For laptops at least, I appreciate not having fans that sound like a helicopter. I guess for Mac Mini and Mac Studio having more fan noise is acceptable (maybe a switch would be nice). One of the things that I love about my Air is there is zero fan noise all the time. Yes, it throttles, and 99% of the time I don’t notice and don’t care. Yes, I know there are workloads where it would be very noticeable and I would care, but I don’t personally run too many CPU bound tasks.

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zozbot234 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Bigger fans can move a lot more air while being less noisy, so if you care about a silent profile for any given amount of work the Mac Studio (or the Mac Mini if you don't need the full power of a Studio) is the best choice.

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cosmic_cheese 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Same. It’s always disappointing when otherwise promising competing laptops turn out to be considerably more noisy if you’re doing anything more intense than using MS Paint.

It’s probably the single most common corner to cut in x86 laptops. Manufacturers love to shove hot chips into a chassis too thin for them and then toss in whatever cheap tiny-whiny-fan cooling solution they happen to have on hand. Result: laptop sounds like a jet engine when the CPU is being pushed.

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benjiro 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Even something like MS Paint can turn a laptop in to a aircraft.

The issue is actually very simple. In order to gain more performance, manufactures like AMD / Intel for a long time have been in a race for the highest frequency but if you have some knowhow in hardware, you know that higher frequency = more power draw the higher you clock.

So you open your MS Paint, and ... your CPU pushes to 5.2Ghz, and it gets fed 15W on a single core. This creates a heat spike in the sensors, and your fans on laptops, all too often are set to react very fast. And VROOOOEEEEM goes your fan as the CPU Temp sensor hits 80C on a single core, just for a second. But wait, your MS Paint is open, and down goes the fan. And repeat, repeat, repeat ...

Notice how Apple focused on running their CPUs no higher then 4.2Ghz or something... So even if their CPU boosts to 100%, that thermal peak will be maybe 7W.

Now combine that with Apple using a much more tolerant fan / temp sensor setup. They say: 100C is perfectly acceptable. So when your CPU boosts, its not dumping 15W, but only 7W. And because the fan reaction threshold is so high, the fans do not react on any Apple product. Unless you run a single or MT process for a LONG time.

And even then, the fans will only ramp up slowly if your 100C has been going on for a few seconds, and while yes, your CPU will be thermal throttling while the fans spin up. But you do not feel this effect.

That is the real magic of Apple. Yes, their CPUs are masterpieces at how they get so much performance from a lower frequency, but the real kicker is their thermal / fan profile design.

The wife has a old Apple clone laptop from 2018. Thing is for 99.9% of the time silent. No fans, nothing. Because Xiaomi used the same tricks on that laptop, allowing it to boost to the max, without triggering the fan ramping. And when it triggers with a long running process, they use a very low fan rpm until it goes way too high. I had laptops with the same CPU from other brands in the same time periode, and they all had annoying fan profiles. That showed me that a lot of Apple magic is good design around the hardware/software/fan.

But ironically, that magic has been forgotten in later models by Xiaomi ... Tsk!

Manufactures think: Its better if millions of people suffer from more noise, then if we need to have a few thousand laptops that die / get damaged, from too much heat. So ramp up the fans!!!

	▲	cosmic_cheese 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		And as a cherry on top, Apple uses custom fans designed to emit noise in less annoying frequencies and when multiple fans are in play, slightly varies their speeds to avoid harmonizing. So even when they do run, they're not perceived as being as loud at most speeds.
	▲	zozbot234 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You can mostly fix this by running your CPU in "battery saving" mode. CPUs should basically never boost to the 5GHz+ range unless they're doing something that's absolutely latency-critical. It's a huge waste of energy for a negligible increase in performance.

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drob518 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Exactly. They shoot for the highest benchmark score and build something annoying to use on a daily basis.

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TiredOfLife 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is no non Apple desktop/server cpu with faster single core than apple m5 or even m4