There is lots of info online about loud MacBook Pro fans. In my case I never figured out if it was hardware (e.g. heat sinks not making good contact) or software issue. I use ChimeraX on various Mac, Windows and Linux machines. It can heavily use the GPU if you are displaying a complex scene, but very few computers rev up the fans to high speed 98% of the time I am using ChimeraX. The one exception is when using ChimeraX virtual reality on a gaming laptop -- that has the fans screaming due to the high graphics frame rate (90 frames per second in two eye views).

I had to look up if my MacBook Pro M1 Max has fans, since I cannot recall hearing them for the year I have had this machine, and I work with very large molecular systems and cryoEM maps sometimes. It does have fans. But the Mac ARM chips are known to be very efficient -- one of the main attractions is the very log battery life resulting from that efficiency. Also we have no reports of ChimeraX graphics crashes on Mac ARM GPUs in the couple years they have been out, while we have hundreds of graphics crashes reported on Mac Intel/AMD machines due to less stable graphics drivers on that hardware.

On Jan 25, 2023, at 4:56 PM, Lewis James martin via ChimeraX-users <chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:

Thanks for checking, Tom. I updated to Ventura - no change. I've also heard that M1 chips don't heat up very much. I guess it's just related to having Intel chips, then, rather than anything to do with ChimeraX.
Cheers
Lewis

On January 26, 2023, Tom Goddard <goddard@sonic.net> wrote:
Hi Lewis,

On my I 2021 MacBook Pro M1 Max with macOS 13.1 if I open a large model and spin it in ChimeraX daily build I also see 200% CPU and about 36% GPU in Mac Activity Monitor.

open 8dit
show atoms
roll

But I never hear a fan, in fact I don't recall ever hearing the fan on this machine. If I also use ambient shadows the GPU use goes up to 72% during the spin

light full

If I stop the spin (command stop) then the CPU use goes to 2% and GPU use to 1%. ChimeraX uses the GPU heavily for rendering graphics. I see the same CPU and GPU use for an old ChimeraX version 1.3. I don't know why ChimeraX is using 200% CPU. That is surprising. I suspect that reported CPU use is somehow misleading and it would be worth checking on Windows or Linux to see what they say the CPU use is. ChimeraX in general does very few tasks with multiple threads, and only one thread is rendering, so I think it is something peculiar about macOS that it is report 200% CPU use. Maybe using the GPU automatically engages a new CPU thread. I recall in years past CPU use was minimal (20%?) and GPU use depended on complexity of rendering (5 to 100%) for moving a model.

I had a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro and I recall its fans went crazy loud for no apparent reason, and it was not entirely predictable. That machine failed in less than 2 years due to the display hinge cable wearing out. I never figured out its loud fan issues. I recall them going away maybe after some macOS update.

Tom

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