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Why does Studio M1 Max has this huge fan?

F

Freida

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Original poster
Oct 22, 2010
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Guys, do you know why we have such a huge fan for the M1 Max when in Macbook Pro its way smaller?
I could maybe understand for Ultra but Apple said that Ultra has even better cooling (copper vs aluminium).

Is it the PSU that is making it worse and hence the fan?
 
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Well, I hope this design has a lot of TDP buffer (unlike the trashcan) so we can have this as silent machines and the design will work. I would prefer the PSU outside of this unit so it could be a touch shorter (also less heat) but I will see when I have it in hands :)
 
Freida said:
Well, I hope this design has a lot of TDP buffer (unlike the trashcan) so we can have this as silent machines and the design will work. I would prefer the PSU outside of this unit so it could be a touch shorter (also less heat) but I will see when I have it in hands :)
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Thermal mass is the key. If the CPU heatsink has a lot of thermal mass, the fan doesn't have to turn on at all for short bursts of processing, and only needs to kick in on a long term job.

One of the things that drives me nuts about my iMac 27 is that the fans start spinning within a few seconds of starting up any kind of CPU heavy job. They didn't use much thermal mass in the heatsinks and it shows. I think that's why the Mac Studio is so bulky; I bet a decent proportion of that height is a big block of metal for thermal mass.

And please, no external power supplies. I was so pleased to see a standard "mickey mouse" power inlet on the Mac Studio. External power supplies are a pain in the ass for cable routing.
 
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I would hope so.
Ideally, I want Mac Studio to be turned on 24/7 with rendering and still be fairly quiet.
I won't be using it as such but I would love to know that its build to this so when I decide to render my short movie and it will take 20-30 days straight I want to know that I won't burn my computer to the ground.

I've used the M1 Pro MBP for few weeks and I was so impressed how silent the machine is. I don't think I've heard the fans once.

I also hope, that Unreal Engine will work well once optimised and that my purchase of the M1 Max will be fine :)

I don't mind the power brick outside as I still use 15" MBP 2017 that has the adapter and it never bothered me. So I would prefer it out but I understand your point. Maybe the difference wouldn't be so big so in that case its fine as is :)



zorinlynx said:
Thermal mass is the key. If the CPU heatsink has a lot of thermal mass, the fan doesn't have to turn on at all for short bursts of processing, and only needs to kick in on a long term job.

One of the things that drives me nuts about my iMac 27 is that the fans start spinning within a few seconds of starting up any kind of CPU heavy job. They didn't use much thermal mass in the heatsinks and it shows. I think that's why the Mac Studio is so bulky; I bet a decent proportion of that height is a big block of metal for thermal mass.

And please, no external power supplies. I was so pleased to see a standard "mickey mouse" power inlet on the Mac Studio. External power supplies are a pain in the ass for cable routing.
Click to expand...
 
Also the M1 Max in the MacBook Pros runs at 46 Watts. But in Apples performance comparison diagrams the M1 did run at 60 Watts. That would mean it would be able use 30% more energy and would also be able to get around 30% hotter. To make that possible you need a more capable cooling system.
 
Does that translate to M1 Max being faster in Mac Studio than in MBP?

Juuro said:
Also the M1 Max in the MacBook Pros runs at 46 Watts. But in Apples performance comparison diagrams the M1 did run at 60 Watts. That would mean it would be able use 30% more energy and would also be able to get around 30% hotter. To make that possible you need a more capable cooling system.
Click to expand...
 
Freida said:
Does that translate to M1 Max being faster in Mac Studio than in MBP?
Click to expand...
It should. But probably not 30% faster. But we have to wait for the first deliveries if it actually is able to run at 60 Watts or if Apple made a mistake on their diagram (I doubt it).
 
Freida said:
Does that translate to M1 Max being faster in Mac Studio than in MBP?
Click to expand...

Sure it does. It's a word play, something that Apple loves to do. Energy Efficiency isn't the same thing of Thermal Efficiency.

I suspects that the CPU core could run as cold as 14MBP, but the RAM and SSD could spread a lot of heat, much more than in 14MBP. One would have longer peak speed reads from SSD in Mac Studio and RAM will run faster too.


In the below image from Apple's site you can see how huge are the PSU components at the bottom of the computer. They will generate a lot of heat.
Screen Shot 2022-03-11 at 15.23.34.png

For comparision purposes, the actual Macpro uses a 1200W PSU. As stated before, MacStudio will use a 370W one. Below image shows iFixit's teardown of Mac Pro. The black thing being pulled off is the 1200w PSU.

Screen Shot 2022-03-11 at 15.29.49.png
Screen Shot 2022-03-11 at 15.38.17.png
 
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Freida said:
Does that translate to M1 Max being faster in Mac Studio than in MBP?
Click to expand...

Been watching the new benchmarks as they have been leaking in on geekbench.

M1 max on the 16" gives ~12232 while the M1 max in the studio is ~12500. There are only three Studio M1 Max benchmark data drops right now.

So is the giant heat sink and fans so we can run continuously without throttling? The laptops cap at 46 watts but the charts for the studio showed 60. Where is that extra power going to? GPU cores?


-d
 
Yeah, wonder about this too. The fact that half of the machine is heat management system is something that I'm not a fan off (no pun intended) but I hope that in return we get silent machine even when under heavy load.
 
Freida said:
Yeah, wonder about this too. The fact that half of the machine is heat management system is something that I'm not a fan off (no pun intended) but I hope that in return we get silent machine even when under heavy load.
Click to expand...
If you disregard the battery every Mac except the Mac Pro maybe it half heat management. See the new MacBook Pros for example: https://de.ifixit.com/News/54122/macbook-pro-2021-teardown
 
dugbug said:
Been watching the new benchmarks as they have been leaking in on geekbench.

M1 max on the 16" gives ~12232 while the M1 max in the studio is ~12500. There are only three Studio M1 Max benchmark data drops right now.

So is the giant heat sink and fans so we can run continuously without throttling? The laptops cap at 46 watts but the charts for the studio showed 60. Where is that extra power going to? GPU cores?


-d
Click to expand...

Where did you see these on Geekbench? Searched yesterday and just now again and can’t see anything for the Studio
 
Boil said:
2019 Intel Mac Pro (aka CheeseGrater 2.0) has a 1.4kW PSU...
Click to expand...
That’s correct. PSU output varies according input.

While using 230V input the output will stay around 1400W.

Using in an 127 outlet it will perform 1200w.

When in 100v the output will be 1180w.

For comparison purposes is common use the 110v value.
 
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