Apple engineers reveal how they prevent Mac Pro overheating
Apple's new Mac Pro is the most powerful Mac ever made, and with that power comes extreme heat. To make the Mac Pro and the Pro Display XDR function, Apple engineers had to find new ways to handle those temperatures and keep the machine quiet.

How air is made to flow through the new Mac Pro
The new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR have distinctive Apple designs, but it's not for aesthetic reasons. Both inside and out, the new hardware design on both devices is built to keep the most powerful Mac in existence from overheating.
Speaking to Popular Mechanics, Apple's Chris Ligtenberg and John Ternus revealed some of how their work means the Mac Pro doesn't run too hot, and doesn't have loud fans.
The immediately-recognizable and already copied casing with its myriad holes is key to managing temperature for both the Mac Pro and in particular the Pro Display XDR, which can be used in both portrait and landscape.
"[The pattern] gives us a lot of surface area, which is hugely beneficial," said John Ternus, vice president of Hardware Engineering at Apple. "[For the Display] we wanted free [air] flow through the channels, no matter the orientation."

Close up of the lattice design of the Mac Pro case.
Part of that solution to dissipate heat regardless of whether the display was in portrait or landscape, was to make the holes hemispherical instead of round.
Ligtenberg, Senior Director of Product Design, explains that previously typical solutions to dissipating heat couldn't cut it.
"It's very easy to get air trapped in channels," he says. "A common solution, passively, is to have a finned enclosure, a heat sink. That was not possible."
They also say that the design of the holes means the Mac Pro itself gets "about 20 percent more airflow" than previous models.
However, the fans are not incidental. To help with the heat and to keep the Mac Pro quiet -- or just apparently quiet -- meant Apple had to design the fan blades especially.

Three Apple-designed fans pull air through the system
"Years ago, we started redistributing the blades," says Ligtenberg. "They're still dynamically balanced, but they're actually randomized in terms of their BPF [blade pass frequency]. So you don't get huge harmonics that tend to be super annoying."
Reports so far say that the Mac Pro is exceptionally quiet. Beyond just quiet, Ternus says a big focus of the team was to make what noise it produces be simply less annoying.
"You can have something at a certain SPL [sound pressure level] that sounds really good," Ternus told Popular Mechanics, "But you can have something that's actually at a lower SPL that grates on your nerves and sounds really awful."
"We want to get really great performance where, you either can't hear it, or if you can hear it, it's kind of a pleasant noise," he continues. "A ton of analysis goes into figuring out how to optimize for that."
Apple's new Mac Pro is now available for pre-order, as is the Pro Display XDR.

How air is made to flow through the new Mac Pro
The new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR have distinctive Apple designs, but it's not for aesthetic reasons. Both inside and out, the new hardware design on both devices is built to keep the most powerful Mac in existence from overheating.
Speaking to Popular Mechanics, Apple's Chris Ligtenberg and John Ternus revealed some of how their work means the Mac Pro doesn't run too hot, and doesn't have loud fans.
The immediately-recognizable and already copied casing with its myriad holes is key to managing temperature for both the Mac Pro and in particular the Pro Display XDR, which can be used in both portrait and landscape.
"[The pattern] gives us a lot of surface area, which is hugely beneficial," said John Ternus, vice president of Hardware Engineering at Apple. "[For the Display] we wanted free [air] flow through the channels, no matter the orientation."

Close up of the lattice design of the Mac Pro case.
Part of that solution to dissipate heat regardless of whether the display was in portrait or landscape, was to make the holes hemispherical instead of round.
Ligtenberg, Senior Director of Product Design, explains that previously typical solutions to dissipating heat couldn't cut it.
"It's very easy to get air trapped in channels," he says. "A common solution, passively, is to have a finned enclosure, a heat sink. That was not possible."
Quiet fans
There are fans inside both the Mac Pro and the Pro Display XDR, but with the screen, they are solely to cool certain unspecified components. Ternus and Ligtenberg say that it is the bored metal holes that mean the LED panels can run brightly without problems.They also say that the design of the holes means the Mac Pro itself gets "about 20 percent more airflow" than previous models.
However, the fans are not incidental. To help with the heat and to keep the Mac Pro quiet -- or just apparently quiet -- meant Apple had to design the fan blades especially.

Three Apple-designed fans pull air through the system
"Years ago, we started redistributing the blades," says Ligtenberg. "They're still dynamically balanced, but they're actually randomized in terms of their BPF [blade pass frequency]. So you don't get huge harmonics that tend to be super annoying."
Reports so far say that the Mac Pro is exceptionally quiet. Beyond just quiet, Ternus says a big focus of the team was to make what noise it produces be simply less annoying.
"You can have something at a certain SPL [sound pressure level] that sounds really good," Ternus told Popular Mechanics, "But you can have something that's actually at a lower SPL that grates on your nerves and sounds really awful."
"We want to get really great performance where, you either can't hear it, or if you can hear it, it's kind of a pleasant noise," he continues. "A ton of analysis goes into figuring out how to optimize for that."
Apple's new Mac Pro is now available for pre-order, as is the Pro Display XDR.
Comments
(What a comparison, huh... the Cybertruck has to be one of the worst designs of all time. I should probably be punished for mentioning the two in the same post.)
Power Supply
1.4 kilowatts
Electrical and Operating Requirements
It’s a bit esoteric though as it is pathological to max out both the CPUs and GPUs at the same time. The machine isn’t limited by thermals. They choose to design it for the typical 110 V 12 A circuit that are in the vast majority of places in the world. So it is limited by the typical power circuits in buildings. Higher power will mean some places will have to add higher power circuits, like the ones for a dryer or an oven. Then if you think about it, you do not want anymore than that for a machine that is on your desktop or desk side. It’ll heat up the room and you’ll need to have some consideration for the air conditioning the room.
Nobody has even talked about the software that buyers of this machine have to pay for. Some of the software licenses will cost 10x the cost of the machine over its lifetime.
The Mac Pro's CPU Thermal module is quite large and has a dedicated fan so should radiate quite nicely.