Early testers got a 13″ MacBook Pro with SoC M2 and unfortunately in some scenarios you can see the cooling system crashes and the laptop slows down noticeably.
Apple recently announced its SoC M2 upgrade at WWDC, and the first laptop to use it was the 13 MacBook Pro. The laptop became available to testers a few days ago, allowing content creators to test the device in action. YouTuber MaxTech compared the new 13″ M2 Pro with the older Pro version of the SoC M1. During testing, the cooling performance of the new M2-based Pro proved to be poor. When exporting 8K Canon RAW material, the M2 model reached a temperature of 108Aroundc experienced some serious suffocation. This is in stark contrast to the 14″ MacBook Pro M1, which never choked on the same test.
The new MacBook Pro reaches very high temperatures, which ends up with slower clock speeds and a significant drop in performance. As a result, it takes longer to export 8K RAW textures than it did on the older M1.
The video posted by MaxTech compares side by side; 13, MacBook Pro with M2 and 14-inch model with M1 Pro. One of the main differences with both portable devices is the cooling system. The M2 has only one fan inside its 13 casing. The 14 Pro Chip has two fans. However, this lower fan makes a huge difference (although there may be many differences in the cooling system), with the reviewer writing that the temperatures were the highest he’s ever seen on a Mac. To add weight to his words, he added that this also applies to Intel-based Macs.
High temperatures were achieved while exporting Canon 8K RAW footage, which is very stressful for a SoC. During the export, the processor and graphics chip were emphasized to the maximum. Surprisingly, the MacBook reached these temperatures when a single fan was running at its maximum speed of 7200 rpm. This means that because the fan did everything it could to keep the temperature in check, there was only one way the system could lower it: break the clocks to prevent the system from overheating and damaging it.
In this case, the P core clocks are immediately lowered from 3200MHz to 1894MHz. The E cores went from 2.228 MHz to 1.444 MHz. The GPU also dropped from 1.393MHz to just 289MHz. This significantly reduced power consumption from 29.46 watts to just 7.31 watts, allowing a temporary temperature reduction to 84°C, and then again to more than 100°C. The YouTuber said this cycle continued over and over until the exports ended. This throttling resulted in a decrease in performance and a worse result than the M1 Pro. The M2 took nearly 20 minutes to complete the export, and the M1 Pro just over 11 minutes. M1 Pro with two fans did not choke in the test.
