7 ms·

MacBook Air is thin and fanless, so it can be done.

cmeacham98 2y ago
The cheapest MacBook Air is $1000, and it's more like $1500+ if you want a reasonable amount of RAM and storage. There are similarly expensive Windows laptops available that are fanless.
- rafaelmn 2y ago
  Mind linking some (genuinely curious, would like to checkout potential Linux machine for the next upgrade)
  - nov21b 2y ago
    Count me in
  - jacooper 2y ago
    Surface laptop.
    - tedunangst 2y ago
      Not even the arm version of surface laptop is fanless.
  - esperent 2y ago
    The Huawei Mate book X. I think there's a fanless Asus ZenBook too, or the Surface Pro X. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-X-in-review-Ultra-thin-extremely-light-and-absolutely-silent.540313.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-X-in-review-Ul...
- aurareturn 2y ago
  >There are similarly expensive Windows laptops available that are fanless. Such as?
  - phonon 2y ago
    Wait until Lunar Lake comes out.
  - goosedragons 2y ago
    Robo & Kala 2 in 1. Thinkpad x13s Snapdragon which can still be found in a few places.
- hajile 2y ago
  I spent $1700 or so on my M1 Air not too long after they were released. A ThinkPad X1 Carbon would have cost me more money for massively worse performance. Quality costs more. The difference is that a 4800U would be looking pretty bad vs a HX370 while the M1 still looks decent 4 years later (especially when that HX370 is unplugged).
- paulmd 2y ago
  For $1200 you can easily pick up a decent refurb MBP - these are apple refurbs for example. OOS but an example of what you can find if you look around a bit. https://sellout.woot.com/offers/apple-14-macbook-pro-with-10-core-m1-pro-2021open-box-9?ref=mwj_sh_cp_66_plh https://sellout.woot.com/offers/apple-14-macbook-pro-with-10... There’s very little reason to chase the exact latest model when even a 2020/2021 M1 family is still great.
fulafel 2y ago
Many things can be done if you don't have coexist with AV. (Though the use of the fan is always a configuration choice with thermal management in CPUs these days).
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
"Thin and fanless" aren't that hard, just use any low power CPU. But then people also want fast. Apple does this by buying out TSMC's capacity for the latest process nodes and then taking the performance/efficiency trade off in favor of efficiency, so they get something with similar performance and lower power consumption. But then they charge you $400 for $50 worth of RAM and solder it so you can't upgrade it yourself. The thing to realize is that fans are not required to spin, and the difference between the faster and slower processors are the clock speed rather than the transistors. So what you want is exactly what the OP requested: A laptop with fans in it, but you can turn them off. Then the CPU gets capped at a 15W TDP, has basically the same single-thread performance but is slower on threaded workloads, and it's no longer possible for Chrome to make your laptop loud. But if you want to open up Blender you still have the option to move up the fan slider and make it go faster.
- thecompilr 2y ago
  The M1 was made on 5nm which have long been available to AMD and other competitors in volume.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Fast is relative. The Ryzen HX 370 has a TDP configurable down to 15W and at that power level it could be run fanless and would be faster than the M1, but it's still faster yet if you give it 54W and raise the clock speed.
    - aurareturn 2y ago
      I'm going to need source on that. What does HX 370 score at 10w?
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        You're asking for a benchmark result for a CPU which just came out and has a configurable TDP that hardly anybody is going to have set to its lowest value, if they even disclose it, much less have done so in a test against the original M1. If you think a source for that even exists you can provide a link. But the result seems pretty obvious. Even the 7nm Ryzen U-series at 15W (e.g. 7730U) was beating the 5nm M1 on multi-threaded workloads and the HX 370 is well ahead of both on single-thread performance. Single-thread workloads aren't significantly power limited, so to not be the case the Zen5 HX 370 would have to be slower than the Zen3 7730U on threaded workloads at the same TDP, which seems unlikely.

The cheapest MacBook Air is $1000, and it's more like $1500+ if you want a reasonable amount of RAM and storage. There are similarly expensive Windows laptops available that are fanless.

rafaelmn 2y ago
Mind linking some (genuinely curious, would like to checkout potential Linux machine for the next upgrade)
- nov21b 2y ago
  Count me in
- jacooper 2y ago
  Surface laptop.
  - tedunangst 2y ago
    Not even the arm version of surface laptop is fanless.
- esperent 2y ago
  The Huawei Mate book X. I think there's a fanless Asus ZenBook too, or the Surface Pro X. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-X-in-review-Ultra-thin-extremely-light-and-absolutely-silent.540313.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-X-in-review-Ul...
aurareturn 2y ago
>There are similarly expensive Windows laptops available that are fanless. Such as?
- phonon 2y ago
  Wait until Lunar Lake comes out.
- goosedragons 2y ago
  Robo & Kala 2 in 1. Thinkpad x13s Snapdragon which can still be found in a few places.
hajile 2y ago
I spent $1700 or so on my M1 Air not too long after they were released. A ThinkPad X1 Carbon would have cost me more money for massively worse performance. Quality costs more. The difference is that a 4800U would be looking pretty bad vs a HX370 while the M1 still looks decent 4 years later (especially when that HX370 is unplugged).
paulmd 2y ago
For $1200 you can easily pick up a decent refurb MBP - these are apple refurbs for example. OOS but an example of what you can find if you look around a bit. https://sellout.woot.com/offers/apple-14-macbook-pro-with-10-core-m1-pro-2021open-box-9?ref=mwj_sh_cp_66_plh https://sellout.woot.com/offers/apple-14-macbook-pro-with-10... There’s very little reason to chase the exact latest model when even a 2020/2021 M1 family is still great.

fulafel 2y ago

Many things can be done if you don't have coexist with AV. (Though the use of the fan is always a configuration choice with thermal management in CPUs these days).

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

"Thin and fanless" aren't that hard, just use any low power CPU. But then people also want fast. Apple does this by buying out TSMC's capacity for the latest process nodes and then taking the performance/efficiency trade off in favor of efficiency, so they get something with similar performance and lower power consumption. But then they charge you $400 for $50 worth of RAM and solder it so you can't upgrade it yourself. The thing to realize is that fans are not required to spin, and the difference between the faster and slower processors are the clock speed rather than the transistors. So what you want is exactly what the OP requested: A laptop with fans in it, but you can turn them off. Then the CPU gets capped at a 15W TDP, has basically the same single-thread performance but is slower on threaded workloads, and it's no longer possible for Chrome to make your laptop loud. But if you want to open up Blender you still have the option to move up the fan slider and make it go faster.

thecompilr 2y ago
The M1 was made on 5nm which have long been available to AMD and other competitors in volume.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  Fast is relative. The Ryzen HX 370 has a TDP configurable down to 15W and at that power level it could be run fanless and would be faster than the M1, but it's still faster yet if you give it 54W and raise the clock speed.
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    I'm going to need source on that. What does HX 370 score at 10w?
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      You're asking for a benchmark result for a CPU which just came out and has a configurable TDP that hardly anybody is going to have set to its lowest value, if they even disclose it, much less have done so in a test against the original M1. If you think a source for that even exists you can provide a link. But the result seems pretty obvious. Even the 7nm Ryzen U-series at 15W (e.g. 7730U) was beating the 5nm M1 on multi-threaded workloads and the HX 370 is well ahead of both on single-thread performance. Single-thread workloads aren't significantly power limited, so to not be the case the Zen5 HX 370 would have to be slower than the Zen3 7730U on threaded workloads at the same TDP, which seems unlikely.