WEBVTT 00:00:00.370 --> 00:00:06.370 PC fanboys love to complain that Macs are just so much more expensive than a PC. 00:00:07.090 --> 00:00:13.490 But as we've demonstrated a handful of times in the past, in many cases it's actually just as 00:00:13.490 --> 00:00:21.090 expensive to custom build a PC with the same specs and features as a given Mac. The problem though 00:00:21.090 --> 00:00:28.930 is that Macs often don't perform as you would expect given their specifications. So today's video 00:00:28.930 --> 00:00:44.830 is a deep dive into what's going on and why. Now as you probably already know Apple designs their 00:00:44.830 --> 00:00:51.550 own computers and when I say designs I mean designs. They're slim, they're lightweight, and 00:00:51.550 --> 00:00:58.800 they've got specs that make your eyes light up and go ooh. But in the pursuit of sex appeal they often 00:00:58.800 --> 00:01:07.120 don't do those sometimes very impressive specs justice. The reason? Thermals. Now this is a little 00:01:07.120 --> 00:01:07.580 bit strange, but I'm not going to go into too much detail about that. The reason is that the Macs 00:01:07.580 --> 00:01:08.080 are just so much more expensive than a PC, and they're just so much more expensive than a PC. 00:01:08.080 --> 00:01:08.580 I'm not going to go into too much detail about that. The reason? Thermals. Now this is a little bit strange 00:01:08.580 --> 00:01:14.500 for reasons that we'll get into more later, but watch this. I can fire up quite literally any 00:01:14.500 --> 00:01:21.940 stress test. This is prime 95 right here. And within moments I will have temperatures rapidly 00:01:21.940 --> 00:01:28.180 approaching a hundred degrees. The point at which most Intel CPUs will throttle back their clock 00:01:28.180 --> 00:01:35.920 speeds in order to protect themselves from damage. How can they get away with this? Well Apple's done 00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:37.480 a little bit of trickery here and adjusts their clock speed to the clock speed that they're 00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:43.180 used to and adjusted the voltage and fan curves in macOS so that they can hit a higher thermal 00:01:43.180 --> 00:01:50.180 threshold without throttling too far below Intel's advertised base clock. But even at room 00:01:50.180 --> 00:01:57.660 temperature, it's on a knife's edge. And in boot camp, those tweaks get thrown out the Windows, 00:01:57.660 --> 00:02:02.700 pun intended, which means the voltages are higher and the threshold for throttling triggers 00:02:02.700 --> 00:02:07.000 sooner, making for a sluggish mess of an experience overall. 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:12.120 This actually made waves back when the 2018 MacBook Pro launched, because Apple accidentally 00:02:12.120 --> 00:02:18.840 didn't have those tweaks enabled in macOS, meaning that the Core i9 equipped model throttled well 00:02:18.840 --> 00:02:28.320 below base clock at 100 degrees. Now they promptly fixed it, but is it fixed, or is it just software 00:02:28.320 --> 00:02:35.390 trickery to mask a bad design? To find out, we designed a little test. We compared the MacBook Pro 00:02:37.070 --> 00:02:40.310 mini running the blender classroom rendering test, 00:02:40.310 --> 00:02:43.910 using their stock cooling solutions at room temperature 00:02:43.910 --> 00:02:46.530 against the exact same two machines 00:02:46.530 --> 00:02:49.730 inside a custom chill box of our own creation 00:02:49.730 --> 00:02:52.970 that we held well below ambient temperatures. 00:02:52.970 --> 00:02:56.190 And what's obvious from our test is that 00:02:56.190 --> 00:02:59.030 in Apple's pursuit of sex appeal, 00:02:59.030 --> 00:03:01.710 they're leaving a significant amount of performance 00:03:01.710 --> 00:03:03.930 on the table for their users. 