I absolutely hate it. It throttles constantly even after undervolting it. I had to do a bunch of black magic to get it to sleep properly (which is evidently happening to every Dell) and eventually gave up on that and just set it to hibernate any time the lids closed (it's 32gb so that adds about 30 seconds to the start up time). I've spent more time tweaking this thing, reading forums and reddit about how to make it perform DECENTLY than I did building my last hackintosh and I don't enjoy that experience ever. When you get past all these issues it's still Windows 10 which I just find to be the most annoying OS I've ever used.
Just got my new MBP yesterday and couldn't be more excited to be back on osx. I do really, really wish my MBP was smaller and a 2 in 1, though.
I have a Dell Precision 7540 that I was having issues getting sleep to work. It would panic on resuming I think because of WiFi but I couldn't fix it. So I enabled "hybrid-sleep" which is like hibernate and sleep together. Before it sleeps, it flushes the RAM to disk. When it wakes up, it tries to boot from RAM and, if successful, it deletes the hibernation data. But if it crashes before it deletes the files, you just reboot and it resumes from disk. So I never "lose" my status but 95% of the time my computer resumes normally.
There are certainly other frustrating bits with Linux, but at least the flexibility to fix the issues is within your grasp. That was my biggest gripe with OSX and Windows. You just aren't always able the fix the issue and it's very mentally painful (for me). :P
I went back to macbooks ~1 month ago. The Dell is still brand new (4 months old, ~4000$ fully spec'ed), but my employer does not want it back, so it is now sitting in a drawer in my office.
I ended up billing my employer for the ~120h I spent on "configuring" the laptop over the 4 months. With that included, the laptop costed my employer about 14.000$.
Now I'm using my personal 2013 macbook air instead, and am finally able to get something done, yet I'm not happy with having to use my own laptop for work.
Had they buy me a macbook for 1.500$ instead, like I requested, that would have saved them ~13.000$ + my lost respect + my continued lost respect for requiring me to use my own 7 year old personal laptop for work.
The people for whom Ubuntu works usually have fewer requirements or are not as particular about things working _just right_.
That’s not to say I haven’t had issues with Arch, but there were fewer and they were easier to figure out.
Now if you want a distro where you can update packages without manual intervention several times a year, then it’s probably best to look past Arch.
> Arch was the best distro I could find that used the latest kernel by default. Audio worked there.
That mirrors the experiences I’ve had. Most distros ship with broken old software and custom patches that make troubleshooting a nightmare. They also don’t have the resources to support the wide variety of hardware out there. Microsoft spends billions on Windows and vendors spend billions of their own to make sure hardware is mostly plug and play.
In Linux land, the mainstream distros ship with fragile duct-taped components that work if you’re lucky but are a complete pain to troubleshoot and are a bigger pain as time goes on and you have major upgrades.
Arch is the only sane distro with wide adoption and it’s a joy to use. I get the latest kernel with its bug fixes and hardware support. Packages are updated on a rolling basis so there are a few instances every year where I need to manually intervene, but not major breakages every 2 years.
Granted, it’s not for everyone. You have to recreate the fragile duct-taped components you get in other distros, which is an investment of time. You will know how and why your computer works though and will not have to resort to the Ubuntu stack exchange (or their other communities) for the magic formula that will fix your issues.
I’m hoping we can change hearts one by one with this message: Arch is not scary; it might solve the problems you’ve been having :D
Laughing in Fedora. Out of curiosity how much "mainstream distros" did you use?
Arch was the best distro I could find that used the latest kernel by default. Audio worked there.
Really? I love my XPS 7390 2-in-1, it's the best laptop I've used and owned by far and that includes Macbooks. Combined with a WD19TB dock (and a useful trick of flipping it around so it's an inverted L) it makes a great work from home setup. Its thermal profile is relatively aggressive by default but it should stay at 15W (and ~65 degree temps) indefinitely. Upping the power limit to 25W (like the Windows / Dell "Ultra Performance" mode does) and it appears it can maintain that too. I mean, Crysis can even run on the thing [1].
That said, I'd probably lose my mind if I had to run Windows on it. A suggestion for getting good old S3 sleep to work: enable the hack for reenabling S3 sleep in the Windows registry, then disable "Early Signs of Life / Dell Logo" in the BIOS [2]. I'm not sure if this will work on Windows, but it works flawlessly on Arch.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MXS_KJf_M0 [2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_2-in-1_(739...
It's been awhile since I played with this but I don't believe I was able to bump my voltage to 25w on Ice Lake. Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe I'll do a fresh install and give it a try again. I've heard a few comments where peoples 7390 2in1s were running great but on /r/dell I've seen a lot more with complaints like mine.
I did get some improvement by dropping the thermal/power plan from High Performance down to Quiet. That seems to keep the thermals down so it triggers throttling less.
My problem is it throttles constantly and has other issues where if you move it (lift it up) while it's under load it will immediately throttle and I trigger it sitting on my lap a lot.
I bought it hoping I could run a bunch of VMs (thus the 32gb) and do light development work on it but I can barely even draw in Figma without having a rough experience so I completely gave up on developing on it.
This is a really good article https://getpocket.com/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.playerz...
Single core turbo 3.9GHz, maintains indefinitely, temperature hovers around ~75 degrees, fans around 5000RPM
All core turbo: Keeps 3.4GHz and ~45W TDP for around 10 seconds, before dropping to 2.7GHz and ~25W TDP indefinitely. Temps still around ~75, with the fans around 8000 RPM.
