for some reasons the blackmagic is neither available on apple website nor amazon at the moment.
the blackmagic comes with 2 thunderbolt3 and 1 hdmi port.
since i’m using 4 externals at the moment, would it be possible to connect 3 of them through the blackmagic and 1 directly to the mac ? or will it cause problems ?
I’m not sure what effect connecting the monitor to the Mac would have.
You can get a thunderbolt 3 to double DisplayPort adapter like this one… https://www.sonnetstore.com/products/thunderbolt3-dual-displayport-adapter-html
The Pro also has an additional monitor out (it has two thunderbolt 3, HDMI and DisplayPort), but they stopped manufacturing Pro models when AMD stopped making Vega56.
same issue just with 30hz 1080p monitor and original apple adaptor and charging the mac on the right side. it is a fraud. with ANYTHING open it gets so hot and noisy. please report to apple. they should recall the macbook pro 16’’ and refund the customers.
since i have the 4 monitor setup (two 34" horizontal two 27" vertical) - before i had two 27" horizontal
i got the issue that after wake up, the screen resolutions and rotation (horizontal/vertical) are messed and miexed. i tried to use SwitchResX to save my display sets and restore them but it does not work correctly with multiple display. does anybody know how to fix it ?
after nearly every wake up i have to reconfigure my screen resolutions and rotation which takes up to 2-3 minutes…
try reset nv ram and use hdmi to usb adapter (in case you have a native usb c port on your monitor) - be sure its a 60hz cable…
i experienced in some configurations the problem that native usb C monitor Ports causing trouble…
also for trouble shooting, close the lid from your macbook and monitor your Fans… as you can read in one of my posts yesterday i experienced with closed lid fans are decreasing by approx. 1.000-1.200rpm
looks similiar like the one i ordered…
today i receive my thunderbolt 3 docking station and a tb3->2xdp adapter which i ordered after seeing the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGdvtQS0Cp8
lets see how that will work out
I know it’s not the answer you want to hear, but maybe it can help someone. Using the LG Ultrafine 4K (sold by Apple) display does not cause any heat issues, while my Dell U2718Q 4K display certainly does. Switching displays is obviously not a solution, but if someone is shopping for a display to use with 16" MBP, the LG one does not have the heating issues.
after wakeups sometimes my screenresolution and rotation (using 2 horizontal and 2 vertical screens) are messed up and have to manually correct them. does anybody know how to prevent this problems ? it takes me 5-10 minutes in a morning…
i tried to use ‘SwitchResX’ to save ‘display-sets’. but it sometimes dosnt help - i think it is because it doesnt recognize the connected screens (i.e. it thinks there is a new screen which was never connected before). - maybe it depends on the order the external screens wake up from the standby ? Or is it the order i re connect the cables to the macbook in case they were unconnected before ?
This is crazy. I have been using the 2014 mac book pro, and recently bought a 2019 16".
If I connect to the old mac book pro and do nothing, there is no fan activation.
New mac book pro, just connecting external HDMI monitor makes the fan go crazy.
It seems Apple is going backward.
Which size 2014 MBP?
I suspect that a resolution of this problem will only be finalized when folks fully report the following specifications:
I drive a 27in Quad resolution monitor through an Anker thunderbolt to HDMI adaptor on my 2.4 GHz 8-core i9 with 32GB RAM and the AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8GB graphics upgrade option. I have a USB-B 7-port hub attached to the adaptor with a USB-2 keyboard and a USB-2 trackball on-line. I occasionally run a USB-C external drive for Time Machine backups. I can have some intensive ongoing analytical operations with one piece of computational software, and I otherwise typically do extensive composition work in LaTeX, development work in Curio, and tracking with OmniFocus. I also run Zoom sessions with my iPad connected over AirPlay.
I have had none of the problems that folks are mentioning with highly excessive fan speeds / noise. I do have my MBP on a mechanical-run fan cooling platform, especially during intensive work (mostly always).
–
JJW
I’ve had these issues too. 16”top specs and the fan goes crazy with external monitor and everyday programs. Like web browsing.
Same issue observed on my 16" macbook pro…
I am using Kensington SD5200T dock with Dell 24" monitor.
As soon as I connect my mac to dock, fans goes crazy and it gets really hot.
