Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MacBook Pro with i9 chip is throttled due to thermal issues, claims YouTuber

macrumors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 413 posts

Re: MacBook Pro with i9 chip is throttled due to thermal issues, claims YouTuber

#371

Post by AstralStorm »

wtallis wrote: post #285
gaius wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect the GPU generates heat as well. Which is why all the interest in external enclosures. This entire thread is baffling to me. Everyone rushing to justify buying a new high performance laptop which they don’t mind throttling because they never needed the performance in the first place??

> Everyone rushing to justify buying a new high performance laptop which they don’t mind throttling because they never needed the performance in the first place?? Time scale is relevant. I want interactive tasks to be faster. I won't notice a 5% improvement in a job that takes long enough for a coffee break, but I will appreciate if more short tasks can cross the threshold of being indistinguishable from instantaneou…

We're talking 100% improvement here. This could be reducing a render from an hour to 20 minutes, a qualitative difference.

Re: MacBook Pro with i9 chip is throttled due to thermal issues, claims YouTuber

#372

Post by m_fayer »

spatular wrote: post #354
m_fayer wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine is the 9360 with the i7-8550U. In high performance mode, it's a hair drier. In balanced, the fan is a constant annoying whine if I have, for example, Webpack in watch mode, or am typing code quickly and keeping the IDE's language service active, or if any browser tab has any active JS at all. Basically if the CPU is at a reasonable speed and at 20% load, constant fan noise. It's quiet if I have it in "silent" mo…

I have 9360 with i5-7200U. I've just checked, fan kicks in after 90 seconds of sha1sum /dev/zero and stays always on lowest RPMs. 25C ambient. With 50% core load at 3.1GHz it stays silent most of the time...

50% at 3.1GHZ would make for one noisy experience here. Either mine's a lemon, or, more likely, there's no way to get a CPU like the i7-8550U into such a small case without causing thermal issues.

Re: MacBook Pro with i9 chip is throttled due to thermal issues, claims YouTuber

#373

Post by opencl »

izacus wrote: post #357
opencl wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think this? Lots of laptops have severe throttling issues and the thin-and-light trend of the last few years has not really helped the situation but there are certainly laptops out there that have adequate cooling systems and do not thermally throttle. I was kind of shocked when I got the original Thinkpad X1C (14" screen and weighs 3lb) that it maintained 100% boost clock with no throttling over the e…

Take the Intel's CPU frequency tool, run compilation on your MacBook and see how the clock gets locked to < 2GHz (exact frequency dependent on CPU you have) after the CPU temperature reaches a barrier (usually around 80C).

I don't have a Macbook? I have a Thinkpad that remains at 100% of the 2.6Ghz max turbo clock indefinitely at ~60C because it has a good cooling solution.

Notebookcheck reviewed the i7 version which is clocked higher than mine. Max boost is 3Ghz and in their tests it maintains 2.8Ghz running Prime95, drops to 2Ghz while running simultaneous CPU and GPU stress tests.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Carb...

Re: MacBook Pro with i9 chip is throttled due to thermal issues, claims YouTuber

#374

Post by mrsteveman1 »

The 2018 MacBook Pro having thermal issues doesn't surprise me after seeing what my 2015 model does under load, but it's really disappointing since I've been anxiously waiting for Apple to release new laptops.

This 2015 MacBook Pro will avoid turning the fan on at any cost. I frequently watch the CPU package heat up to about 190F while the fan is still at 0RPM.

Further, the SMC chip and/or kernel are set to use fairly slow fan speeds compared to the amount of heat being produced, so even when it does come on, the system remains hotter than necessary.

But, here's the major problem: it's also become clear that there is a thermal window where the system is hot enough to cause it to throttle itself, perhaps somewhere between 140F and 180F, but not hot enough for the SMC to turn the fan on fast enough or at all, even though it could and should.

So in addition to being really hot and not using the fan to get the heat away from your lap, it gets slow at the same time, right when it's being used. The system becomes faster soon after the fan is turned up to the max.

And to top it off, there appear to be two different throttling mechanisms, the CPU speed can adjust up or down (you can see this with the Intel Power Gadget), and Apple has some kernel system that will use CPU cycles for idling instead of scheduling threads that are waiting, which reduces overall CPU usage, and therefore also heat production.

All combined, it looks like the system is constantly bouncing between ramping up the CPU frequency to handle load, then wasting some of the additional CPU time idling to avoid turning the fan on, then turning the fan on just long enough to get the heat down before turning the fan back off again, and repeat.

