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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?

#61

Post by [deleted] »

hddherman wrote: post #58
c0l0 wrote: post #10

Yeah, I am disappointed that fanless devices have been on the retreat these past several years. My wife's previous laptop was a Lenovo Yoga 710, with a fanless Intel Core m3-6Y30 (Skylake, 2 cores with HT). Performance was more than adequate for her work as a scientist. My current laptop is a Xiaomi Mi Air 12.5, with the same CPU installed. It's powerful enough for everything I do on the go. If I were to replace it,…

To go fully passive while keeping the same amount of performance you need to use much more material, so in this case copper and/or aluminium. Moving that air around with a relatively cheap fan works well enough and allows for a smaller build. This is also why it's generally recommended to go with a classic air cooler that just has the fan speed set to the lowest level over passive air coolers in desktop PC-s. It's st…

[deleted]

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

#62

Post by stavros »

capableweb wrote: post #56
arketyp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figure, basically, that I should be able to do whatever things I do on my phone without the fan spinning.

Sorry, I think maybe I misunderstood or something similar. I thought we were talking about laptops that use active cooling, not smartphones with passive cooling.

I think the GP meant "my laptop should be able to do the same things as my phone without the laptop fan spinning".

This ignores how much more wasteful with resources developers are on the desktop, though.

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

#63

Post by jhpaul »

Daegalus wrote: post #12

I was in need of this a while ago. the best I found was the Surface Pro 7 with the i5. it's fanless. runs super well, I installed Linux on it. other than that, everything else I find has weak Celerons in it.

I've run the Surface Pro 7 i5 since 2019, which replaced a SP4 i5 (though that had a fan, which I'd tuned to almost never come on). For most things it's more than enough and always silent. I sometimes point a fan at it if I'm doing something heavier or driving external displays.

For, I think, $799 with pen and keyboard its a great mobile machine and remote terminal. If I could go back in time I'd maybe spring for the 16/256gb upgrade, though that was more than double the price.

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

#64

Post by 0des »

ksec wrote: post #15

>Is it impossible to passively cool i5, i7 (integrated graphics)? No it is not. Why do they not sell one? Because passively cooled x86 CPU doesn't run every fast enough (yet) which leads to poor sales number. May be a few more years. When both IPC and node improvement catch up.

Pixelbook was an i7 passively cooled. Worked fine for compiling and virtualization etc. Can't remember it ever throttling. Also very thin. Made of plastic and I think either magnesium or aluminum but mostly plastic.

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

#65

Post by replygirl »

Gorgo wrote: post #30
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…

oh no, it keeps falling over!

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

#66

Post by [deleted] »

bornfreddy wrote: post #54
ataru wrote: post #6

I think it is market forces. Fanless laptops can be made, but the bulk of the market seeks reasonable performance at the best price. I think it doesn't matter much, as you can take a standard laptop and restrict the clock speed, and the fan will never turn on.

Does that really work? I would expect the fan to kick in based on temperature, not cpu frequency? Or do you mean restricting clock speed based on temperature?

[deleted]

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

#67

Post by replygirl »

bornfreddy wrote: post #54
ataru wrote: post #6

I think it is market forces. Fanless laptops can be made, but the bulk of the market seeks reasonable performance at the best price. I think it doesn't matter much, as you can take a standard laptop and restrict the clock speed, and the fan will never turn on.

Does that really work? I would expect the fan to kick in based on temperature, not cpu frequency? Or do you mean restricting clock speed based on temperature?

the fan turns on because the cpu gets hot, the cpu gets hot because it’s doing more work, slow the cpu down and it does less work. downclocking to keep the fans from kicking on is the same thing as thermal throttling, just earlier

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

#68

Post by replygirl »

skrebbel wrote: post #36

Intel used to have a CPU line called the "Core m" which allowed fanless use. I had Lenovo laptop with one and i loved it. But they were hard to find then already, and i think they discontinued the line. My theory is that reviewers and benchmarkers don't care enough about "fanless" and gave them bad reviews ("slow for the price") while not highlighting the major advantage that being fanless is.

iirc they discontinued those because most of the sales were to apple for the 12” macbook, but they still essentially make that product tier as lower power i-series

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

#69

Post by microtonal »

pstadler wrote: post #53
microtonal wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mind was still on the old pre-M1 Air which did have a fan IIRC. And the fan on the Intel Air was loud and the CPU performance not great :(. The Intel Air and the M1 Air are like night and day. Even though I have the 14" Pro now, IMO the MacBook Air M1 is the most revolutionary Mac of the past decade, if not more.

Used an MBA M1 for a year before switching to a MBP 14" M1 Pro. The MBA is the best laptop I‘ve ever had. Fanless, light, insane battery life, always cool and blazingly fast. No noticeable difference between the M1 (8/7 16GB) vs. M1 Pro (10/14 32GB) in daily use, although I don’t usually depend on long running processes going full throttle. I believe the entry-level MBA is the best laptop you can buy when it comes to…

Fanless, light, insane battery life, always cool and blazingly fast. No noticeable difference between the M1 (8/7 16GB) vs. M1 Pro (10/14 32GB) in daily use

Indeed. I only got the M1 Pro because I often do larger builds and two AMX (matrix multiplication) units is nice for some machine learning tasks. Other than that, I liked the Air more.

I hope that they carry over some features of the Pro to the next generation Air, in particular MagSafe, supporting more than one external 4k/5k display, and perhaps >16GB, and it would be so perfect.

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

#70

Post by wildrhythms »

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…

Has Apple cracked the code with the M1 Air? It's light. It runs a 'heavy OS'. Three's no fans, and no noise.
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