best quiet (no fan) Windows laptops - Light or powerful or both - any recommendations please

ToneControl · August 24

As mentioned in my other thread, in 2015 I was looking for a 1kg max laptop with no fan cooling.
I bought a Macbook 12, which used a new low-wattage CPU available then, and it appeared in a few windows laptops, too.
Anyway, the windows machines were basically impossible to find, and I assumed the Apple would hold its value better anyway, so bought it.
To be honest I have found the MacOS quite annoying to use, contrary to the typical narrative. I had thought that getting the Macbook 12 would be an eye opener, but I haven't liked it much. In fact my 2 twenty-ish kids have both also said they prefer windows too.

I've worked away from home less than I expected since then, but the Macbook has been used a lot on holidays, for email, browsing, etc. Also for downloading photos from iCloud or iPhones - the functionality seems to somehow fail repeatedly with almost any combination of windows machine and connection. How strange....
Anyway, the battery needs replacing now, and it would cost as much as the value of the machine. Also Apple stop you using the latest versions of the OS on machines older than 7 years, so you miss out on new Application features, since most apps refuse to install on older OS versions.

So I need a new laptop. I have 3 different possible requirements:

Lightweight laptop. Ideally able to use Outlook or equivalent to access several email accounts, and ideally able to work with Word and Excel documents, and powerpoint I suppose.
More powerful laptop, something with the performance and memory at least comparable with my 6700k 64GB, i.e. CPU benchmark ~9000 multi-threaded and 2500 single thread, and memory of 32GB or more
A replacement for my desktop machine: 6700k 64GB, loads of SSDs and hybrid drives, housing 2TB of samples, plus sessions, loads of HD video, and photos. I use Protools with lots of plugins. Ideally I'd like a silent PC this time. My current one is nearly silent, and I know I can now get even quieter desktop options.

It occurs to me that a high-end laptop might be able to satisfy requirement #3, but last time I tried around 2011, I bought a top-end Dell Precision laptop i7 with 32GB. It was as noisy as hell. I'm assuming that the same is true.
I found a similar more recent Dell Precision for £750 (used) i9 32GB, which benchmarks a 10500 / 2439
I found reviews saying they were noisy. Hmmmm.
I suppose a high-end Mac Book Pro could do this, but they are expensive, and I don't like Macs much.

For #1 there are plenty of options. I know I don't want a Chromebook, I want to install Apps.
A used 2015 Mac book air for £210, £400 for a 2018 one.
Or various new or used PCs.

For £1100 The 2024 M3 Mac book Air 15 inch 8GB/256GB has CPU benchmark of 19540/4833, so should be able to do all the things I need, but I'd need to move my life onto Macs. AFAIK they have fans, but are quiet-ish.

Looking around yesterday for fanless windows laptops for #2, I found a few recent options:

Dell XPS 2-in-1
Microsoft Surface Pro 7 or 7+
Huawei Matebook X - I found the U7 CPU version, 16GB 1TB for £900 new, which benchmarks 25145/3546, comparable to the MBA offerings
Huawei Matebook D - I found the i5 12450H CPU version for £480 new, which benchmarks 17039/3386, comparable to the MBA offerings, I can't tell if it has a fan or not though

Has anyone else found any medium to high spec fanless windows laptops?

Danny1969 · August 24

Most processors that has a decent amount of power get hot so needs a fan ...apart from the Apple silicon like the M1 etc

Apple use a different cooling method that Windows laptops can't really do. With an aluminium laptop the whole laptop is a giant passive exchanger. The motherboard has a very large inner ground plain and heat from the processor is absorbed by this and transferred to the aluminum body of the palm rest via sprung contactors.

Windows laptops are normally made from plastic so all heat has to go to the single point of the radiator and then get taken away by the fan.

There are a few Latitudes I've worked on that have smallish fans but after a while the small fan has to work harder and becomes noisier.

From a design point of view passive cooling is the most effective, requires the least maintenance and is the quietest cooling so it's the construction of the laptop that dictates the cooling really, not the processor

Jfingers · August 24

I was recommended an aluminium bodied laptop by @digitalscream which I'm very happy with. I've no idea if it meets your spec requirement, but it is quiet and quick. Lenovo Yoga.