It is a long post and have not yet gone through all responses, but do we have any solution to this?
Hi everyone,
I’m in the same boat as you guys and I was struggling with extremely hot MacBook Pro 16" (up to 70ºC/158ºF) with two external monitors connected. Today I’ve managed out how to fix that (at least for my setup) and wattage of the Radeon GPU dropped from 20W to 5W and tº from 65-70ºC/140-158ºF to 50ºC/120ºF just by setting the refresh rate of my 2xFullHD monitors to 55Hz (the default one was 60Hz). I’ve used SwitchResX for that.
Power consumption:
Settings for SwitchResX:
Steps are simple: create a new custom resolution for each monitor and set two parameters: GFT and Vertical scan rate to 55 (your value could depend on what your monitor is supporting). Save and reboot.
For some reason, the app is complaining that settings were not applied though they are.
I can be wrong but I guess it’s sort of a bug in drivers caused by some standard refresh rates which leads to extensive power-draining by discreet GPU.
Hope this will help you.
PS: photo of my setup with a description will be in the next post as far as new members can’t put more than 2 images per post.
and here is my setup:
Monitors: 2 × 1920×1200 Lenovo T24d
Shell: closed.
USB-C 1: HDMI adapter
USB-C 2: USB-C hub (3xUSB3, HDMI out, USB-C power supply input)
UPD: when the lid is opened — GPU power consumption jumps back to 20W and temp is also jumped back to high.
@stunpix can SwitchResX change refresh rate of the MacBook Pro monitor? would it be needed/help with temps?
I am using a 2017 Macbook Pro with touchbar model. All these 4 years, I have wasted giving my macbook to multiple service centers and getting the logic board, display board and battery replaced multiple times and still, Apple doesn’t have a solution.
It gets too hot(uncomfortable to even type) when connected to an external display. I have tried multiple dongles and cables, tried connecting to multiple monitors(Dell, HP, LG, BenQ) and still the issue is the same. Due to the heat, the battery drains in less than 2 hours. Have tried using external cooling pads, and not much gain.
Without any external monitors, it delivers 8 hours on battery.
Is there a permanent solution to this?
What software are you running?
For me, there was not - other than selling it. My experience with two LG 5K displays attached was that the fans (it was a 2019 MacBook Pro16 inch with an i9 processor, 64gb of ram, and plenty of storage) would spin up almost immediately and would continue until I unplugged from both displays. Could not be resolved with Apple or anyone else.
So, I sold it, stored one display, stashed most of the money, bought the cheapest M1 Mac mini, added a OWC Thunderbolt hub and a 2 Tb SSD. Very satisfied with the setup (until the new 16 inch MacBook Pro comes out, of course).
Based on all the comments above which have been really helpful in debugging this; I did some playing around with my MBP 16" in clamshell mode and refresh rates for my external monitor (ASUS TUF Gaming VG27AQ).
What I found I thought was kinda interesting which is why I’m posting here. At some refresh rates, I get much higher idle Radeon High Side Wattage ~18-21W vs. ~6-8W. Initially I thought this would naturally go up as my refresh rate went up, but interestingly at 59.88Hz I also get the higher power usage.
Here’s my full results (I didn’t take multiple samples or test different monitors so take these as anecdotal numbers for my particular setup). Resolution was always 2560x1440 with HDR off and the Macbook was in clamshell mode. Here are my display settings for reference.
| Refresh Rate (Hz) | Radeon High Side (Watts) | Screenshot |
|---|---|---|
| 59.88 | 17.96 | 59.88 |
| 120 | 7.82 | 120 |
| 144 | 6.15 | 144 |
| 155 | 8.08 | 155 |
| 160 | 18.18 | 160 |
| 165 | 18.31 | 165 |
If anyone is wondering whether those wattages fluctuate, here’s a graph of iStat menus which shows that yes there is some fluctuation of the Wattage as I do different things but for the most part the baseline wattage stays much lower when I pick one of the better refresh rates above. The big spike happened when I opened up a game with smaller spikes for youtube videos and other GPU related tasks.
My next step is to run through some different refresh rates for a whole work day with zoom use, programming etc. and also have the following command running to record throttling events.
pmset -g thermlog
I’ll also aim to get some good temperature readings at both idle and high usage across the different refresh rates.