00:03:03.930 --> 00:03:06.410 Now the obvious retort might be, 00:03:06.410 --> 00:03:10.090 yeah, but that's a totally unrealistic scenario. 00:03:10.090 --> 00:03:13.870 Would a laptop PC achieve these results? 00:03:13.870 --> 00:03:18.330 And in fairness, the answer in many cases is no. 00:03:18.330 --> 00:03:20.530 Most notebooks, PC and Mac alike 00:03:20.530 --> 00:03:23.550 with Intel HK series chips thermal throttle, 00:03:23.550 --> 00:03:27.690 but many of them to a lesser degree. 00:03:27.690 --> 00:03:30.170 Part of the problem boils down to Intel's delays 00:03:30.170 --> 00:03:32.370 in getting their 10 nanometer production going. 00:03:32.370 --> 00:03:35.310 And this is compounded by their recent pattern 00:03:35.310 --> 00:03:37.270 of releasing processors 00:03:37.270 --> 00:03:38.730 with TDPs. 00:03:38.730 --> 00:03:40.670 So this is the amount of heat 00:03:40.670 --> 00:03:42.470 that they're supposed to output 00:03:42.470 --> 00:03:46.490 that are spec'd much lower than they actually should be. 00:03:46.490 --> 00:03:47.330 They've even done this 00:03:47.330 --> 00:03:49.510 with some of their desktop processors. 00:03:49.510 --> 00:03:51.910 Essentially what they're doing right now then 00:03:51.910 --> 00:03:54.510 is stuffing more and more cores 00:03:54.510 --> 00:03:57.270 into the same package size as before, 00:03:57.270 --> 00:04:00.370 but with the same transistor size, 00:04:00.370 --> 00:04:03.290 meaning that they're generating more heat. 00:04:03.290 --> 00:04:06.070 That means that the only way for a manufacturer 00:04:06.070 --> 00:04:06.950 to rein in these chips, 00:04:06.950 --> 00:04:09.650 is to test them themselves, 00:04:09.650 --> 00:04:12.090 then overbuild their cooling solution, 00:04:12.090 --> 00:04:15.410 which clearly can actually be done. 00:04:15.410 --> 00:04:18.350 It's just that Apple isn't doing it. 00:04:18.350 --> 00:04:20.630 And the thing is that even if you don't care 00:04:20.630 --> 00:04:22.750 about getting every last drop of performance 00:04:22.750 --> 00:04:23.870 out of your computer, 00:04:23.870 --> 00:04:26.390 this creates other problems too. 00:04:26.390 --> 00:04:29.830 A computer, any computer for a fact 00:04:29.830 --> 00:04:32.230 will fail more quickly when subjected 00:04:32.230 --> 00:04:35.610 to higher operating temperatures over its lifetime. 00:04:35.610 --> 00:04:36.910 And this can come about 00:04:36.910 --> 00:04:39.110 in a whole host of different ways. 00:04:39.110 --> 00:04:41.730 Just ask Lewis Rossman or for that matter, 00:04:41.730 --> 00:04:45.150 anyone who's owned a 2011 or 2012 MacBook Pro 00:04:45.150 --> 00:04:47.170 with a dedicated GPU. 00:04:47.170 --> 00:04:50.110 Not only is heat bad for the chips themselves, 00:04:50.110 --> 00:04:51.490 the ones producing it, 00:04:51.490 --> 00:04:54.130 it's actually also unhealthy for the board 00:04:54.130 --> 00:04:55.590 that they're attached to. 00:04:55.590 --> 00:05:00.590 Hotspots on a PCB can and will cause flexing and warping 00:05:01.010 --> 00:05:04.410 as the materials repeatedly expand and contract, 00:05:04.410 --> 00:05:06.810 which can in turn lead to BGA components, 00:05:06.910 --> 00:05:08.670 breaking away from their solder pads. 00:05:08.670 --> 00:05:10.410 And that's to say nothing of the health 00:05:10.410 --> 00:05:12.570 of any surface mount components nearby, 00:05:12.570 --> 00:05:15.210 like capacitors or resistors. 00:05:15.210 --> 00:05:19.170 All of which would require either a time consuming repair, 00:05:19.170 --> 00:05:21.250 or if you go the official route, 00:05:21.250 --> 00:05:25.770 a costly and wasteful replacement of the entire board. 00:05:25.770 --> 00:05:27.650 So then what gives? 00:05:27.650 --> 00:05:30.190 Why would Apple do this to their hardware? 