Quote:
Originally Posted by djh108
Thanks for the responses everyone. I opted for a 2019 MacBook Pro 2.3 i9 w/ 32 gigs of ram. A bit more than I was planning on spending, but it benchmarks about 15% better than my 2012 12 core, so hopefully it'll buy me a few extra years before thinking about m1 machines. Should be here in a couple days.
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Sorry, didn't see this thread.....
If you buy an Intel MBP 16", make sure to get the 5600M GPU, rather than the 5500 or 5300, especially if you intend to use an external screen.
The problem is that, in MacOS, the 5300/5500 GPUs ramp to 20 watts consumption as soon (most) external screens are connected, and also for almost any/all video work, or for Chrome, or for any other excuse really. And that, along with the CPU being rather hot, makes the fans come on and stay on.
The 5600M seems to exhibit the problem a lot less. There's a 4000-post thread on MacRumors about it. (
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads...nitor.2211747/)
I bought one and sent it back for this reason - and it also wouldn't power my 49" 32:9 screen at the maximum resolution. It's a pain as the MacMini has a bunch of other problems, so I've ended up with a Mac Pro, which was offensively expensive and completely not portable. I also bought (and returned) an M1 Air, which was impressively fast (and of course quiet) but had an even worse problem with large screen resolution (my 5120x1440 became 3008x846 !!).
Running the latest Logic benchmark, I get 160 tracks on the 16-core Mac Pro 7.1 and 95 tracks on the M1 Air. Pretty awesome power, but lack of ports and Big Sur being a mess put me off (along with the screen problems).
The 5600M wasn't available when I tried the MBP 16" - if it had been, I might have ended up with that machine. Good luck!
Dominic