Axe_meister · August 24

You'll be looking for one of the new ARM based laptops if you don't want a fan.
The new strixpoint AMD laptops should be cooler, but will still require a fab but less noisy

boogieman · August 25

Jfingers said:

I was recommended an aluminium bodied laptop by @digitalscream which I'm very happy with. I've no idea if it meets your spec requirement, but it is quiet and quick. Lenovo Yoga.

Likewise I’ve just bought a Lenovo IdeaPad which has a metal chassis. Seems to have minimal, if any, fan noise. I got an i7 version with 16gb Ram, no idea of the measured performance but it seems lightning quick to me.

FX_Munkee · August 27

The Dell XPS range always used to have a metal chassis. I had a beast of one (game dev spec) a couple of years back and I'm fairly sure that was fanless. Admittedly I'd only have another one if someone else was paying. Mrs Munkee has a small one for work and that's definitely fanless and metal chassis. They're really nice laptops, if you're not paying for it.

Heartfeltdawn · August 27

ToneControl said:

Has anyone else found any medium to high spec fanless windows laptops?

I gave up. My desktop PC runs as near silent as can be thanks to a massive Noctua CPU cooler wih a very low rev fan and a very very quiet PSU. When it came to laptops. I went through a few and took measurements from other people's laptops.

In the end, I settled with Lenovo Ideapads. I have three of them now with the most powerful of the three running a Ryzen 5625U processor (benchmark 14925).

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+5+5625U&id=4760

The fans are quiet and I disable Turbo Boost on all of them to stop them ramping up. I am completely anal about shitty noise levels on laptops and powered speakers. The Lenovos work for me. They aren't the best or the most powerful but they have nt fucked up on me and they do their job quietly.

GoFish · August 27

In my well out of date experience, Apple laptops rule the roost. Lenovo are the only pc brand I would trust.

Heartfeltdawn · August 27

GoFish said:

In my well out of date experience, Apple laptops rule the roost. Lenovo are the only pc brand I would trust.

The Acer Aspires a few years ago with Ryzen processors were impressive. You could really tweak those and get the fan speed down and the DPC latency on the motherboards was low too. Very cool for audio purposes. Now they seem to be Intel processor dominated and these run noisier with less tweakability. I returned one last year as the fan control software was just shit. Honor and Huawei do nice spec laptops but the fan speed tweaks are lousy. Lenovo just do a job decently for me, even the cheaper Ideapads compared to the Thinkpads.

ToneControl · August 28

Any experience with the Ultra 7 or Ultra 9 chips?

ToneControl · September 3

I've paused my search for a fanless windows laptop, I may try something like the Surface Pro 7 plus, not sure.

For now I wanted to get something that is powerful and quietish, with lots of memory.
I found quite a few refurb sellers, then found some that let you spec-up the memory and SSD size.

One of them had a 4core i5, 11th generation CPU, which is pretty low wattage, so I maxxed out the RAM and storage:

Lenovo ThinkPad L14 Gen 2 i5-1145G7 2.60GHz

64GB Ram

2TB SSD

win 11
for ~£500 with a 12 month warranty

Multi-thread rating 9803, single thread 2749

If too noisy, I can let my kids use it
I will try tweaking the settings, if it is quiet enough, I may tolerate it

FX_Munkee · September 4

Had an original (IBM) Thinkpad "back in the day", I think it's still in the loft actually, Took me ages to get used to not having a ."mouse nipple" on the laptops after it. IIRC Lenovo kept them as business machines so hopefully should be well put together.

Had a bit of time on a Surface Pro about 3 years ago. The slimness and lightness was proper sci-fi stuff (and I'm hard to impress) but the typing experience is weird. People seem to get used to it though.

ToneControl · September 23

end result - it's very very quiet unless you hammer it
I'm very pleased with it , other than I wish the screen was a little taller, there is a blank area below the screen.

Jetsam1 · September 23

I have been doing refurbed Lenovo Thinkpads for a while now as for my usage there is nothing better. I can open them and replace parts myself without too much drama as well. Will likely continue down this path.

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best quiet (no fan) Windows laptops - Light or powerful or both - any recommendations please

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Lenovo ThinkPad L14 Gen 2 i5-1145G7 2.60GHz

64GB Ram

2TB SSD