Core i9 MacBook Pro Cooling Problems Kill Performance

The MacBook Pro, as the name suggests, is a laptop aimed at professionals. Or at least, it was. The price is high, but in return you expect to get unrivaled performance in a portable package. With the 2018 MacBook Pro, it looks as though Apple has taken a step too far by offering a Core i9 15-inch model without any consideration of the cooling such a high performance chip requires.

As ExtremeTech reports, the Core i9 processor Apple chose to use inside the MacBook Pro (i9-8950K) has a base clock frequency of 2.9GHz, which is capable of bursting up to 4.8GHz when necessary. However, testing carried out by YouTuber Dave Lee makes it clear the Core i9 can't even maintain 2.9GHz, let alone 4.8GHz. In fact, it ends up running at 2.2GHz due to the heat generated inside the chassis forcing it to throttle.

You may be thinking, "but it's still a very fast laptop, right?" but that's clearly not the case. The thermal throttling is so severe this Core i9 model ends up taking longer to complete tasks than older generation processors. Lee used Adobe Premier Pro as an example, pitting the Core i9 MacBook against a 2017 MacBook Pro using an older Kaby Lake chip with fewer cores. The older laptop was faster by 11 percent!

This isn't a problem with Intel's Core i9, it's Apple's thermal solution. Apple is a company laser-focused on design and offering the thinnest, most beautiful laptops to the detriment of just about everything else. In this case it's cooling that's insufficient, and it means the Core i9 is completely wasted inside the MacBook Pro.

It gets worse, though, as the problem isn't just limited to the Core i9 model. NotebookCheck tested the 2018 MacBook Pro which ships with the Core i7-8850H and experienced similar throttling problems. It remains slightly faster than the 2017 MacBook Pro running a Core i7-7700HQ, but the gap diminishes the more you use the laptop as the heat increases.

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What's most frustrating about this for new MacBook Pro owners is, Apple either didn't test the thermals thoroughly enough in these new Pros, or it did and decided the reduced performance was acceptable. Neither of those are acceptable when Apple expects you to pay upwards of $2,399 for the Pro and $2,799 if you want a Core i9.