MacBook Air M3 and MacBook Pro M4

Rainy_diary said:

For anyone having MacBook Air M3 and MacBook Pro M4.

If you opened 100 Raw files with Preview. Does the MacBook Air M3 and MacBook Pro M4 overheating or fan turn on ?

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How would you select 100 files to open with Preview? I selected as many as I could in Finder, maximized to full window size. Thumbnails appear on the left side of Preview, allowing selection to the end of list. M2 Macbook Pro 16 fan never became audible.

Macbook Air does not have a fan. I believe this is true for M1 thru M4. Instead, when the CPU heats up, performance decreases as activity is throttled back.

Rainy_diary said:

My MacBook Pro 2017 8 GB ram with latest Ventura always overheating and fan turn on during opened 100 Raw files. Last month have done repaste and clean fan. Yesterday had fresh install Mac OS.

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Heating and fan noise is typical of Intel. Happens for me during updates and Zoom calls.

fan noise is a thing with the pro as well. Just not as loud as they have very very good fans in them. You can make the macbook air not throttle with the use of a thermal upgrade kit that mounts ontop of the tinfoil cooler plate inside the system. It's very easy to install and then the entire system base is used as it's cooler making it more efficient. If I goto an air for my laptop the cooling upgrade will be the first thing waiting for the macbook arrival.

CAcreeks said:

Rainy_diary said:

For anyone having MacBook Air M3 and MacBook Pro M4.

If you opened 100 Raw files with Preview. Does the MacBook Air M3 and MacBook Pro M4 overheating or fan turn on ?

Click to expand...

How would you select 100 files to open with Preview? I selected as many as I could in Finder, maximized to full window size. Thumbnails appear on the left side of Preview, allowing selection to the end of list. M2 Macbook Pro 16 fan never became audible.

Macbook Air does not have a fan. I believe this is true for M1 thru M4. Instead, when the CPU heats up, performance decreases as activity is throttled back.

CAcreeks said:

My MacBook Pro 2017 8 GB ram with latest Ventura always overheating and fan turn on during opened 100 Raw files. Last month have done repaste and clean fan. Yesterday had fresh install Mac OS.

Click to expand...

Heating and fan noise is typical of Intel. Happens for me during updates and Zoom calls.

Click to expand...

In Finder I setting show file as list then hold Shift key and select how many Raw files to open using touchpad.

Your 2017 MacBook Pro (8GB RAM) is likely struggling due to aging hardware, lower RAM, and higher thermal output. While repasting and a fresh macOS install help, modern MacBooks are far more efficient in handling such tasks.

Rainy_diary said:

Hi all

For anyones have MacBook Air M3 and MacBook Pro M4.

If you opened 100 Raw files with Preview. Does the MacBook Air M3 and MacBook Pro M4 overheating or fan turn on ?

My MacBook Pro 2017 8 GB ram with latest Ventura always overheating and fan turn on during opened 100 Raw files. Last month have done repaste and clean fan. Yesterday had fresh install Mac OS.

Thank

Click to expand...

Overheating and fan noise is mostly due to old hardware. My 2019 16 inch MBP, even though it had 32 GB of ram and an i9 processor, struggled to process lots of RAWs. My recently acquired M4 Pro MacbookPro with 24GB can import over 700 RAWs without breaking a sweat. I haven't heard the fan once since I got it a few weeks ago, and I live in Panama, which is over 80 F every single day.

Rainy_diary said:

Hi all

For anyones have MacBook Air M3 and MacBook Pro M4.

If you opened 100 Raw files with Preview. Does the MacBook Air M3 and MacBook Pro M4 overheating or fan turn on ?

My MacBook Pro 2017 8 GB ram with latest Ventura always overheating and fan turn on during opened 100 Raw files. Last month have done repaste and clean fan. Yesterday had fresh install Mac OS.

Thank

Click to expand...

I just selected 300 RAW files and opened with my M4Pro MacBook Pro. No fan came on.

I don't think opening RAW or JPG in Preview makes much of a difference since Preview is just looking at the embedded JPG. In Activity Monitor, I'm only using 16gb of 24gb and I have a bunch of stuff open and zero bytes in swap files.

The CPU usage in Activity monitor spiked for a couple seconds but never "above the line". My M4 is the 14 core CPU / 20 core GPU model. It barely went to the second CPU core (Preview showed something like 200% which means it bumped up to the second core at least that is how I understand it).
So, opening a ton of RAW files in Preview with the M4 MacBook Pro shouldn't cause any heat problems. Now, rendering movies and applying enhancements with something like Topaz Video AI will for sure cause the fan to come on but I've not seen any degradation of performance while the fan was on. I can hear it but, it is a fan and you will hear it.

Hope this helps.
Jeff

[edited to correct "autocorrect" errors.

The fans on the Pro are very well designed. they produce more of a low mhz woosh instead of high pitched jet engines of most pc systems.