I'm considering the 24 core M1 Max 14" but watched a review showing it hitting 98 degrees on load with the fans around 5k rpm. Can anyone with this specific model confirm? I'm wondering if that was perhaps just a bad review unit. Any idea how many DB those fans put out at 5k rpm? Thanks
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Thermals / fans on 14" Max 24 core
- Thread starter mario-64
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As above, if you push these machines hard on performance profile they will make noise. Which is fair enough, you have chosen performance over silence.
If you set them to low power mode you lose maybe 10% performance and they're mostly silent with very little noticeable difference in performance.
What I will say is that in normal use the current machines are quieter than any MacBooks I've seen/used/heard in over a decade.
If you set them to low power mode you lose maybe 10% performance and they're mostly silent with very little noticeable difference in performance.
What I will say is that in normal use the current machines are quieter than any MacBooks I've seen/used/heard in over a decade.
Never heard the fans on my 14" M1 Max 24GPU after more than one month using it, 95% of those was on clamshell mode, neither hit those temps even when intensively working, at the top 62-66ºC (sometimes 70's if it's compiling or if I'm gaming directly from it) with some intense processes, with mid/moderate usage it usually stays between 42-52ºC, on light/mild around 38-41ºC. As @jav6454 it would be interesting what kind of load you want to measure and what was the reviewer doing to achieve those temps.
In a nutshell, 14" chassis can be an issue here due to thermal capabilities, but you're gonna find them also with M1 Pro 16GPU, at least from my experience, I got that machine for 2 months, and I've always justified my decision to go with the Pro mainly to thermals and battery. After reading/browsing a lot regarding battery and settled that for equal usage those two should consume practically the same if no extra GPU horse power was involved ... all was left was to try temps ... and I've finally made the swap after one final video in youtube:
- 14" M1 Max 32GPU 64GB on Cinebench (just CPU test) 10-minute run and yes, it was getting to mid 90's
- did same test with my 14" M1 Pro 16GPU 32GB ... same temps, even slightly higher than the Max on the video
Summarizing, after this month, M1 Max 24GPU gave me exact same temps than the M1 Pro 16GPU (if not better ones) and same exact wonderful battery time (if not better again, no kidding) ... only moment when I noticed it was sucking more battery than the Pro was when streaming games from my desktop pc, but this is expected since it was using more that GPU array, temps during this were around mid 50's btw. Of course, gaming directly also made an impact, but again, expected, temps though, were very similar when running Dirt 4 on both (around mid 70's as stated before)
Right now I do have Safari with 12 tabs open, Firefox with 4, Discord opened and a terminal on a remote session with my raspberry Pi, and here you have a screenshot of the temps (computer has been turned on all day, and I was watching twitch streams/youtube videos + coding till 45m ago, so take that into consideration as well)
PS: my room ambient temp these last weeks was between 18º-24ºC to mark a reference point
In a nutshell, 14" chassis can be an issue here due to thermal capabilities, but you're gonna find them also with M1 Pro 16GPU, at least from my experience, I got that machine for 2 months, and I've always justified my decision to go with the Pro mainly to thermals and battery. After reading/browsing a lot regarding battery and settled that for equal usage those two should consume practically the same if no extra GPU horse power was involved ... all was left was to try temps ... and I've finally made the swap after one final video in youtube:
- 14" M1 Max 32GPU 64GB on Cinebench (just CPU test) 10-minute run and yes, it was getting to mid 90's
- did same test with my 14" M1 Pro 16GPU 32GB ... same temps, even slightly higher than the Max on the video
Summarizing, after this month, M1 Max 24GPU gave me exact same temps than the M1 Pro 16GPU (if not better ones) and same exact wonderful battery time (if not better again, no kidding) ... only moment when I noticed it was sucking more battery than the Pro was when streaming games from my desktop pc, but this is expected since it was using more that GPU array, temps during this were around mid 50's btw. Of course, gaming directly also made an impact, but again, expected, temps though, were very similar when running Dirt 4 on both (around mid 70's as stated before)
Right now I do have Safari with 12 tabs open, Firefox with 4, Discord opened and a terminal on a remote session with my raspberry Pi, and here you have a screenshot of the temps (computer has been turned on all day, and I was watching twitch streams/youtube videos + coding till 45m ago, so take that into consideration as well)
PS: my room ambient temp these last weeks was between 18º-24ºC to mark a reference point
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Macs Fan Control (just monitoring, I didn't install the helper to control the fans yet)
You're more than welcome. To be honest with you, I never saw the fans activating till mid 70's-80's were there, and they had to be there for more than a minute for the Mac to kick in its fans. And even so, it wasn't audible, only moment when I heard them was heavy benchmarking or torturing tests being on the 80's-90's (and this was on the Pro, I didn't test this extreme way the M1 Max yet)
Do you do any gaming? If so, how are the thermals and fan noise in that scenario?
Nope, not at the moment, I just did a quick test on Dirt 4 but uninstalled it after 20 mins, I noticed the temps were kinda similar than M1 Pro (around 70's, fans maybe kicked in but weren't audible with the game volume) ... it still didn't happen that I gotta game outside home, and most of the times for gaming outside my desk, only thing I do is streaming via "Steam Remote" from the desktop tower, and in that scenario, temps are always between 50ºC-55ºC (for example, rendering Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p @ 60fps) so the fans never kick in.
The most "stressful" situation I put this machine regarding benchmark is executing 2-3 times in a row Geekbench 5, highest temp showed 70's as well just for a few seconds on the most demanding test, results were also very similar to M1 Pro.
On the other hand I must tell you, I owned a 16" M1 Max 32GPU for a couple of weeks and makes a diff with temps idling/on load, and if you know you're gonna demand high usages on an extended basis (compiling/rendering/exporting more than 50% of your time), I think it's more safe to keep it less warm than possible, for that scenario, in hard usage, the 16" was improving temps 8 to 10ºC to 14", at least with the Cinebench 10-minute stability test, highest temp I saw were 80-82ºC vs 92-95ºC on the M1 Pro 14".
Though that, I don't need high-cpu bursts for extended period of time for my workload, and also, I found I wasn't using the 16" as a laptop as much as I did with the 14", that also took part of the final decision to keep the lil boy, at least for me.
PS: I'm kinda sick regarding temperatures, I've been watercoling all my desktop computers since 2008
I don't think it's available on the AppStore, I always downloaded it from their official page (CrystalIdea)
Remember one thing, once it opens it will ask for the admin password, don't type it in if you don't want to install the extension to control the fan curve, just click "Cancel", then another dialog pops in warning you will be just able to monitor the sensors, click "Monitoring Only" and that's all.
I installed the extension on the M1 Pro and it worked well, still didn't installed on this M1 Max cause default behaviour suits my case, let's see in summer. I've been using this software since many many years ago, used it on my 2010 & 2012 MBP to setup my own fan curve with no issues whatsoever.
It's free but not open source, so that's one thing to consider, even that, I'd consider it a quite safe piece of software if you decide to go ahead with the extension install as well.
Thanks, I have been looking for a suitable replacement for iStats.
I have a 14" MacBook Pro with M1 Max 32-Core GPU. When using the laptop as a laptop and doing day to day stuff the system is around 40℃ - 42℃ and the fans don't even spin up. When using it in clamshell mode with a Studio Display it is usually around 48℃ - 50℃ and the fans are off for the most basic of tasks, but it's not hard to get them to turn on at 2300 RPM.
I did one project that stressed the system to about 65℃, but the fans stayed at 2300 RPM.
I did one project that stressed the system to about 65℃, but the fans stayed at 2300 RPM.