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by jsjohnst 2010 days ago
> This laptop had quite a bit of overheating issues to the point you can't even drive all the monitors it says it supports on the spec sheet off the iGPU anywhere close to comfortably.

Also, which laptop is this claim in reference to?

Personal experiences:

13” M1 MBP - one LG 5K display, zero heat or fan speed issues.

16” MBP - I daily drive two LG 5K monitors with no increased heat or fan speed. Prior to picking up the additional LG 5K, I used one LG 5K and two 27” Apple Thunderbolt displays.

15” MBP, with 4 TB3 ports: LG 5K and two 27” Apple TB displays all working without higher heat than w/o them connected

13” MBP, with 4 TB3 ports: same triple monitor setup, same no heat / fan speed issues.

15” rMBP (2015): used two 27” Apple Thunderbolt displays + two 34” ultrawide LG displays, no heat issues or fan issues

The only time I’ve ever seen my laptop stressed by connected monitors is when I did an experiment and connected NINE external displays (ten total screens, as laptop screen was still on) as a test to a 16” MBP to see if it could do it. If I’d had more TB monitors to test with, I think I could’ve done higher count.

Setup in that test:

TB3 port back left: LG 5K display

TB3 port front left: two 27” Apple Thunderbolt monitors daisy chained and using TB3->TB2 adapter

TB3 port back right: eGPU w/ AMD Radeon 580 card connected to two 34” LG ultrawides and two 27” Apple Cinema Display monitors (the older non-TB models)

TB3 port front right: same setup as left, two 27” Apple TB displays

Even then, it definitely wasn’t “overheating”, but processors did idle much higher and fans stayed on during idle (but not at high speed).

1 comments

I was looking for a laptop capable of running 3x4k displays and there is currently a 186 page thread on macrumours about the 16" being too hot with external displays.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-is-hot-noisy-with-an...

I can't remember where I saw the benchmarks but I saw a HUGE difference in performance for the CPU depending on if you were running an eGPU or not simply because you're not stressing the internal GPU. Closing the lid reportedly also makes a huge difference. We may be using different definitions of "overheating" but generally what I saw was a laptop which advertised it could handle FOUR 4k displays but it could only do that while being loud and slow. Looking at updated reviews it seems like it's only certain configurations that lead to this problem. Nevertheless I saw reviews, they looked bad, and I held onto my money, and bought a solution with better cooling.

I have strong hopes the m1x will just support a ton of displays out of the box and just work in a compact package. If they released a 14" that could support more than 2 displays I'd freaking faint and wake up weeping with joy that my dream computer had arrived.

I’ve seen the same thread (and commented in it). I stand behind the statement I made there (and here in the past), it’s very likely one of two issues

1) specific monitor and connection method combinations have issues

2) manufacturing defect on some laptops that Apple is refusing to acknowledge