TLDR …. I fixed it with a Dell D6000 Dock … yes, you have to spend more money to make that pricey ass laptop stfu and work as it was intended to.
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So after many, many years of being very seriously opposed to proprietary operating systems I got a job that supplied me with macbook pro and I was fairly impressed with how nice it was. It had its moments where it would start breathing heavy but I was usually doing something resource intensive when it happened.
So once this covid shit blew up and I had no job or fancy laptop and I was trying to work on my old linux machine. It was doable until I was sent a PSD file and had to try and run Adobe Cloud on a virtual windows machine. In no time I was ready to stab my fucking eyballs with the dullest object I could find.
I suffered thru it for the better part of a week and just said fuck it. I had the money so why not invest in myself. I went out and got me a macbook pro with a black mouse and keyboard. Got a slightly bigger Samsung monitor than I previously had and a fancy dock for all my peripherals. I was able to get it from BestBuy as they were having a sale and the price was slightly better than the student discount from apple.
I picked up all my shit from BestBuy and was happy as clam. That was rather short lived though because only a few minutes after connecting the monitor to the dongle the laptop fans began blowing super hard while using firefox to login into my gmail for the first time and the keyboard on laptop became so hot I could actually not touch it. It wouldn’t have melted my fingers or anything but it was as close as it could be to that without the laptop actually bursting into fucking flames. I removed the monitor and things cooled off and went back to normal.
This was a deal breaker for me because the fact I can connect the laptop to an external monitor is something I rely on in terms of workflow when sitting at a desk. Being a laptop it also provides the added benefit of traveling with me. One could argue that if I wanted a desktop machine I should get a tower or imac but fuck that bullshit I’ve always used a laptop like this and I wasn’t about to pay more money for a “pro” graded item that cant connect to an external monitor without sounding like a small plane about to lift off.
So I hit the google and found a reddit thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/ekh86o/macbook_pro_16_heat_issues_with_external_monitor/) I wish I would’ve seen before I purchased the laptop. In it you will see all the people (save a few apple fanboy trolls) wondering why their fancy as fuck laptop wants to self-immolate.
At one point the laptop got so hot the screen blacked out and gave me kernel panic errors upon restart. I called Apple and they gave no fucks. I returned that macbook and got a new one. I installed iStat so I could monitor temperature and fan speeds. People in the reddit thread claimed many things worked and I tried the following:
- Moshi – USBC to DP, Samsung and Dell monitor directly into macbook pro
- USBC to USBC, Samsung and Dell monitor directly into macbook pro
- Purchased a new Dell UltraSharp monitor – USBC to USBC and USBC to DP, Dell monitor directly into macbook pro
- Dell D6000 Dock – essentially a more expensive dock with it’s own power supply.
One theme I noticed in peoples efforts was the removal of the dock in the equation. The Moshi cable is a $50 cable. While it did bring the temps down the fans would eventually go nuts. The USBC to USBC cable had pretty much the same results.
Once I deemed the $80 worth of cables to not really help much I decided to try and imitate the setup of a person claiming to have no overheating issues and purchased a Dell UltraSharp monitor. Oddly enough it actually did bring the temps down and kept the fans off for longer using the supplied USBC to USBC cable. The Moshi cable provided same results as the provided USBC cable. The fans turned on after running Illustrator for a few minutes though and while it was an improvement it was not really good enough considering what I paid for the laptop.
I had browsed over a Reddit user claiming a Dell D6000 Dock had made it work for him with two monitors but I wasn’t looking to spend more money at that point. I later saw that some one claimed it also worked for them so after a few days of not knowing what else to do I searched on OfferUp and found a brand new sealed one for a great price. This was actually the last thing I was willing to do to remedy the situation before I gave up and returned everything.
I installed the drivers and plugged everything in and turned the monitor on. I launched a code editor, a browser and Affinity Designer. No fans. Launched Spotify. No fans. Launched Photoshop. Still no fans. Temps went up slightly but nothing crazy.
The Dell D6000 Dock was the solution! The only downside I found is that it only has a single USBC port, but it has two DP ports so not too bad. I am for the most part not doing anything too resource intensive. I use a code editor, terminal, browsers, music and an Adobe or Affinity product.
I’ve only had fans fire up audibly once or twice while in my office during a heat wave and the office was like 80° F. I don’t have an AC and fan was doing nothing so I just disconnected from the monitor and went downstairs where it was cooler and it stopped fanning itself.
All in all I am happy with current setup however it was a bit stressful to have to spend all that money and test everything out all within BestBuy’s return period. Their painless return process was much appreciated.
I think it also worth mentioning that my power bill has been consistently higher since I purchased this laptop. Seems to be drawing a considerable amount of juice because I previously had a Windows tower and a Linux laptop in my office and now I just have a macbook pro.
For now I can dig it. In the future I might be a little more open to trying out a windows machine. It’s pretty fucked up that a company as big as Apple who claims to be some type of higher echelon in hardware is knowingly pedaling faulty hardware and pretending it’s normal. As my first personal experience with Apple it did leave a rather shitty taste in my mouth.