Modern mid- and high-end fanless laptops?

More popular than ever, but some are still very noisy.

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resistante
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Joined: Wed Jan 24, 2018 6:28 am

Modern mid- and high-end fanless laptops?

Post by resistante » Fri Jan 28, 2022 11:55 am

Let's make a list for anyone looking for a laptop that's fanless, but still reasonably powerful and good quality.

I'll define modern mid- and high-end laptop as one that has a CPU that was released in 2019 or newer (10nm process or smaller) and that has a passmark score of at least 4000*, 11+ inch 1080p+ screen, 12GB+ RAM and 500GB+ SSD or an option of mounting this much.

If you're not sure if a given laptop is fanless, but suspect it may be, post it with a note saying that and hopefully we'll somehow find out. Please report if you've experienced or seen reports of coil whine with any of these laptops.

Incomplete list of low-power CPUs that can be cooled passively (TDP less than 15W) that pass these requirements:
upcoming Intel 12G Golden Cove (Alder Lake-UP4)

upcoming Samsung and Qualcomm ARM desktop-class CPUs

Intel 11G Willow Cove (Tiger Lake-UP4):
i3-1120G4
i5-1130G7
i5-1140G7
i7-1160G7
i7-1180G7
i3-1110G4

Intel 10G Sunny Cove (Ice Lake-Y):
i5-1030G4
i5-1030G7
i5-1030NG7
i7-1060G7
i3-1000G1
i3-1000G4
i3-1000NG4

Apple M1
* Any reasonably fast/usable CPU will have a score passing this. Low-end (Intel Atom, Chromebooks etc.) or pre-2019 (eg. Intel 14nm and older) laptops won't. You can check the score here: https://www.passmark.com/search/zoomsearch.php

CA_Steve
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Re: Modern mid- and high-end fanless laptops?

Post by CA_Steve » Sat Jan 29, 2022 8:25 am

If you go the extra step using NotebookCheck's search option, you can select fanless, laptop, and age (say 2020 to 2022) and find a handful of devices. Using the processor generation option seems to fail. You'd have to sort thru the Atom stuff to find the few higher performance devices.

resistante
Posts: 34
Joined: Wed Jan 24, 2018 6:28 am

Re: Modern mid- and high-end fanless laptops?

Post by resistante » Wed Feb 16, 2022 8:59 am

That's very helpful, thank you. Do you think NotebookCheck's search will list all laptops available on the market that meet the criteria or perhaps some models may not be listed on the site at all or some of their features such as presence of a fan may not be?

Once I have some more free time again I'll do a more thorough research, but at a quick look Huawei MateBook X with i5 10210U might be the best option currently. Interestingly it sports a 15W CPU and not one of those I listed previously. The CPU is slightly downclocked and thus works fanless, cool! I will have to research the build quality of this thing and Linux support as it's a must-have for me. It's sad that virtually all options have glare screens.

CA_Steve
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Re: Modern mid- and high-end fanless laptops?

Post by CA_Steve » Wed Feb 16, 2022 9:19 am

Notebookcheck will list the models they (or the external sources they aggregate have) reviewed.

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