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Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

#21

Post by traceroute66 »

microtonal wrote: post #18
traceroute66 wrote: post #13

I think most of it is the clue in the name .... laptop. If we move for a minute beyond the direct "hard" technical constraints which have already been expressed here (i.e. small chassis, lots of chips etc.). You have a second aspect, the old PBCAK (Problem Between Chair And Keyboard) one. Users will use their laptops in less than optimal (from a thermal perspective) ways. They will use it on their laps. They will use…

the necessity of forced cooling is still there The MacBook Air M1 is passively cooled. I used an M1 Air for a while (switched to M1 Pro) and it would only throttle slightly during very long builds. There have also been many tests where the MacBook Pro M1 (which does have a fan), the fan only spins up after minutes of loading all cores. The MacBook Air M1 shows that it is possible to have a fast [1], passively cooled…

> The MacBook Air M1 is passively cooled.

Thanks for the correction

My mind was still on the old pre-M1 Air which did have a fan IIRC.

Thanks to you my credit card is trying to tempt me to pull it out of my wallet. ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

#22

Post by microtonal »

formerly_proven wrote: post #9
mjevans wrote: post #4

Weight and power density are the biggest issues. Some of the lower end APUs (think tablet mode) might work out, but to literally be usable on top of a lap they aren't allowed to get that hot. Tablets mostly spend their energy budget (under normal operation) on illuminating the screen and most of the action content they see would either classify as webpages or video encoded with codecs they have hardware support for d…

> You can blame the noise of the fan on the push for crazy flat laptops though. There's no reason a still light but thicker laptop couldn't use a larger slower moving fan. Well, other than the perception of thick as heavy and thus bad. FWIW I've taken apart many laptops over many generations and the general trend seems to be that OEMs always use a cooling solution that's just-so good enough, regardless of available s…

When you give an OEM a 40 % reduction in power through a new CPU generation

It's the same with workstations. Although they have plenty of room, but OEMs often install barely-capable CPU coolers that are noisy (rather than something like a large Noctua cooler that can keep most CPUs cool with barely any noise). Or another big annoyance: many OEMs (even reputable brands like Dell) install a PSU that is just enough for the load. If you want to replace the GPU by something that requires a bit more power, you'll end up replacing the PSU as well (assuming that you can get one that is compatible with their custom mainboards).

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

#24

Post by capableweb »

nwatson wrote: post #19

(As for your OS needs, using UTM you can run Windows 11 ARM Edition on Apple M1 MacBook Pro.)

I'm not sure running a unsupported OS on a device made by a company that famously don't support any software not made by them is a great idea for a device you mainly want to be productive with. You're better off just voting with your wallet for devices that support multiple OSes.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

#25

Post by capableweb »

arketyp wrote: post #11

The Huawei Matebook X looks good to me. I was really disappointed with the fan behavior of my Thinkpad X1 Nano -- constantly spinning, and loudly. I use third-party software to control it now. Having the fan spin for writing an email is just ridiculous.

> Having the fan spin for writing an email is just ridiculous

What program are you using for writing said emails? That matters more than what user action you're performing.

As a reference, using gmail in firefox makes my X1 very loud too, but I've moved to Thunderbird as of late and it's much more careful about resource usage.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

#26

Post by microtonal »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #5

For the same reason the macbook pro, mac mini, ... have a fan. > Is it impossible to passively cool i5, i7 (integrated graphics)? Obviously not, but same as with the M1 in the air and in the pro: fan=more power and heat available. Add the fact that in many devices you have to try really, really hard to be even able to hear the fans adding them is a no brainer.

but same as with the M1 in the air and in the pro: fan=more power and heat available

The MacBook Air M1 does not have a fan, it's passively cooled. The fan in the MacBook Pro M1 (non-Pro/Max) and Mac Mini M1 spins up very rarely.

Add the fact that in many devices you have to try really, really hard to be even able to hear

Then you have a lot of ambient noise. Everything from Intel MacBook Airs, Intel MacBook Pro 16" to Lenovo laptops make quite a bit of noise when under load (where 'load' can also mean something simple like a video call). Once you are used to a quiet machine (like an M1 Mac), it can be very annoying.

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

#29

Post by microtonal »

CiaranMcNulty wrote: post #20
microtonal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the necessity of forced cooling is still there The MacBook Air M1 is passively cooled. I used an M1 Air for a while (switched to M1 Pro) and it would only throttle slightly during very long builds. There have also been many tests where the MacBook Pro M1 (which does have a fan), the fan only spins up after minutes of loading all cores. The MacBook Air M1 shows that it is possible to have a fast [1], passively cooled…

I could count the number of times my M1 (13") MBP's fans have kicked in over the last year on two hands, and in most cases when I investigate there's some rogue process running thrashing some of the cores (looking at you, Fusion360)

My experience with the Mac Mini M1 is the same. We bought a Mini for our daughter. I use it sometimes to benchmark stuff on the vanilla M1. I don't think the fan every spun up.

I can get the fans to spin up easily on my MacBook Pro 14" (M1 Pro), e.g. when building a large project like PyTorch. Luckily, the fans are not very loud. I can't hear it at the office (plenty of ambient noise), though I can hear it sometimes in our home office.

Passive cooling is one of the reasons I recommend people to get the M1 Air, unless they need 8 performance cores or > 16GB RAM. A completely quiet laptop is such a nice feature. I hope that they keep the Air passively cooled in the future.

Edit: >= corrected to >

Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few fanless laptops with Intel/AMD?

#30

Post by Gorgo »

traceroute66 wrote: post #13

I think most of it is the clue in the name .... laptop. If we move for a minute beyond the direct "hard" technical constraints which have already been expressed here (i.e. small chassis, lots of chips etc.). You have a second aspect, the old PBCAK (Problem Between Chair And Keyboard) one. Users will use their laptops in less than optimal (from a thermal perspective) ways. They will use it on their laps. They will use…

The base of the laptop is the part of the machine being put on the lap/blanket/pillow/duvet while the lid sticks up in the air. A solution would be to put either the radiator (hard) or heat-producing hardware (easier) in the lid (with some insulation between the hot parts and the screen), making it a bit thicker and with that more stable. This also keeps the heat away from the battery which should make it last longer.
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