Okay, so, there are a couple of videos
and articles floating around out there,
trashing the new M2 MacBook Pro,
and saying it overheats and thermal throttles.
And at first look, it definitely seems like it,
with some CPU cores
reaching over 100 degrees Celsius.
So, while this new M2 MacBook Pro
certainly does have some issues,
a couple of which I've already covered on this channel,
I wanted to cover this thermal issue
in a little bit more detail.
Does the M2 MacBook Pro thermal throttle
and overheat?
Do you lose performance?
And how might this translate
into the upcoming M2 MacBook Air
that doesn't have a fan?
So, first of all, let's start with the CPU.
I'm going to use a synthetic benchmark here
for consistency,
and TG Pro to monitor temperatures.
First, let's compare with the M1 MacBook Pro.
During Cinebench,
which pushes the CPU cores to their limits,
and typically produces a lot of heat,
the performance cores on the M1 typically hover
around 90 to 95 degrees Celsius,
versus 95 to 99
on the M2,
with some performance cores
consistently hitting 99,
or even over 100 degrees temporarily,
before going back down to around 97.
So, at first glance,
this behavior is consistent with thermal throttling,
right?
I mean, if this was a Windows PC,
typically, you'd get a blue screen of death
when the CPU hits about a 100 degrees Celsius
to prevent damage to the CPU,
but this doesn't tell the whole story here,
so, we need to delve a little bit deeper.
So, I plotted all of this data on a graph,
the Y-axis being degrees Celsius,
and also fan RPMs,
or rotations per minute,
divided by 100,
so it would fit on the same axis.
And the X-axis being time.
In this case, about 10 minutes
for a single Cinebench benchmark to run.
Straight away, you can see the M2 does run hotter
by about 10 degrees Celsius.
And if I overlay the fans on this same graph,
it seems the fans on the M1
are slightly more aggressive,
consistently spinning about 500
to a thousand RPMs higher
than the fans on the M2.
So, to remove this variable,
I manually set the fan RPM of both MacBooks
to the maximum,
which is 7,200 RPM,
and ran Cinebench again.
As both MacBooks
share the exact same chassis cooling system,
and now, fan RPMs,
the only variable is the chips themselves.
So, after running the full Cinebench benchmark,
I noted that the hottest CPU performance core
was around 79 on the M2,
versus, pretty much, the exact same on the M1.
When I plot this data on a graph,
the average CPU temperature on both machines
got nowhere near thermal throttling,
even though the M2 was consistently
about five degrees hotter than the M1.
But what was more interesting
is that their Cinebench scores were exactly the same,
no matter if I was using the default fan curve,
Apple designed themselves,
or if I just manually ramped the fan RPM up
to the maximum.
Okay, so, let's really take this up a level,
and stress both the CPU and the GPU at the same time.
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Okay, so, let's really put some stress
on both the CPU and the GPU this time,
because remember, on the M2,
it has a higher CPU and GPU clock speed,
increased wattage,
and two additional GPU cores,
and all of this results in more heat.
By the way, if you want to see a full performance comparison
between the M1 and M2 MacBook Pro,
make sure you see the video I uploaded previously.
Now, for this CPU and GPU thermal stress test,
I rendered the Barbershop Demo Scene on Blender,
using the GPU,
while also running the Cinebench CPU benchmark.
Now, this is a completely ridiculous
and unrealistic test that you will never run
in real life.
The purpose of this, though,
is just to really stress the components
of the M2 MacBook Pro,
and see what kind of temperatures we can get.
The test itself ran for over 20 minutes,
which is plenty of time to heat up the CPU
and GPU cores to their maximum temperatures.
Again, it seemed like the M2 was more reluctant
to increase fan RPM,
the M1 was consistently 600 to 1000 RPMs higher.
So, once again, I manually set fan RPMs to the max,
and did the same test again.
And this time, I saw pretty much the exact same results
as the CPU-only tests.
The M2 was well under the thermal throttling threshold.
Geez, try and say that quickly,
10 times in a row,
but, again, running noticeably hotter
than the M1.
So, if you look at just these results,
you kind of think to yourself,
where are all these thermal throttling rumors
coming from?
It doesn't really seem,
at first glance, like the M2 MacBook Pro
does thermal throttle.
Well, I have seen videos
where the M2 does seem to get super hot
and thermal throttle,
but only in one very specific scenario,
for example, rendering a Canon 8K RAW timeline
with multiple LUTs applied.
And yes, I was able to replicate this
on my own M2 MacBook Pro,
and I did see some thermal throttling,
the wattage and clock speeds
of the CPU and GPU cores would drop
once the fans were maxed out,
and temperatures were still pushing 100 degrees Celsius.
You can see it in these little peaks and troughs
in the power graph for the CPU and GPU.
