Still baffles the mind that Apple solved this issue some 20+ years ago, and others _still_ haven't. I remember being basically surrounded by jet engines running Word in school.
A few years ago in an old job I got a monster-specced Dell laptop, and it would still roar if I opened anything. I had to pull all the nerf tricks through the BIOS to at least keep it somewhat tolerable in low-load scenarios (i.e. most of the workday).
I have a number of passively-cooled silent machines, from metal-chassis rugged subnotebooks popular with the military and field-service techs, to plastic cheapies intended for the student market.
They're all fairly low-spec in absolute terms, but even 4GB of RAM and 64GB of eMMC is adequate to run Win10 and office apps, at least, it was before all the Copilot bloat. And you can buy them as an individual, if you search them out explicitly.
But that's not what the mass market buys when they go shopping. Partly because that's not what Best Buy puts on the shelf, and partly because Microsoft sternly warns that such machines aren't recommended for the AI-encumbered future. Gotta push 40 TOPS and have at least 16GB to get Microsoft's blessing, which I think is the single largest driving force behind the hardware upgrade cycle.
Even a 2015 MacBook for me ran the fan hard almost constantly. First Apple silicon MacBook was silent. Now using an M1 Max MBP from 2021 and external hard drives are the thing making noise on my desk.
A fanless CPU needs more, lower-clocked cores to have the same multi-thread performance as an actively cooled CPU with fewer cores, and higher core count CPUs cost more. So you only get a fanless CPU if you either a) get a low multi-thread performance CPU or b) pay for a high-performance CPU and then get only medium performance out of it by running it fanless. Notice that even Apple's highest performance laptops have fans; fanless there isn't a thing.
But Apple's fanless machines do b) and then they just charge you the premium. There are a few fanless PC laptops that do the same thing, but most people don't want that, because they'd rather save a significant amount of money by getting the same performance out of a less expensive CPU with a fan.
This is oversimplified. It is sustained multithreaded performance that brings throttling with fanless cpu. Anything for a short enough amount of time is fine, and sustained single threaded stuff is also fine. Bursts are also fine. A lot of work that people do on a computer is fine. Fanless doesn't really hurt unless you process large amounts of data in parallel for some time. Performance in a cpu does not only show in this kind of tasks.
I have used both airs and the max versions of macbooks, and the airs are embarrassingly on par for too many things. I understand it may be hard to believe, but one can do actual, serious work on a macbook air.
Of course one could say that ~having~ using the fan is always optional anyway (like the older 13" macbook pro was mostly an air with a fan) and in these types of tasks you may barely hear it. But still I prefer the peace of not ever hearing a fan for my to-go laptop.
Apple silicon is only been around for 5+ years, but people tend to forget how bad Intel macs overheated, throttled and hand tons of other thermal related issues.
I did forget, because a silent laptop is now table stakes for me. I can't imagine buying anything with an audible fan again. I'd rather stay on the hardware I have.
I wouldn’t want a fan on a Windows laptop, for sure. On Linux they are fine as long as the lowest speed is “off,” since they’ll only kick on if you explicitly ask the computer to do something crunchy.
So what? The right amount of performance is what allows you to do what you have to do quickly enough. Anything beyond that is useless. It’s not like you have to use 100% of the theoretical performance of a computer all the time.
The quiet isn’t even the best part of passive cooling. It’s that the cooling will never stop working due to dust clogging fans.
Surely the thermal paste will degrade at some point, right?
well it's really difficult to get internal temperature even to 70 celsius...
Still baffles the mind that Apple solved this issue some 20+ years ago, and others _still_ haven't. I remember being basically surrounded by jet engines running Word in school.
A few years ago in an old job I got a monster-specced Dell laptop, and it would still roar if I opened anything. I had to pull all the nerf tricks through the BIOS to at least keep it somewhat tolerable in low-load scenarios (i.e. most of the workday).
I have a number of passively-cooled silent machines, from metal-chassis rugged subnotebooks popular with the military and field-service techs, to plastic cheapies intended for the student market.
They're all fairly low-spec in absolute terms, but even 4GB of RAM and 64GB of eMMC is adequate to run Win10 and office apps, at least, it was before all the Copilot bloat. And you can buy them as an individual, if you search them out explicitly.
But that's not what the mass market buys when they go shopping. Partly because that's not what Best Buy puts on the shelf, and partly because Microsoft sternly warns that such machines aren't recommended for the AI-encumbered future. Gotta push 40 TOPS and have at least 16GB to get Microsoft's blessing, which I think is the single largest driving force behind the hardware upgrade cycle.
> Apple solved this issue some 20+ years ago
All the i7/i9 Macbook pros that I used back in the day were obnoxiously load. Even when not under particularly heavy load.
Even a 2015 MacBook for me ran the fan hard almost constantly. First Apple silicon MacBook was silent. Now using an M1 Max MBP from 2021 and external hard drives are the thing making noise on my desk.
A fanless CPU needs more, lower-clocked cores to have the same multi-thread performance as an actively cooled CPU with fewer cores, and higher core count CPUs cost more. So you only get a fanless CPU if you either a) get a low multi-thread performance CPU or b) pay for a high-performance CPU and then get only medium performance out of it by running it fanless. Notice that even Apple's highest performance laptops have fans; fanless there isn't a thing.
But Apple's fanless machines do b) and then they just charge you the premium. There are a few fanless PC laptops that do the same thing, but most people don't want that, because they'd rather save a significant amount of money by getting the same performance out of a less expensive CPU with a fan.
This is oversimplified. It is sustained multithreaded performance that brings throttling with fanless cpu. Anything for a short enough amount of time is fine, and sustained single threaded stuff is also fine. Bursts are also fine. A lot of work that people do on a computer is fine. Fanless doesn't really hurt unless you process large amounts of data in parallel for some time. Performance in a cpu does not only show in this kind of tasks.
I have used both airs and the max versions of macbooks, and the airs are embarrassingly on par for too many things. I understand it may be hard to believe, but one can do actual, serious work on a macbook air.
Of course one could say that ~having~ using the fan is always optional anyway (like the older 13" macbook pro was mostly an air with a fan) and in these types of tasks you may barely hear it. But still I prefer the peace of not ever hearing a fan for my to-go laptop.
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I wish I lived in the reality. My 2014 MBP and 2019 MBP’s fans come on quick and loud
Apple silicon is only been around for 5+ years, but people tend to forget how bad Intel macs overheated, throttled and hand tons of other thermal related issues.
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I did forget, because a silent laptop is now table stakes for me. I can't imagine buying anything with an audible fan again. I'd rather stay on the hardware I have.
I wouldn’t want a fan on a Windows laptop, for sure. On Linux they are fine as long as the lowest speed is “off,” since they’ll only kick on if you explicitly ask the computer to do something crunchy.
I appreciate a light whoosh from a laptop.
No fan = leaving performance on the table due to lacking thermal headroom.
If I wanted maximum performance I would use a desktop.
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So what? The right amount of performance is what allows you to do what you have to do quickly enough. Anything beyond that is useless. It’s not like you have to use 100% of the theoretical performance of a computer all the time.
I have no problem if it is the occasional spin up, but it is rare to have system that can do just that.
My Thinkpads seem to only use the fan occasionally but then my work load is very light.