5 ms·

Ask HN: Why aren't laptops evaluated with a plot of performance vs. fan noise?

55 points by amichail 4y ago

Nobody wants to use a laptop that has high performance but also fan noise for extended periods of time.

DiabloD3 4y ago
Gamers Nexus has done such testing for GPUs, dB adjusted performance numbers. No reason you can't for laptops.
user32489318 4y ago
[dead]
nydev 4y ago
I like the reviews at https://www.notebookcheck.net/ https://www.notebookcheck.net/ because they do measure fan noise.
- tstrimple 4y ago
  The fan noise and laptop hot zones are two of the reasons I always check that site. Many laptops will serve as an adequate substitute for long term birth control if you actually use it on your lap.
  - rak111esh 4y ago
    Or a replacement for room heater. Proud owner of HP Pavilion DV5-1106AX which got me through winters of 2008-12 when I was broke.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
NotebookCheck[1] does extensive fan noise, chassis heat, and hot air distribution tests. It also performs display colorimetry and calibration, display PWM tests, Wi-Fi and SD card slot (if present) speed tests, basic teardowns, extended performance tests (accounting for PL1/PL2 limits), combined CPU + GPU performance tests on a veritable battery of benchmarks from games and renderers to industrial benchmark suites on a variety of resolutions and settings. [1]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/ https://www.notebookcheck.net/
- scns 4y ago
  Thank you and sibling very much for that recommendation! They l show noise levels per frequency band. I skimmed several reviews on that site in the past but never saw that. Reason is they were their equally great mobile phone reviews, which i read to check for blueish tint of displays. For GPU noise comparison, techpowerup.com does it best. Pick the latest test of the model you are interested in -> Go to the Noise emissions page -> Directly compare against all other boards with that chip they measured.
- M911T 4y ago
  They are great, but they don't review many laptops.
steve1977 4y ago
Apple MacBooks: what fan noise?
- warrenm 4y ago
  beat me to it :P
- chainwax 4y ago
  Macbook Air performance / fan noise... Error
- wjdp 4y ago
  Was sitting between two Intel macbooks the other day, like sitting between two hoovers, they haven't all gone away yet!
  - ja27 4y ago
    The last Intel MacBook was discontinued 16 months ago
    - brokenmachine 4y ago
      The horror of using a laptop 16 months old!
dathinab 4y ago
There is not specific reason I think. But consider that a lot of people live in environments so loud that for a lot of laptops the max fan noise is at best a mild nuisance, at least with modern laptops. Also a lot of laptop gaming is done with headphones. Then there is the problem that measuring fan noise is harder to do then measuring performance, for the first you just have to run benchmarks in a "normal" temperate room, for the later you need a consistent not too loud noise environment.
PBondurant 4y ago
IMO title is clickbaity; it's a statement-of-opinion-masquerading-as-a-question. Effectively the parent is saying 'fan noise is up there with performance as my most important metric in a laptop'. This may be true for the OP, but it's by no means a universal consideration. Personally, battery life comes before fan noise for me as a metric. YMMV.
- scarface74 4y ago
  To a first approximation, if the fan is going (and using energy) because the CPU is running hot under load (using energy), doesn’t that give you a hint about battery efficiency?
  - jononor 4y ago
    Two laptop model with the same CPU can have big differences in thermal design, which impacts a lot the fan noise but battery efficiency only in a marginal way.
    - a1445c8b 4y ago
      Sounds like you’ve just supported the point about fan noise being a good approximation for battery efficiency.
warrenm 4y ago
"Nobody"? How much "fan noise"? Compared to what? An anechoic sensory deprivation chamber? A jack hammer outside the office building? Your refrigerator? Car tires at highway speed?
- grecy 4y ago
  > How much "fan noise"? Compared to what? It doesn't need to be "compared" to anything. Just a chart of noise in dB vs. performance would suffice. That way you can glance at the chart and say "at this performance level, I can expect it to make this much noise"
  - warrenm 4y ago
    It does need to be compared to something - 72dB is "loud" in a quiet room It's pretty "quiet" in other contexts
    - qup 4y ago
      It can just be measured and reported, and the user can decide for themselves?
      - warrenm 4y ago