That's without any undervolting, but with the processor set for 25W TDP (like the Windows "Ultra Performance" mode). Adding in some undervolting gets the all core turbo up to 2.9GHz.
[1] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/196597/...
The only bad thing is that it requires a kernel extension so will stop working when they are deprecated in 10.16. Hopefully Apple introduces a similar feature as there were rumours of a "Pro" mode coming which would ramp up the fans and clock, my hope is they add a complementary "quiet" mode or similar to disable turbo boost.
Pretty much all 15" laptops with 45W Intel CPUs turn into jet engines when under load, at least in my experience.
Also not to defend Apple but I do find the MacBook Pro cools down and gets quieter quicker than the Dell does although that could down to my personal setup (tools, configuration, etc). Could be the more powerful Nvidia dGPU on the Dell although I am talking purely CPU workload however with the shared thermal solution the Dell has it could be a bigger factor than I think?
As long as people buy for sleekness first and thermals second this is the outcome you get.
It is possible to buy thicker/bulkier laptops that do a much better job at passive cooling and so don't get so loud.
Personally I prefer the lighter/slimmer laptops for easier portability and am fine with the trade off of them being louder and thermal throttling a bit under load but I appreciate not everyone feels the same as me.
Apple tunes itself to spin down it's fans later, which is why you're noticing this.
This is because when the average user runs a cpu intensive task it is unlikely you will run another one seconds later, so the cpu can cool off without all the fan noise.
https://youtu.be/LGOmbNRlZdM?t=495 (8:15)
And I've always gotten better battery life on average on MacBooks than other laptops, and in macOS than in Windows on the same Mac.
The problem is when there are bugs (of which there are many) in the other higher-level daemons and third-party apps that get stuck in some task and cause the CPU to unnecessarily shoot up.
For example I try to do things like renice +20 for every Steam process, because it's a bad macOS citizen and suddenly shoots up to 100% CPU for no reason, but it doesn't help until I terminate them. Even the TextInput etc. daemons get randomly wonky and have to be terminated.
The core thermal management of macOS seems to be better than Windows on the same mac device
As an aside the 2019 redesign of the Mac Pro likely has the best thermal design we've seen from Apple by far. I often wonder what an actual mobile workstation laptop from Apple would look like, I'm talking at least three times the thickness, hardy case/screen, great thermal design, and huge battery. It would be niche but fantastic.
Keep in mind Intel marketing as well which advertises CPU with way less heat than they expose in real life.
The way you have this machines is because apple is commercial company and they should follow market demands.
"10 cores", "silent": you can only choose one.
If you want a reliable silent machine, use the proper tool for the job. I.e. mac mini / imac. There is the only way to get proper cooling. You can't have silent cooling in your laptop. Especially if it's "a top spec".
No. It's "10 cores", "silent", "5mm thick": choose two. Personally I don't see the point in having a laptop thinner than 20mm. I would pay very good money for a 25mm thick, reasonably powerful laptop with super quiet cooling.
The Thinkpad T440s was dead quiet. It was the first generation of thinkpads with a 15W CPU instead of 35W. A current mobile CPU configured to 15W TDP would be powerful enough for basically any task that you would throw at a single computer. Instead of keeping things quiet, manufacturers focus on making laptops thin enough to replace a knife.
On current laptops, the noise level tends to follow the system load very closely. Just putting a bit more thermal mass into the cooling system would allow for a much more steady noise level, which is much less annoying (and the fan would not have to spin up at all on short load bursts like starting a VM).
They focus on what customers want. If they want 10 cores 5mm thick notebooks, they'll get it. It'll be noisy but who cares. It'll be used to like facebook posts anyways. Professions will buy stationary computers for the heavy lifting anyways.
T440 is an awesome machine although X1 is more popular, which is kind of slender version of t440.
I, a professional, have no say in what equipment I use in my profession — my employer does, and they do not allow outside equipment. (I get 1 MBP.)
I don't think this at all uncommon, either; I've only worked for one company so far that allowed personal machines, and that was only briefly while they were so small they weren't purchasing any equipment for the employees yet. (They rapidly outgrew that.)
This isn't a "laptops" issue, this is an "ultra thin" issue. Trouble is most people only want to buy ultra thin laptops and don't realize that that super powerful 8 core cpu isn't any faster than a much less expensive one when there isn't adequate cooling.
Not practical at all, of course, but this is well within the laws of physics. (And people do lesser things all the time, using e.g. those laptop “cooling stands” with clearance and fans built in.)
The recent metal-cased RTL-SDR's from rtl-sdr-blog have this "problem". The metal case actually helps the chip run cooler, but it gets hotter to the touch then the early insulating plastic models.
This can extend your battery a decent amount, and obviously would cut down on fan noise.
Also, it's questionable whether running at lower clocks saves power overall. Apparently it's more efficient to run higher clocks, but for shorter periods of time than it is to run medium clocks for extended periods of time.
Turbo Boost Switcher's website says it can adjust Turbo Boost based on fan speed (only in its Pro version). This is probably the best way to do it: disable Turbo Boost only when it's running for long enough to turn on the fan.
I honestly think a "no fan noise" setting should be a built-in feature.
I have found that "gaming" on my macbook almost requires it as for whatever reason, the system will NOT spool up when intel gpu gets hot.
http://tbswitcher.rugarciap.com/
Happily sprang for the pro version, it's needed to not have to keep authorising it in on every switch.
My reading skills still suggest SMCfanControl fulfills the description given by the parent post
All of this could be fixed if the device gave me power settings but even third party paid tools that require custom kernel extensions (Volta) still don't work reliably.
My next computer is not going to be from Apple for sure.