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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?

#81

Post by nerdawson »

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…

I’ve owned an M1 Pro for a month or so and I have yet to hear the fans spin up once. A Google Meet call on my old Intel MBP would have the fans operating at max.

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

#83

Post by sys_64738 »

heelix wrote: post #75

Consider water cooling, if it is a desktop system. I've got a radiator/pump I intend to use for the next gen threadripper when it shows up. A 5950x, at stock speeds, runs without any fans needed. The heat dissipation with the large radiator is enough where the fans won't need to switch on. Combined this with a power supply video card that throttles the fan when not needed, it is absolutely silent. This was a real sho…

Cooling systems inevitably leaks which is why there are leak sensors in the Enterprise devices. Not sure about consumer though.

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

#84

Post by fmajid »

Redoubts wrote: post #71
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…

Meh, the older 12” MacBook (not pro, not air) was also fanless. I miss that 2 lbs design quite a bit.

And it had abysmal performance, unusable for any development task.

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

#85

Post by kyrra »

tjoff wrote: post #76

It is possible, but most often not desirable. I think most surface pro lineups had the i5 being fanless and the i7 with a fan. And that was a problem, because although the performance difference between the i5 and the i7 wasn't that great (most would not pay for the difference) the cooling differences made it night and day. And as someone who loves passive cooling I was forced to recommend the i7 just because it had…

i5, versus i3, versus i7 matters less for fan or fanless compared to the product suffix. That's that letter at the end of the name. U, Y, K, H, etc... Which are decoded on this page: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/processor...

The letter indicate the target application, which then impacts the TDP Intel is targeting (slightly dependent on i3/i5/i7, but maybe not at all). U and Y are the big ones to look at for mobile fan vs fanless. Their definition is:

   Y: Mobile extremely low power
   U: Mobile power efficient
   H: High performance optimized for mobile
Here's the ARK link for 4 10th gen i7 with the above 3 letter (plus one desktop CPU): https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?pro...

TDP (max power draw) based on letter:

   Y: 7 W
   U: 15 W
   H: 45 W
   KF: 125 W (unlocked, Requires discrete graphics)

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

#86

Post by vladvasiliu »

microtonal wrote: post #22
formerly_proven wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> (assuming that you can get one that is compatible with their custom mainboards).

This. I have got an old HP EliteDesk from work. It uses a standard SFF (not sure if it's the right term) PSU, but the motherboard connector is custom. Of course the fan makes a terrible noise. And even if I'm able to find a replacement PSU that would fit in the case (even fanless! - I'm happy with the integrated graphics), I also have to look for an MB connector adaptor.

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

#87

Post by simne »

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,…

Yes, fan is cheaper.

- Copper is one of the most expensive materials, and it is hard enough, and have high melting temperature, so manufacturing also more expensive than from plastics.

When micro computers was inside 15W TDP this was not a problem, as heatsink was tiny, but for modern commodity designs, 25W+, need to use all surface of notebook as heatsink (at least one side of "shell"), this would be very expensive.

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

#88

Post by bytehowl »

guilamu wrote: post #49

My answer: the mind-blowingly cheap, good and passive Acer Swift 1 with a quad-core last gen pentium n6000. I've been buying dozens of those for people at work since 5 years now (first ones with n5000) and I still have to hear a single complaint about it. The only point of failure of that thing is the charging port, proprietary, not usb c.

What is your use case for those?

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

#89

Post by fmajid »

threeseed wrote: post #40
langsoul-com wrote: post #23

M1 is arm, whilst Intel and amd aren't. Perhaps there'll be general laptops with arm chips that won't have fans.

There is nothing inherently special about ARM that makes it use less power. Apple simply invested a huge amount of resources and had the benefit of optimising the SOC specifically for the OS.

Which is why Intel is an also-ran in mobile computing and IoT despite all the ressources it poured into it, I suppose?

The sheer amount of legacy in x86 is why those CPUs are so inefficient and require so much cooling. ARM would not have emerged if not for its superior efficiency.

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

#90

Post by [deleted] »

glandium wrote: post #14
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…

You can do surprising lots with the M1 macbook air (including building Firefox faster than many intel-based laptops), and it doesn't even have openings for airflow.

[deleted]
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