00:05:30.190 --> 00:05:32.250 Well, when it comes to the performance question, 00:05:32.250 --> 00:05:35.910 it seems to be because for a large enough proportion 00:05:35.910 --> 00:05:36.910 of their customers, 00:05:36.910 --> 00:05:40.390 the looks and the status symbol of owning the machine 00:05:40.390 --> 00:05:41.670 are just more important 00:05:41.670 --> 00:05:43.970 than whether it's actually quick off the line. 00:05:43.970 --> 00:05:45.290 Although on that note, 00:05:45.290 --> 00:05:47.550 one innovation in recent CPU designs 00:05:47.550 --> 00:05:50.030 that has masked Apple's negligence 00:05:50.030 --> 00:05:52.210 is the advent of Turbo Boost, 00:05:52.210 --> 00:05:53.990 Intel's name for a technology 00:05:53.990 --> 00:05:57.730 that dramatically boosts the clock speed of a CPU temporarily 00:05:57.730 --> 00:05:59.650 during short bursts of activity, 00:05:59.650 --> 00:06:03.390 like while loading a webpage or launching an application. 00:06:03.390 --> 00:06:06.910 Turbo Boost allows machines like their 2015 MacBook 00:06:06.910 --> 00:06:10.370 to actually feel pretty snappy in day-to-day use, 00:06:10.370 --> 00:06:13.330 but require literal water cooling 00:06:13.330 --> 00:06:16.670 to reach peak performance in heavy workloads. 00:06:16.670 --> 00:06:19.540 As for the reliability issues, 00:06:19.540 --> 00:06:22.780 honestly, my best guess is that they just don't care. 00:06:22.780 --> 00:06:24.660 I'm sure like any insurance company, 00:06:24.660 --> 00:06:28.120 they've done the analysis of their failure rates over time 00:06:28.120 --> 00:06:30.340 to ensure that AppleCare customers 00:06:30.340 --> 00:06:32.740 are covered by the policy that they bought. 00:06:32.740 --> 00:06:35.500 And then as for the ones who didn't buy AppleCare, 00:06:35.500 --> 00:06:36.340 huh. 00:06:36.340 --> 00:06:37.180 Guess you should have bought AppleCare. 00:06:37.180 --> 00:06:39.700 It's not like you can take your business somewhere else 00:06:39.700 --> 00:06:41.260 if you want macOS. 00:06:41.260 --> 00:06:43.060 The real head scratcher here for me though, 00:06:43.060 --> 00:06:45.860 is that Apple considers it okay 00:06:45.860 --> 00:06:48.580 for even their professional grade computers 00:06:48.580 --> 00:06:50.580 to throttle like this, 00:06:50.580 --> 00:06:53.740 but not for their flagship iPhone. 00:06:53.740 --> 00:06:57.680 You can run games or benchmarks all day long on this thing 00:06:57.680 --> 00:07:00.840 and never lose any performance to heat. 00:07:00.840 --> 00:07:03.240 Compare that to competing Android handsets 00:07:03.240 --> 00:07:06.540 and you've got yourself actually a very compelling reason 00:07:06.540 --> 00:07:08.200 to buy an iPhone. 00:07:08.200 --> 00:07:20.310 So why this difference in philosophy? 00:07:20.310 --> 00:07:22.000 Oh, sorry. 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:24.240 Oh, you were waiting for an answer. 00:07:24.240 --> 00:07:26.140 I actually don't have one. 00:07:26.140 --> 00:07:28.620 But what I will do is I'm gonna put that on my list 00:07:28.620 --> 00:07:31.140 of things to ask my good friend, Tim Apple, 00:07:31.140 --> 00:07:34.530 if he ever agrees to sit down for an interview with me. 00:07:34.530 --> 00:07:37.230 Although I sincerely doubt that's ever going to happen 00:07:37.230 --> 00:07:39.170 because I'm going on the record now 00:07:39.170 --> 00:07:41.970 saying that my next question then will be, 00:07:41.970 --> 00:07:43.570 why do you advertise your products 00:07:43.570 --> 00:07:45.850 in ways that you know for a fact are misleading? 00:07:45.850 --> 00:07:48.870 The 2018 MacBook Pro's product page 00:07:48.870 --> 00:07:50.850 is a great example of this. 00:07:50.850 --> 00:07:55.850 So you can see 4.8 gigahertz touted as the CPU speed upfront. 00:07:57.350 --> 00:08:00.310 But you probably won't notice that further down, 00:08:00.310 --> 00:08:03.390 the base clock that this machine struggles to maintain 00:08:03.390 --> 00:08:06.470 by the way, is just 2.9 gigahertz, 00:08:06.470 --> 00:08:09.370 a difference of almost 40%. 