDIA egpu's need to be used, AFAIK.

Thoughts?

 

[jerryk]

Are you happy with performance+heating/cooling when training Neural Network models on the 2018 MBP?

I recently got the 2018 2.6/16/512, but am not sure if the 32gb makes more sense, however the price delta is almost $680(including taxes) for me for a refurbished one with 32Gig from Applestore(I got a good deal from Costco on the 2018/16gb). So, the value of the 32gb is really poor.

In addition, the GPU is not powerful enough and if deeplearning needs to be done using CUDA the AMD GPU doesn't support that. Also, from Mojave, Nvidia drivers not available if NVIDIA egpu's need to be used, AFAIK.

Thoughts?

Not all happy with the performance of the MacBook Pro for machine learning. As you said, Deep Learning needs CUDA/CUDAnn support which is NVidia's proprietary code. And with the bad blood between Apple and NVidia I don't see a Nvidia GPU in a Mac anytime in the near future.

I only use the MBP for training when I am away from my main desktop system which has RTX 2070s in it. With that set up I can often see a 10-15 times performance increase from the MacBook Pro. Another option I use is Colab (online Jupyter Notebook) (colab.research.google.com). They offer GPU or TPU acceleration. There I can see a 3-5 times performance increase from the MacBook Pro on certain models.

 

[niray9]

Not all happy with the performance of the MacBook Pro for machine learning. As you said, Deep Learning needs CUDA/CUDAnn support which is NVidia's proprietary code. And with the bad blood between Apple and NVidia I don't see a Nvidia GPU in a Mac anytime in the near future.

I only use the MBP for training when I am away from my main desktop system which has RTX 2070s in it. With that set up I can often see a 10-15 times performance increase from the MacBook Pro. Another option I use is Colab (online Jupyter Notebook) (colab.research.google.com). They offer GPU or TPU acceleration. There I can see a 3-5 times performance increase from the MacBook Pro on certain models.

Macbook to imac ssh works great(wife has an imac with rx580, much faster gpu, although amd)

Is it easy/(have you tried) to ssh to a nvidia system running linux from mac os terminal?

OR

Is the answer to vnc from mac to a linux machine running nvidia gpu?

 

[jerryk]

Macbook to imac ssh works great(wife has an imac with rx580, much faster gpu, although amd)

Is it easy/(have you tried) to ssh to a nvidia system running linux from mac os terminal?

OR

Is the answer to vnc from mac to a linux machine running nvidia gpu?

Haven't really player around much VNCing into a local linux machine. I just use colab usually (or GCS-Google Cloud Service, Azure, or AWS). It is pretty neat to code and train models from my iPad Pro (with a cloud server). And still better than the MBP locally

 

[terminator-jq]

These chips are hot as hell.
I bet the 13" would handle that load with ease and not run half as loud. (my experience anyway).

what he described is not such a big load.

comparison:
same Logic Pro project on:
15": fans at 3000rpm
13": fans at 0 rpm

when GPU kicks in on the 15"ers, it becomes worse. there's no way you won't hear fans with an app that activates the discrete gpu.

That’s been my experience as well. The 2019 15” is a quick and powerful machine but it does get HOT! I’m coming from a 15” 2017 and my 2019 is noticeably hotter... for the times when I do use my laptop on my lap, the 2019 can get quite uncomfortable to use, whereas my 2017 could be used for quite a while without making my legs too hot.

That being said, it’s a very fast machine and the keyboard is soooooo much better this time.

It will be very interesting to see what Apple does for the next generation MacBook pros. Air flow for sustained performance has taken a major focus in the new Mac Pro and even the new Pro Display. Hopefully that trend will continue with the new laptops.

 

[dasman88]

Found this thread, after searching for some answers to my own concern.

Been using a MBP 13" for nearly 5 years. I'm not doing any big "crunching", so it's more than adequate for my needs.

Just bought a 2019 MBP 15" i9 16GB RAM and 512GB drive. This thing gets HOT, just being turned on and having a web browser window open.

The battery, while doing almost nothing but surfing the web, drains about twice as fast as my 5 year old MBP.

My old MBP, would light the keyboard on boot, making it easy to type in my password when I am sleepy, or have to get up and check my biz in the middle of the night...

My new $2800 MBP (twice the price of my old one) doesn't backlight the keyboard on boot. I have to turn on a damn light to see the keyboard. I mean come on Apple... WTF?

The touchbar - sweet Jesus... what a farce. Keys are much better, and ALREADY mapped, I don't have to "tab" them to open.

I have been using nothing but Mac since 1988...

Yeah, it's fast. It's supposed to be fast for cripes sake! It's an i9!

Sorry for this turning into a rant... but my 5 year old MBP (which is on the fritz, thus, this new machine) is a MUCH better thought out piece of hardware in every way.

