Is the Mac mini M4 silent?

[ConcertinaChap]

It seems to me, rightly or wrongy, that Apple put some effort to making their machines as quiet as possible. We've had a number of Macs over the years: an ancient Macbook Air and a modern one, an iMac and an iMac Pro, a Mac Studio and 3 (three) Mac Minis of different generations and they've all been notable for how much noise they haven't made. When it comes to Macs and noise it's something I just don't lose sleep over.

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[S.Crow]

This site tends to go deep in terms of noise analysis compared to most.
Should generally be silent but under very heavy loads it is noticeably louder than the previous version.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-Mac ... #c12271268

[Arpangel]

iMac here, plus a MacBook, no noise, not noticeable anyway, even in a very quiet room. My high spec PC however, not the same scene, I have to tune the noise out, it's just loud enough to notice

[MOF]

I have a MacBook Pro M1 13” and it’s quiet, more than can be said about the early tower G5, in particular. I made up a foam lined cabinet (not completely sealed) to reduce the loud fan noise; kids of today don’t know they’re born!!!

[Sam Spoons]

I ran a diagnostic on my new (to me) 2019 Mac Pro* and it demonstrated that the fans could do a fair impersonation of a jumbo jet but during normal use I can just hear a whisper with my ear next to the grill.

[The Paul meister]

It’s interesting how computers have got more quiet/silent over the years.

I remember my old year 2000 Compaq laptop had a real high pitched whine coming from the hard drive. And the old Dreamcast console had quite a bit of fan noise.

I remember when the first Carillon computer came out in 2000/2001 the big selling point was how quiet it was.

[MOF]

I don’t think computer manufacturers were that worried about fan noise since the audio users were not a significant user base.
I think it was all down to cost and that a small cheap, fast fan was preferable to a large, slower moving (more expensive) fan that forced a larger volume of air over the cpu.

[Kayvon]

Just for completeness, I don't believe the M3 Macbook Air has any fans. I've certainly never heard anything from mine.

However, when I run it at 32 sample buffers with a couple of different USB audio interfaces I am able to hear a faint whine coming from in between the top of the keyboard and the bottom of the screen. It reduces in frequency and amplitude when moving up to 64/128 etc.

I'd love to know if anyone else's MBP/Mini/iMac has a similar phenomenon. I'm led to believe it may have something to do with USB polling.

The other thing that crosses my mind is whilst these modern Macs may not make any fan noise now it'd be interesting to see if in say 5 years time with a bunch of OS revisions and more demanding software whether the CPUs are taxed more to the point where they do need to run the fans more often. Also dust accumulation would probably be a factor by then as well.

[Sam Spoons]

Just for completeness, I don't believe the M3 Macbook Air has any fans. I've certainly never heard anything from mine.

I can't say categorically that your M3 MBA does have a fan but I reckon Apple would be singing it from the rooftops if it didn't. My M1 MBP definitely has a fan but I have never heard it fire up so I'm not surprised your MBA is silent.

[Kayvon]

Just for completeness, I don't believe the M3 Macbook Air has any fans. I've certainly never heard anything from mine.

I can't say categorically that your M3 MBA does have a fan but I reckon Apple would be singing it from the rooftops if it didn't. My M1 MBP definitely has a fan but I have never heard it fire up so I'm not surprised your MBA is silent.

According to Apple's page on the M3 MacBook Air:

And no matter how intense the workload, it stays silent thanks to a fanless design.

Perhaps they didn't take to the rooftops because they knew there'd be some pedantic soul like myself who'd hear the USB polling (if that's what it is) and point out it's not absolutely silent!

It's really a tiny thing and there's any number of background noises that're more significant in a typical room but y'know, it's there and is just another thing that makes me wonder about the superiority of Thunderbolt. I'll happily test out a Lynx TB3 interface with my M3 if anyone fancies sending me one!

[Kayvon]

I say USB polling but that was just one or two comments I'd previously read n just thinking about it now, I suppose such a noise shouldn't change in frequency with a change in sample buffers.

It's one of those noises where if you turn your head you can't hear it.

Just doing a cursory Google now n it seems it could be the SSD or maybe the CPU. Not really an issue. Just one of those occasions where one's ears are in hyper sensitive mode and you think to yourself 'hold on, what's that?'. Maybe it's telling me to setup one of my vintage synths that has a 'comforting' bit of transformer hum

When I worked at a studio design/acoustic consultancy one of my seniors told me they once did a studio for someone that was sufficiently quiet that the client was a bit unnerved. Their solution was to add in a tiny speaker replaying white noise to keep him happy!

[Sam Spoons]

Just for completeness, I don't believe the M3 Macbook Air has any fans. I've certainly never heard anything from mine.

I can't say categorically that your M3 MBA does have a fan but I reckon Apple would be singing it from the rooftops if it didn't. My M1 MBP definitely has a fan but I have never heard it fire up so I'm not surprised your MBA is silent.

According to Apple's page on the M3 MacBook Air:

And no matter how intense the workload, it stays silent thanks to a fanless design.

Always happy to be corrected

[ConcertinaChap]

Macworld has this to say about the fanless M3 Air:

One of the major differences between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro is that the Air lacks cooling fans. That means the Air will slow down its performance if the task at hand causes the computer to generate excessive heat. That’s always been the case with the Airs, but apparently, it’s jumped to a new extreme with the M3 MacBook Air.

Max Tech has done some extensive benchmarking with the M3 MacBook Air and discovered that when using the M3 Air in clamshell mode with two external displays, one of the laptop’s major new features, the laptop throttles so much that performance could be cut in half. Max Tech was able to do this by running the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme benchmark for 20 minutes. After the sixth minute, the performance starts to dip and it continues to do so until about 50 percent of the performance is lost.

[shrugs]Well I wasn't intending to use mine in clamshell configuration anyway[/shrugs]

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[Sam Spoons]

I was assuming that performance would be affected as CPU temp rises. Clamshell mode would be the extreme case but even with the screen open temperatures will rise more quickly with a fanless design so throttling will happen.

[ConcertinaChap]

Looks like it, but as I type this on my M3 Macbook Air (24 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD) I'm not noticing any slow down

I bought this to do the usual email/web/word processing stuff, for which it's well over-powered, but also to step into the breach on a temporary basis if either of our main computers threw a wobbly. I don't think the throttling issue changes that particularly.

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[Sam Spoons]

Given the performance of the M series CPUs I doubt I will ever hear the fans on my M1 MBP either and max performance was not were not a factor in my buying decision.

[The Paul meister]

I can't find a fan anywhere on my iMac M4.

[Sam Spoons]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/im ... l.2443452/