00:08:09.370 --> 00:08:12.610 That performance disparity is gonna take the MacBook Pro 00:08:12.610 --> 00:08:15.850 from feeling quick and snappy while surfing the web 00:08:15.850 --> 00:08:18.310 to feeling sluggish and unresponsive 00:08:18.310 --> 00:08:21.470 the moment that you start a render and it stops boosting. 00:08:21.470 --> 00:08:24.570 And that's not even considering the dedicated GPU. 00:08:24.570 --> 00:08:27.850 You run both the CPU and the GPU simultaneously, 00:08:27.850 --> 00:08:31.090 like in a game or a hardware assisted video export, 00:08:31.090 --> 00:08:33.370 and you're in for a pretty bad time. 00:08:33.370 --> 00:08:35.950 One of the most frustrating aspects of all of this 00:08:35.950 --> 00:08:40.010 is that they're blatantly doing it on purpose. 00:08:40.010 --> 00:08:42.710 In our recent video where we used liquid metal 00:08:42.710 --> 00:08:45.350 thermal interface material on the MacBook Pro, 00:08:45.350 --> 00:08:48.950 we found that even with better cooling, 00:08:48.950 --> 00:08:51.470 temperatures were the same. 00:08:51.470 --> 00:08:55.310 So Apple took advantage of the extra thermal headroom 00:08:55.310 --> 00:08:58.610 by keeping the fans low for as long as possible, 00:08:58.610 --> 00:09:02.070 instead of attempting to boost the CPU's performance 00:09:02.070 --> 00:09:03.230 for longer. 00:09:03.230 --> 00:09:04.390 I mean, I get it. 00:09:04.390 --> 00:09:07.450 Nobody wants their fans to ramp up like a jet engine 00:09:07.450 --> 00:09:10.530 just because they loaded a big file in Photoshop 00:09:10.530 --> 00:09:14.170 that made the CPU work for five seconds. 00:09:14.170 --> 00:09:15.170 But if we're running 00:09:15.170 --> 00:09:18.510 an all core load, we're hitting 90 plus degrees 00:09:18.510 --> 00:09:20.110 for more than that, 00:09:20.110 --> 00:09:23.650 the system needs to kick its fans into overdrive 00:09:23.650 --> 00:09:25.730 in order to protect itself. 00:09:25.730 --> 00:09:28.670 As for why Apple doesn't just equip its machines 00:09:28.670 --> 00:09:30.570 with processors that are more suited 00:09:30.570 --> 00:09:32.670 to the form factors that they target. 00:09:32.670 --> 00:09:36.870 Remember guys, a slower CPU that doesn't throttle 00:09:36.870 --> 00:09:40.560 is not slower than a faster one that does. 00:09:40.560 --> 00:09:42.500 We're not sure why they don't do that. 00:09:42.500 --> 00:09:44.700 The only answer we can come up with is, 00:09:45.260 --> 00:09:49.220 is that Apple is targeting the less tech savvy market 00:09:49.220 --> 00:09:52.900 with their promises of magical, high performance, 00:09:52.900 --> 00:09:55.800 thin design, lightweight and low noise, 00:09:55.800 --> 00:09:57.860 all with stellar battery life. 00:09:57.860 --> 00:10:00.980 But you simply can't avoid the laws of physics 00:10:00.980 --> 00:10:04.870 and there is nothing magical about what they're doing. 00:10:04.870 --> 00:10:05.990 So thanks for watching guys. 00:10:05.990 --> 00:10:08.150 If you disliked this video, you know what to do. 00:10:08.150 --> 00:10:10.870 But if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed 00:10:10.870 --> 00:10:13.330 or maybe consider subscribing to our YouTube channel. 00:10:13.330 --> 00:10:14.610 We'll see you in the next video. 00:10:14.610 --> 00:10:15.450 Bye. 00:10:15.490 --> 00:10:16.790 Also consider checking out where to buy the stuff 00:10:16.790 --> 00:10:19.270 we featured at the link in the video description. 00:10:19.270 --> 00:10:21.270 To be clear, it's not a terrible machine, 00:10:21.270 --> 00:10:22.650 just thermal throttles. 00:10:22.650 --> 00:10:24.170 Also down there is our merch store, 00:10:24.170 --> 00:10:25.930 which has cool shirts like this one 00:10:25.930 --> 00:10:28.690 and our community forum, which you should totally join.