        Honestly, almost no one understands decibels ... beyond "less if better" (for some things) :) I took a whole semester class in college on the physics of sound - decibels and loudness are just bleeding weird :)
- klodolph 4y ago
  You don’t really need to compare it to anything other than the 0dBSPL reference point. Standardize a laptop setup and environment, pick a listening position, measure dbSPL. A good position might be “1m from the center of the laptop base, at an elevation of 45°, while the laptop is on a flat, hard desk”. You know, more or less how people use laptops. Obviously you can go loose or specific with the description of the listening setup. You could standardize the room, you could standardize the desk, etc. I think the desk probably should be there, since it will reflect fan noise, and closer match actual laptop usage. You measure the A-weighted fan noise under different loads and publish something like dB SPL versus W graph.
100721 4y ago
I do not care about fan noise because I am always listening to music. I'd rather have much higher performance for louder fans.
- gowld 4y ago
  ? I do care about fan noise because I am always listening to music.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- arglebargle123 4y ago
  Similar sentiment: who cares about laptop fan noise when I'm already wearing noise cancelling headphones?
CrypticShift 4y ago
There are other variables - Room temperature: It makes a difference whether it is summer or winter. - Throttling ratio : A lot of laptops will lower the CPU speed rather than keep the fan running for a prolonged time, or am I wrong ?
gowld 4y ago
silentpcreview.com abandoned their mission :-(
rozab 4y ago
Because most people gaming on laptops are using beefy headphones. Quiet operation is a luxury anyway. You don't buy a laptop to be quiet, you buy a laptop to perform the workloads you need (for which you need performance). People who are budget constrained usually want the best possible performance for the price.
- brokenmachine 4y ago
  I buy a laptop to be quiet. If I can't get a quiet one, I don't buy that laptop. If no laptop performs the workload I want without noise, then I use a quiet desktop, or remotely connect to the loud machine in another location.
mindslight 4y ago
Computer review methodology is terribly anti-scientific in general. For example, look at all the pomp and circumstance around reviews of desktop PC coolers - we used this motherboard and this RAM with this case in a room this temperature blah blah. Whereas the physical reality is that thermal resistance (degrees temperature rise per watt dissipated) sidesteps all of that. The right way to characterize a cooler would be to use a constant heat source to measure the thermal resistance (via temperature) and noise while varying the fan RPM, and create a simple graph that could be straightforwardly compared. But then they wouldn't be able to focus on a subjective narrative supporting whatever manufacturer paid them to write the article.
williamstein 4y ago
"The main thing I worry about in my computer is - it doesn't have to be big and powerful, although I like that - it really has to be completely silent." - Linus Torvalds. https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/cnz6a3/it_really_has_to_be_completely_silent_linus/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/cnz6a3/it_rea...
- Whatarethese 4y ago
  This is why I bought a M2 MacBook Air. Silence is truly golden.
throwayyy479087 4y ago
Because Macbook Airs have that market cornered
2Gkashmiri 4y ago
hey. anyone wanna help me? i bought a used laptop "lenovo ideapad" ryzen 3 something. Am running kde neon. The only problem, the FANS ARE 100% ALL THE TIME. it gets tiring pretty fast because the jet blower of the fan is supposed to come up during heavy load but not all the time. i tried pwmconfig but it couldn't find fans. Same for other utilities. They just don't recognize the fans. Could it be a hardware issue or a software one beacause the fans are working fine, they just don't modulate.
throwaway675309 4y ago
I'd much rather see sustained performance under peak load with respect to power throttling. A laptop with a 4 GHz CPU is worthless if you can only run at that clock speed for bursts of a few seconds at a time.
- brokenmachine 4y ago
  A powerful CPU is not worthless if you only run demanding things every now and then. I bought a powerful CPU not because I wanted to calculate pi continuously all day long, but so when I did do something demanding it was able to do that in a reasonable time. 99% of the time my CPU is running <10% usage. Same with most people I'd think.