That is a good sign
of some thermal throttling taking place.
But this test
is completely unrealistic, right?
I mean, no one in their right mind
is going to be editing,
and also rendering,
raw, 8K Canon footage on any of these devices.
If you look at more realistic workflows,
I couldn't get any of them to thermal throttle.
The performance would be the same,
regardless of, if the fans were using the default fan curve,
and stayed around 4,000 RPM,
or if they were manually maxed out at 7,200 RPM.
Octane X, for example,
where the GPU typically gets quite hot,
didn't throttle.
The Barbershop scene in Blender,
when using both CPU and GPU to render,
didn't throttle.
Even after 30 plus minutes of consistent gaming,
and then running several benchmarks in a row
on top of that,
it still didn't thermal throttle.
Now, I want to stress
that I'm not saying that the M2 MacBook Pro
is a great device,
I'm not defending Apple,
or anything like that,
I'm simply pointing out
that it's not the blazing campfire
that some people have made it out to be.
I mean, let's be honest,
look at the footprint and the size of the chassis,
show me a laptop that can produce this much power,
and not thermal throttle in some situations.
Is it worthy of the Pro name?
Probably not,
but it is still a decent little all-rounder laptop
that really doesn't cost that much
when you compare it to all of its competitors.
So, let's talk about the fan curve,
and the thermal strategy,
Apple seems to have implemented
with their 13-inch Apple,
silicon MacBook Pros in general.
It seems that Apple doesn't really want the fan RPMs
to exceed the 5,000 RPM threshold by too much.
And I can tell you that when the fans
are at 5,000 RPM,
it's really not that bad,
it's not too loud,
it's not too overwhelming,
but once you get to that next threshold
of 7,000 RPM,
that's when you can really start to hear it,
and you can actually,
sometimes, quite easily hear it,
even when you're wearing headphones.
So, I think this is on purpose by Apple,
almost certainly for noise reasons.
They don't want their MacBooks
sounding like they're archnemesis,
a hot and loud Windows computer,
for example, or even an Intel MacBook.
But this is kind of a problem now,
because on the M2,
with the higher CPU and GPU clock speeds,
increased wattage, and additional GPU cores,
all of this results in more heat.
So, instead, Apple seems to be allowing
the actual M2 SoC itself to run hotter
than the M1,
and design the fan curve,
so that it still stays just under where it would start
to thermal throttle,
but while also not producing too much fan noise.
This Venn diagram is a good example.
Apple is very careful
to balance all three of these elements together.
And in my opinion,
the M2 is at the upper limits
of what this chassis can deal with,
while still balancing those three things.
Any hotter,
and you start to drift away from the center.
Now, I'm sure some people might be alarmed
to be seeing such high CPU temperatures
on their MacBook,
and wondering if this can maybe damage
or degrade the laptop in some way over time.
Now, I wouldn't be super worried,
because, I mean,
I doubt you're going to be thrashing
your CPU all day long,
and getting to those temperatures very often.
At all other times,
it runs so cool that the fan doesn't even need to spin.
And if you are going to be rendering all day long,
you're not even the target market of this MacBook,
you're going to have, at the very least,
a 14-inch M1 Pro,
or probably a 16-inch M1 Max MacBook instead.
But if you are still worried,
you can do what pretty much every PC owner
has had to do for the last several decades,
and manually adjust the fan curves.
There are tons of apps out there
that make this super easy,
I've mentioned a couple in this video already,
and I will link them down below.
So, if you are worried about overheating
or decreasing the life of your MacBook,
you can set a custom fan curve to kick in,
and boost those fans to the max RPMs,
when your CPU hits 95 degrees,
for example.
So, this raises the question,
how is the fanless M2 MacBook Air
going to deal with this additional heat?
Well, don't forget,
it will be using an entirely new chassis
with better thermal management,
and even with the M1 MacBook Air,
we didn't really see a massive decrease in performance
when compared to the M1 MacBook Pro.
Plus the M2 MacBook Air base model
has two less GPU cores than the M2 MacBook Pro,
which will naturally result in less heat.
So, my opinion is that the performance gap
between the M2 MacBook Pro and the M2 MacBook Air
will be about the same as the previous M1 generation,
maybe a little bit worse on the M2.
I think the big advantage of the M2 MacBook Air
will be that you get those speeds for short bursts,
and only see the throttling if you're rendering
or really stressing the chip,
which likely doesn't happen too often on an Air.
But, judging by Apple's track record over the years,
who knows?
The M2 MacBook Air could turn out
to be a portable furnace,
for all I know.
We're not going to tell until Apple
actually releases that laptop,
and I buy it, and I get it into the studio,
and start testing it.
But apart from that, guys,
hopefully, you enjoyed this video,
and I'll catch you in the next one.