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An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

fanfan.rambo.codes

21–30 of 454 posts

Re: An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

#23

This is funny, but I prefer my computers silent. Semi-related: I can hear the inductors on my NVIDIA GPU, which is somewhat useful. When I am training deep learning models, the coil whine follows very regular patterns. Also, the pattern changes between training and validation. So, I can literally hear when an epoch is done. (Of course, TensorBoard for the real monitoring.)

Do you do anything special for cooling the GPUs? I mounted a giant CPU heatsink to my gtx 1080, and it still has to turn on the fans when running ML workloads.

Re: An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

#25
Pre M1, I've always preferred a PC.

When I'm using a laptop, especially doing real work, they heat up, the fans go crazy, the laptop is hot to the touch and everything slows down.

It almost makes you anxious. You're wondering if it's about to crash or go on fire.

I've always kept a Desktop PC on the go for this reason, a well cooled desktop just doesn't have these issues. With a laptop, I always feel like I'm compromising a bit.

I got an M1 Macbook Pro recently and it just doesn't have these issues, I fire up my whole dev environment and get busy, and it's still quiet and (mostly) cool, and I can't notice anything slowing down.

I don't care so much about the architecture differences, x64 vs ARM etc, but the fact that I can finally use a laptop like a desktop is massive.

Re: An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

#28

No troll, the fan shutting off was how I knew my app had compiled and I could start debugging. With the M1, I now have to check the cpu usage history occasionally.

Honestly I believe that as developers we don't use audible feedback enough in our tooling.

Imagine diagnosing your app health like you could diagnose your connection speed of a dial-up modem.

Re: An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

#30

No troll, the fan shutting off was how I knew my app had compiled and I could start debugging. With the M1, I now have to check the cpu usage history occasionally.

jesus wept. are your builds that slow, or your inability to add notifications that real?

not sure if programmer, or just troll...

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