Ehn.. I used to be like you. Once I used Pixelbook, a superthin fanless device, I was in awe. Pixelbook Go was similar fanless device as well. But, then I realized that they have their limitations. With a fan, one can achieve much better performance when needed. So, now, I prefer a laptop that can passively cool for normal day to day work, and then for heavy workloads take advantage of the fan.

I got the framework laptop, which should be able to push the intel chip to the max 28 TDP. I heard the fan is big, and thus not annoying. I am curious to see how it will turn out (My batch 3 order gets delivered tomorrow).

Yeah I guess I don't have a ton of experience here outside of mac laptops, but the idea of a PC laptop that only kicks in the fans when truly intensive tasks are being run sounds pretty nice.

My experience has mostly been that when any work is being done, the fans spin up. It's jarring when you're trying to focus on the problem at hand.

You need to find your fan rpm/noise threshold. On my laptop the fan becomes noticeable above 2500rpm. Someone commented about adjusting the fan curve (I have no idea how), I just manually capped the CPU performance with a powersave profile instead.

Some PCs let you configure the fan curves. I have never done that though.

You're right about cooling for intel/amd, with the note that the M1 is a whole different beast - it can deliver good performance with only passive cooling anyway

Same here. I went from a thinkpad to an m1 air, and although the noise wasn’t something that bothered me before, I do appreciate its absence now. The battery life also is a big draw. I can go to the office without a charger, and it’s not a problem. I’ve never had a laptop that made it past half a workday.

It's a shame ARM isn't quite a first-class desktop architecture quite yet. I'd probably use one if my software ran on it. Otherwise, I figure in 10-15 years, when it is "fully featured," the architecture will have already been usurped by RISC-V.

I've never met someone before that cares about cpu fan noise. Genuinely. It never bothers me so I have never thought about it. Perhaps also because my workflow involves playing music when I work to make me more productive.

As someone who records lots of videos it is quite frustrating. The less noise the better.

My MacBooks have generally been quiet, but not silent. Having lived with the M1 MacBook Air since it came out, I _never_ want to go back to a fan. Silence is a luxury.

They likely used apple for a long time before this, and they had a ton of fan noise. So likely wasn't an issue previously.

Getting a noise less and fast laptop is a good improvement. It's like going from a fossil car to an electric one. So much less noise and vibrations. The noise is acceptable but it's annoying to go back.

As someone who bikes, electric cars make a lot of noise still when they're not going under 10km/hr.

The pre-M1 MacBook Air fan kicks in a lot and produces a lot of noise compared to other laptops IMO.