55 points by amichail 4y ago

Nobody wants to use a laptop that has high performance but also fan noise for extended periods of time.

DiabloD3 4y ago

Gamers Nexus has done such testing for GPUs, dB adjusted performance numbers. No reason you can't for laptops.

user32489318 4y ago

[dead]

nydev 4y ago

I like the reviews at https://www.notebookcheck.net/ https://www.notebookcheck.net/ because they do measure fan noise.

tstrimple 4y ago
The fan noise and laptop hot zones are two of the reasons I always check that site. Many laptops will serve as an adequate substitute for long term birth control if you actually use it on your lap.
- rak111esh 4y ago
  Or a replacement for room heater. Proud owner of HP Pavilion DV5-1106AX which got me through winters of 2008-12 when I was broke.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

delta_p_delta_x 4y ago

NotebookCheck[1] does extensive fan noise, chassis heat, and hot air distribution tests. It also performs display colorimetry and calibration, display PWM tests, Wi-Fi and SD card slot (if present) speed tests, basic teardowns, extended performance tests (accounting for PL1/PL2 limits), combined CPU + GPU performance tests on a veritable battery of benchmarks from games and renderers to industrial benchmark suites on a variety of resolutions and settings. [1]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/ https://www.notebookcheck.net/

scns 4y ago
Thank you and sibling very much for that recommendation! They l show noise levels per frequency band. I skimmed several reviews on that site in the past but never saw that. Reason is they were their equally great mobile phone reviews, which i read to check for blueish tint of displays. For GPU noise comparison, techpowerup.com does it best. Pick the latest test of the model you are interested in -> Go to the Noise emissions page -> Directly compare against all other boards with that chip they measured.
M911T 4y ago
They are great, but they don't review many laptops.

steve1977 4y ago

Apple MacBooks: what fan noise?

warrenm 4y ago
beat me to it :P
chainwax 4y ago
Macbook Air performance / fan noise... Error
wjdp 4y ago
Was sitting between two Intel macbooks the other day, like sitting between two hoovers, they haven't all gone away yet!
- ja27 4y ago
  The last Intel MacBook was discontinued 16 months ago
  - brokenmachine 4y ago
    The horror of using a laptop 16 months old!

dathinab 4y ago

There is not specific reason I think. But consider that a lot of people live in environments so loud that for a lot of laptops the max fan noise is at best a mild nuisance, at least with modern laptops. Also a lot of laptop gaming is done with headphones. Then there is the problem that measuring fan noise is harder to do then measuring performance, for the first you just have to run benchmarks in a "normal" temperate room, for the later you need a consistent not too loud noise environment.

PBondurant 4y ago

IMO title is clickbaity; it's a statement-of-opinion-masquerading-as-a-question. Effectively the parent is saying 'fan noise is up there with performance as my most important metric in a laptop'. This may be true for the OP, but it's by no means a universal consideration. Personally, battery life comes before fan noise for me as a metric. YMMV.

scarface74 4y ago
To a first approximation, if the fan is going (and using energy) because the CPU is running hot under load (using energy), doesn’t that give you a hint about battery efficiency?
- jononor 4y ago
  Two laptop model with the same CPU can have big differences in thermal design, which impacts a lot the fan noise but battery efficiency only in a marginal way.
  - a1445c8b 4y ago
    Sounds like you’ve just supported the point about fan noise being a good approximation for battery efficiency.

warrenm 4y ago

"Nobody"? How much "fan noise"? Compared to what? An anechoic sensory deprivation chamber? A jack hammer outside the office building? Your refrigerator? Car tires at highway speed?

