https://axu2.medium.com/solved-by-1440p-hidpi-macbook-pro-16-is-hot-noisy-with-an-external-monitor-f8af19c30f81 Get started Open in app Alex Xu 2 Followers About Sign in Get started 2 Followers About Get started Open in app SOLVED by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16" is HOT & NOISY with an external monitor! Alex Xu Alex Xu 20 hours ago*4 min read TLDR: My Macbook Pro 16" is hot and noisy when connected to a 2560x1440p60 monitor, even when the lid is closed at idle. This article outlines a partial solution that enables silent operation at idle when the lid is closed. The MacBook Pro 16" has a problem. If you connect certain GPU models (specifically the 5300M/5500M) to external monitors with certain resolutions, many users report that their MacBook gets really hot and the fans spin up really loudly. It is documented in this nearly 200 page MacRumors thread: https:// forums.macrumors.com/threads/ 16-is-hot-noisy-with-an-external-monitor.2211747/ And this Hacker News thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id= 22265235 Specifically, many users report extremely loud fans when connected to 2560x1440p60 monitors. The solution to this problem, however, is just rendering at 2x resolution. DISCLAIMER: This article only considers a MacBook Pro 16" with 5300M graphics connected to an external 32 inch 2560x1440p60 display. It may also apply to the 5500M. If you have a different setup, no guarantee this will work, since this is probably a bug with exactly the 2560x1440p60 resolution. Before, when connected to a 32 inch 1440p monitor, my MacBook Pro 16 inch reports 18-20W of power draw from the GPU (Radeon High Side). This is regardless of whether or not the Macbook lid is closed. [1] Just using default settings on a 1440p monitor [1] Results in insane power draw. It doesn't take long for all this extra power to heat up the laptop and cause the fans to spin up, even if the MacBook is idle with nothing else running! But if you force enable HiDPI mode for your external monitor, this is what happens: [1] Now the external monitor is treated as a HiDPI display [1] Now the GPU power draw is only around 5-6W. What exactly is HiDPI mode? Well, it's basically forcing macOS to internally render at 2x resolution. So in the case of a 2560x1440p monitor, macOS is internally rendering at 5120x2880p. You can tell, since the screenshot of the power draw monitoring utility (iStat Menus) is twice as sharp in the second example. Now the MacBook is drawing a much more reasonable 5-6W and stays silent during normal operation, as it should! Now it feels like a Pro machine! Seeing as how it makes no sense that rendering at 2x resolution cause 1/3 of the power draw, this is most likely a GPU driver bug on Apple or AMD's end, and a temporary solution could be force enabling HiDPI mode for 1440p monitors in the next release of macOS Big Sur. Note, these power draw settings only work if you keep the MacBook lid closed. You can force enable HiDPI mode yourself by following the instructions in this GitHub repo: https://github.com/xzhih/ one-key-hidpi When using this script, make sure the MacBook lid is closed. My script run looked like % bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xzhih/one-key-hidpi/master/hidpi.sh)" _ _ _____ _____ _____ _____ | | | | |_ _| | __ \ | __ \ |_ _| | |__| | | | | | | | | |__) | | | | __ | | | | | | | | ___/ | | | | | | _| |_ | |__| | | | _| |_ |_| |_| |_____| |_____/ |_| |_____| ============================================ (1) Enable HIDPI (2) Enable HIDPI (with EDID) (3) Disable HIDPI Enter your choice [1~3]: 1 ------------------------------------- |********** Display Icon ***********| ------------------------------------- (1) iMac (2) MacBook (3) MacBook Pro (4) LG Display (5) Pro Display XDR (6) Do not change Enter your choice [1~6]: 3 ------------------------------------------ |********** resolution config ***********| ------------------------------------------ (1) 1920x1080 Display (2) 1920x1080 Display (use 1424x802, fix underscaled after sleep) (3) 1920x1200 Display (4) 2560x1440 Display (5) 3000x2000 Display (6) Manual input resolution Enter your choice: 4 Enabled, please reboot. Rebooting the logo for the first time will become huge, then it will not be Please note, your MacBook fans may be loud on the initial restart, but will quickly settle down and be silent on every subsequent restart. And once again, this fix only works when the MacBook lid is closed. So welcome to having a silent MacBook when plugged into a monitor now! As it should be! Interestingly enough, setting the scaled resolution to 1080p also seems to have a similar result, but 1080p on a 1440p monitor looks terrible. Found this article helpful? Feel free to buy me a coffee :) Alex Xu Tinkering around with things Follow 66 1 66 66 1 * MacBook Pro * MacBook * Monitor * Apple * Amd More from Alex Xu Follow Tinkering around with things More From Medium 3 Reasons to Replace Safari with Brave Jamie Bullock in Mac O'Clock [1] [1] Mac Apps For The Month Of May Nima Sakhtemani in Mac O'Clock [1] [1] MULTI-CORE PROCESSORS Neel Malwatkar [0] [0] The Three [Possible] Reasons Why Apple Removed The Backlit Apple Logo From MacBooks JuanSC * in Mac O'Clock [0] [0] Best 4k 120Hz Gaming Monitor That You Can Add To Your Setup TechotN in Techotn [1] [1] Apple's New Ad for iPhone Privacy is Totally Brilliant (and Pokes Facebook) Anupam Chugh in The Big Tech [1] [1] Why The Apple Watch Is Not Called iWatch Ghani Mengal in Mac O'Clock [0] [0] How to Use Postman Monitors to Schedule CircleCI Pipelines Hayk Sardaryan in Better Practices [1] [1] About Help Legal Get the Medium app A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store