The crappy (un)lighted keys thing really pushed me over the edge, after being annoyed AF about how hot this gets just sitting idle. Machine with lighted keys, and I have to turn on a light in a dark room, to take advantage of the backlighted keys. That's just stupid.

Did Apple fire all the good UI people and serious hardware designers?

 

[poorcody]

Are you happy with performance+heating/cooling when training Neural Network models on the 2018 MBP?
...
In addition, the GPU is not powerful enough and if deeplearning needs to be done using CUDA the AMD GPU doesn't support that. Also, from Mojave, Nvidia drivers not available if NVIDIA egpu's need to be used, AFAIK.

Thoughts?

Definitely a problem with using MacBooks... it really is a shame NVIDIA is out and looks to stay out. My solution has been to build a desktop that I VNC into from my MacBook to run NN-models. Actually works out pretty well, as the performance is better than any laptop GPU will give me anyway, and I don't have to tie-up the laptop with long-running processes, and it's easy to upgrade or add GPU cards as needed. For other projects I use the cloud. So not sure I even need NVIDIA locally, although it would be nice to stick with Mac-only software...

 

[mmomega]

But overall is it ok for the laptop? To be running it like this?

I have computers, macs, macbooks, that have been turned on for 10 years this year. Dozens of them.
The new macbook will be fine.
It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. Just allow it to do it.

Out of 72 Macs in the last decade I have had 1 single fan failure.
These machines stay turned on 24/7, are configured to turn back on immediately after a power outage, some are on UPS so they never turn off. Then they are worked Monday-Thursday 7am-8pm.

 

[whg]

My old MBP, would light the keyboard on boot, making it easy to type in my password when I am sleepy, or have to get up and check my biz in the middle of the night...

My new $2800 MBP (twice the price of my old one) doesn't backlight the keyboard on boot. I have to turn on a damn light to see the keyboard. I mean come on Apple... WTF?

Please see this post:

Keyboard backlight on boot up, File Vault and T2 | MacRumors Forumshttps://forums.macrumors.com › ... › MacBook Pro

I suffered the same "no keyboard light for login" as you on my new 2019 MBP 13". I unfortunately had to turn FileVault off to enable the keyboard light from the start. I also consider this a very unfortunate design decision by Apple.

 

[dasman88]

Please see this post:

Keyboard backlight on boot up, File Vault and T2 | MacRumors Forumshttps://forums.macrumors.com › ... › MacBook Pro

I suffered the same "no keyboard light for login" as you on my new 2019 MBP 13". I unfortunately had to turn FileVault off to enable the keyboard light from the start. I also consider this a very unfortunate design decision by Apple.

That worked! THANK YOU!

I would much prefer I didn't have to turn off File Vault... but I am often up in the middle of the night, and screen brightness is already turned down just one click before dark, with Flux on...

I HATE having to turn on the light so my blurry sleepy vision can type out a password.

I have computers, macs, macbooks, that have been turned on for 10 years this year. Dozens of them.
The new macbook will be fine.
It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. Just allow it to do it.

Out of 72 Macs in the last decade I have had 1 single fan failure.
These machines stay turned on 24/7, are configured to turn back on immediately after a power outage, some are on UPS so they never turn off. Then they are worked Monday-Thursday 7am-8pm.

That's fair... I have had a couple MBP fans fail... don't relish ever cracking the case on this generation of MBP for a fan replacement. Now, that said, I will probably need to retire/retask it before a fan dies. I hope, anyway.

 

[dasman88]

UPDATE: HEAT/BATTERY DRAIN PROBLEM--> SOLVED!!

2019 MBP, 16GB - 8 core i9 2.3 Mhz - 512TB SSD
________

Before I went to sleep last night, Battery drained from 100%, to 8% in a little more than 2 hours.

Finally called Apple Support, after waking up and finding my closed 2019 MBP base bezel above the touch bar, too hot to touch, even though the machine was closed tight overnight.

Support tech uncovered what is, IMO, a BUG in Catalina. (..or the NSA being very interested in the contents of my Computer LOL. Waste of tax money as it is.)

In Preferences, in the "Sharing" control panel, "Internet Sharing" was selected and turned "On". None of the devices were selected at all, but sharing turned "On" over Wifi.

DESELECTED "Internet Sharing", and 5 minutes later this machine, which has been hot ALL the time since I bought it, even when just turned on, no apps running, sitting idle, is now cool to the touch.

So, if you are having this issue with a hot current Gen MBP, go to the "Sharing" folder in Preferences, and make sure Internet Sharing is turned off, UNLESS you need to use the MBP as a connection mode for a device with broken WiFi or something

 

[kp98077]

just make sure those keys don't come off !😭