grecy 4y ago
> How much "fan noise"? Compared to what? It doesn't need to be "compared" to anything. Just a chart of noise in dB vs. performance would suffice. That way you can glance at the chart and say "at this performance level, I can expect it to make this much noise"
- warrenm 4y ago
  It does need to be compared to something - 72dB is "loud" in a quiet room It's pretty "quiet" in other contexts
  - qup 4y ago
    It can just be measured and reported, and the user can decide for themselves?
    - warrenm 4y ago
      Honestly, almost no one understands decibels ... beyond "less if better" (for some things) :) I took a whole semester class in college on the physics of sound - decibels and loudness are just bleeding weird :)
klodolph 4y ago
You don’t really need to compare it to anything other than the 0dBSPL reference point. Standardize a laptop setup and environment, pick a listening position, measure dbSPL. A good position might be “1m from the center of the laptop base, at an elevation of 45°, while the laptop is on a flat, hard desk”. You know, more or less how people use laptops. Obviously you can go loose or specific with the description of the listening setup. You could standardize the room, you could standardize the desk, etc. I think the desk probably should be there, since it will reflect fan noise, and closer match actual laptop usage. You measure the A-weighted fan noise under different loads and publish something like dB SPL versus W graph.

100721 4y ago

I do not care about fan noise because I am always listening to music. I'd rather have much higher performance for louder fans.

gowld 4y ago
? I do care about fan noise because I am always listening to music.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
arglebargle123 4y ago
Similar sentiment: who cares about laptop fan noise when I'm already wearing noise cancelling headphones?

CrypticShift 4y ago

There are other variables - Room temperature: It makes a difference whether it is summer or winter. - Throttling ratio : A lot of laptops will lower the CPU speed rather than keep the fan running for a prolonged time, or am I wrong ?

gowld 4y ago

silentpcreview.com abandoned their mission :-(

rozab 4y ago

Because most people gaming on laptops are using beefy headphones. Quiet operation is a luxury anyway. You don't buy a laptop to be quiet, you buy a laptop to perform the workloads you need (for which you need performance). People who are budget constrained usually want the best possible performance for the price.

brokenmachine 4y ago
I buy a laptop to be quiet. If I can't get a quiet one, I don't buy that laptop. If no laptop performs the workload I want without noise, then I use a quiet desktop, or remotely connect to the loud machine in another location.

mindslight 4y ago

Computer review methodology is terribly anti-scientific in general. For example, look at all the pomp and circumstance around reviews of desktop PC coolers - we used this motherboard and this RAM with this case in a room this temperature blah blah. Whereas the physical reality is that thermal resistance (degrees temperature rise per watt dissipated) sidesteps all of that. The right way to characterize a cooler would be to use a constant heat source to measure the thermal resistance (via temperature) and noise while varying the fan RPM, and create a simple graph that could be straightforwardly compared. But then they wouldn't be able to focus on a subjective narrative supporting whatever manufacturer paid them to write the article.

williamstein 4y ago

"The main thing I worry about in my computer is - it doesn't have to be big and powerful, although I like that - it really has to be completely silent." - Linus Torvalds. https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/cnz6a3/it_really_has_to_be_completely_silent_linus/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/cnz6a3/it_rea...

Whatarethese 4y ago
This is why I bought a M2 MacBook Air. Silence is truly golden.

throwayyy479087 4y ago

Because Macbook Airs have that market cornered

2Gkashmiri 4y ago

hey. anyone wanna help me? i bought a used laptop "lenovo ideapad" ryzen 3 something. Am running kde neon. The only problem, the FANS ARE 100% ALL THE TIME. it gets tiring pretty fast because the jet blower of the fan is supposed to come up during heavy load but not all the time. i tried pwmconfig but it couldn't find fans. Same for other utilities. They just don't recognize the fans. Could it be a hardware issue or a software one beacause the fans are working fine, they just don't modulate.

throwaway675309 4y ago

I'd much rather see sustained performance under peak load with respect to power throttling. A laptop with a 4 GHz CPU is worthless if you can only run at that clock speed for bursts of a few seconds at a time.

brokenmachine 4y ago
A powerful CPU is not worthless if you only run demanding things every now and then. I bought a powerful CPU not because I wanted to calculate pi continuously all day long, but so when I did do something demanding it was able to do that in a reasonable time. 99% of the time my CPU is running <10% usage. Same with most people I'd think.