Re: MacBook Pro with i9 chip is throttled due to thermal issues, claims YouTuber

#376

Post by earenndil »

saas_co_de wrote: post #193
earenndil wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'intel upgrade treadmill' consists of reducing transistor size and upping clock; the former of which reduces thermal issues, and the latter of which increases them.

> consists of reducing transistor size It used to. The problem here is that they have not been able to ship next gen chips and so they started shipping a 6-core chip on the same process as the old 4-core, and that doesn't work so well.

No one has been able to reduce transistor size as easily as they used to.

Re: MacBook Pro with i9 chip is throttled due to thermal issues, claims YouTuber

#377

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

runjake wrote: post #346
bischofs wrote: post #328

At this point, people in the Mac hardware engineering leadership need to start submitting their resignations or being forced out. This kind of sloppy engineering and lack of product focus is the antithesis of what Apple has stood for. If I were Tim Cook I would fire Dan Riccio, and then resign myself and hand the company over to someone who cares about products and not supply chain optimization. Also the whole execut…

Why immediately jump to firing Dan Riccio? He was in charge during the glory days of Apple design. Instead, I'd probably begin by taking a look at at Tim Cook and Jony Ive's input and approach to product design. It shouldn't be hard. Look for the people championing the "go thinner, lighter!" "form over function" cause and act accordingly.

I don't think there has ever been a macbook pro that I can safely call a mobile workstation: that is to run for long periods of time with no thermal throttling and no burning chassis. Every time I see apple further thinning the chassis I shrug because no matter how much more efficient intel can make their cpus at idle or how fast the system races to idle sustained loads remain the same( 35 watts) and apple taking more and more of the tiny headroom available.

Re: MacBook Pro with i9 chip is throttled due to thermal issues, claims YouTuber

#378

Post by wmeredith »

kalleboo wrote: post #33

It's summer now and as soon as I plug my MacBook Pro 2017 in to charge, it starts throttling itself due to the heat of the charging battery. Same thing happened to the 2012 I had before. These things just don't have adequate cooling.

But they’re so thin!

Re: MacBook Pro with i9 chip is throttled due to thermal issues, claims YouTuber

#379

Post by LyndsySimon »

daemin wrote: post #234
reitzensteinm wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 15" laptop's body could easily be absorbing 75 watts of heat from the sun, equivalent to running both the CPU and GPU of a MacBook Pro pegged at 100%. I think throttling in this scenario is a reasonable tradeoff, much more so than overengineering the cooling solution to handle it and thereby increasing cost, weight and bulk. Sit in the shade.

Isn't the operating temperature of a mac laptop max out at something like 35c ? That's woefully low for anywhere it gets hot, like Australia for example. It basically means that on a hot day in summer you cannot use your laptop unless you're indoors in air conditioned comfort. EDIT: Yes, I checked, the MacBook Air has an operating temperature of 10-35c and a storage temperature of -25-45c, which means that it's techn…

35ºC == 95ºF - I'm at the upper end of that range sometimes, but not exceeding it.

I typically work from a hammock, in the shade, until it gets to 90-95ºF. The throttling happens even when the temperature is in the range of 80-85ºF and CPU load make it much worse. It's not uncommon for me to have to seek air conditioning if I'm running a large test suite or rebuilding docker containers, else my machine throttles to the point that I can't even use Safari.

I've never had this problem with any other laptop I've owned, including previous generations of MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

Re: MacBook Pro with i9 chip is throttled due to thermal issues, claims YouTuber

#380

Post by LyndsySimon »

coldtea wrote: post #211
LyndsySimon wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t think it’s unreasonable that a laptop should work in daylight?

I think it's unreasonable that a laptop should work at all -- knowing the myriads of components and software that makes it work and has all kinds of complexity. As for the daylight, the sun is not the same as daylight. Devices have tolerances for heat, tropical heat in Miami is not the same as daylight in Chicago.

I'm in the middle - northern Arkansas.

To be clear, I don't make a habit of working in direct sunlight. Screen glare makes that impractical, even if the temperature warrants it. I do generally work from a hammock in the shade, and I deal with thermal issues constantly.

Even in the shade, at around 85ºF, I find that I start throttling noticeably when I run large test suites, recreate complex python environments, or build docker images. I keep a close eye on my system's sensor temps through iStat Menus, and try to tailor my laptop's workload around it. For example - I use Slack on my iPhone or iPad instead of on my laptop, and keep Safari closed unless I'm actively testing something in it.

Still, it seems like my machine throttles to uselessness right around noon. That's when my battery hits 20% or so unless I've been plugged in to my external battery, and about the time the temperature hits 85-90ºF.

Post reply on HN