Mac M4's and fan noise - yikes!

he's right - all that power equates to heat and the heat has to go somewhere

edit:  I've noticed that my new Dell XPS 8960 sometimes revs up the fans but so far it has only been when I start zipping up old projects (for archiving, so they take up less space).  I have not noticed it yet when tracking or mixing so that's good.  My previous Dell XPS 8940 was always dead silent.  The difference is mainly in the CPU. the 8940 had an i5-11400 which was 14nm process and 65W.  For the 8960, I've got the i5-14600 and it is still base 65W, it can "turbo" up to 154W.  The CPU technology also shrunk to half the size (it is the "Intel 7" aka 7nm process) so getting it all cooled is much more challenging.  DDR5 memory (and I've only got 16GB) also runs hotter.  But this is one of the reasons I don't go for the  top of the heap - not to mention the current i7 and i9 CPUs have had some reported issues (that are supposedly fixed by BIOS updates but that usually means  some kind of performance compromise!)...     I don't need a fancy graphics card since it's just Pro Tools.

The other physics part of this is..

You need surface area to radiate heat, and you need airflow to do it more effectively.

Since the boxes on these are really small, your surface area is constrained so you need to move more air to have effective heat removal.

The obvious answer would be to have a large heatsink and a large fan that turns fairly slowly. That would be as effective as a smaller heatsink and fan turning much faster but a lot quieter.

That's an M2 these are M4's!

I want an Apple laptop - I have a monster powerful (silent water cooled) PC workstation in my studio to run Cubase 14.

Macbook are finally becoming really powerful with the M4 and now here comes the inevitable heat!

I haven't bought it yet - re read my post

No probs with my m4 mini.

I’m just doing my regular logic sessions: 30 plus tracks, busses, various 2 nd party plugs, 3-6 vi and mastering plugs: get’s the job done: not aware of fans at all.

I think fan noise is way less of a big deal with a Mini than with a laptop. Even a little fan noise is very annoying on a laptop if you're holding it, well... on your lap. But a Mac Mini on or under a desk? I feel like it would have to be pretty darn loud before it became an issue.

kcatthedog one question, I can't remember what model you got. A YouTube link you shared a while ago said the fan noise wasn't an issue but even in that video they mentioned that the M4 Pro is much louder than vanilla M4. I mean... who knows what that even means though. Much louder than virtually silent still isn't that loud.

I look at those other videos on fan noise and thermal throttling and it's like... in what use case are you running at 100% CPU for 20 minutes? Bit coin mining? Ok, maybe rendering. So do you need your machine to be silent when you are rendering large animations or mining for crypto currency?

Yes, that's true of my water cooled PC desktop - it's under the desk and that makes it virtually silent from my sitting position.

But I really want a laptop  - it will be way more versatile and useful to me.

May I should split the money and get a Mac Mini and a Mac book Air? .... but then both wouldn't be as powerful as one really powerful Mac Book Pro.

I have had a 2012 mbp i7, still run it and I was aware of its fans coming on occasionally.

I had an m1 mini for about two years, 2 feet away on my table top: never heard the fans.

I now have an m4 mini, been running at about 2 weeks, also two feet away: never heard the fans yet.

I understand the concern and the logic of more work means more heat, but it all comes down to efficiency of design.

Apple has a great return policy, buy the pro and see if you can get it to fall over and if/when fan comes on ?


Real your world work is much better then internet speculation!

attaboy!!

I would but now Apple has all my money until I’ve saved up again

What would make sense, so it probably won’t happen is Sonnet should build an expansion chassis for a naked Mini.

I say this every time someone complains about cooling noise, it’s not just the fan, you also are dealing with the resonances of the chassis & anything else in there!