quietest "new gen" laptop

Looking for a laptop here in quarantine. I was lucky to score a Asus G14 pre-order but have been scared by early reports of fans always being on. That's my biggest turn-off, would love a 10th gen intel or Ryzen 4000 that performs ok in gaming but will not blow air all the time, maybe this is not possible I don't know! Would also be ok with a Max-Q Nvidia RTX (prob 2060). G14 pretty much fits my needs, except the noise. Thanks for any opinions of stuff coming up (I know I could look at previous generation as well; esp intel gen 9 if there's an obvious fit). Also looking for < 5 lbs


General Questions

1) What is your budget?
probably up to 2500 max

2) What size notebook would you prefer?
a. Ultraportable; 10" - 12" screen
c. Thin and Light; 13" - 14" screen
d. Mainstream; 15" - 16" screen
e. Desktop Replacement; 17"+ screen
15"

3) Which country will you buying this notebook?
US

4) Are there any brands that you prefer or any you really don't like?
a. Like:
b. Dislike:
No real preferences, I am like 5 years out of touch

5) Would you consider laptops that are refurbished/redistributed?
No

6) What are the primary tasks will you be performing with this notebook?
All arounder + non esports gaming

7) Will you be taking the notebook with you to different places, leaving it on your desk or both?
both

8) Will you be playing games on your notebook? (If so, please state which games or types of games?)
Yes, Jedi, Destiny, Minecraft RTX

9) How many hours of battery life do you need?
5+

10) Would you prefer to see the notebooks you're considering before purchasing it or buying a notebook on-line without seeing it is OK?
N/A

11) What OS do you prefer? Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Chrome OS, etc.
Windows

Screen Specifics

12) What screen resolution(s) would you prefer? (See further below for explanations.)
1080p

13) Do you want a glossy/reflective screen or a matte/non-glossy screen? (See further below for explanations.)
Ok either way


Build Quality and Design

14) Are the notebook's looks and stylishness important to you?
Prefer slightly more conservative

Notebook Components

15) How much hard drive space do you need?
1TB

Timing, Warranty and Longevity

16) When are you buying this laptop?
Next 4 weeks

17) How long do you expect to use this laptop?
3 years


18) How long could you afford to do without your laptop if it were to fail?
5 weeks

19) Would you be willing to pay significantly extra for on-site warranty, or would it be acceptable to you to have to ship the laptop to the vendor for repair with perhaps a week or more outage?
Ship to vendor is ok

 

I think it really depends on the level of performance you want. My laptop is loud when I turn its fans on high. Which I often do, as fan noise is far from one of my biggest concerns, but if I don't crank the fans and leave it on office mode/eco, it's a lot quieter.

Yakuza Kiwami, max settings, Office/Eco mode, 57 fps.

Turbo mode, with the GPU overclocked, much louder, but 67 fps.

That's with a i7-9750H and a GTX 1660 TI.

Not sure what exact laptops you'd consider quiet enough, but in general, I think if you're fine with settling for 60 fps, quiet is feasible. But there's a cost to it being quiet.

 

Laptops with max-q graphics card should fall under the most quiet as they have to follow noise guides from nvidia.
For a laptop to be certified max-q it should produce less than 40dBA so maybe look at those.

Many laptops also have "comfort" or "quiet" modes nowadays. Or you can just get any laptop and limit the frames in the games you play, that will lessen the load and make most of them much quieter.
Either way you are trading performance for less noise.

 

I tested mine, and in quiet mode, the fans were producing 23 dB of noise, on turbo that ramped up to 47 dB however.

 

Intel based laptops are going to run hotter and thus louder. the CPUs get hotter than the GPUs now and just blow thermals, even more so on MQ models that have spartan cooling solutions the thinner and smaller you go, more so on UHD panels. You are better sticking to the G14 since the ryzen cpu will use tons less power (over 40w less) alongside the GPU which means less aggressive fan ramp up. You can use notebookfancontrol to zero out your fans too i guess. A fan running is fine as long as its not ramped up, the G14 should be quieter.

 

Bit of misinformation in this thread.

Manufacturers completely abandoned these guidelines. A quick glance at notebookcheck emissions results will show this.

The G14 is not quieter. Not only is it louder, it is higher pitched due to smaller faster fans.


---
In reply to OP. The quietest machines on the market are the Razer Blade 15 Advanced (not base) running in Balanced mode and Lenovo Legion Y740 (both 15 and 17 are relatively quiet, but you will need a certain BIOS.. 1.08 I believe).

For some good information on this, I recommend Ultrabookreview. They are now my preferred laptop reviewers. They goes into depth on different power modes (ie high performance, balanced and silent) and give a rundown on noise, heat and fps for all of them.

 

If you wanna game, the GPU will have to work. When GPU have to work smoothly, the fan have to work. When the Fan have to work to keep system cool, there will be noise.
If you want a long hour journey in a single charge, you need not just only good and efficient CPU/GPU combo or how fat the battery pack is, most importantly, effective cooling design and solution of a system. To achieve efficient cooling, just design of air flow is not enough, if the fan doesn't do it's job to handle different work in different situations in different environment. Hence, noise is still expected.

 

Not really. The GPU fan is generally fairly quiet in this generation of laptops. It's the CPU fan which puts these machines over the edge.

I keep my Lenovo Y740-17IRH (2080 max-q) whisper quiet while gaming by limiting turbo boost to 3 GHz on all cores while letting the 2080 stretch its legs.

Simply moving the boost up to 3.4 GHz makes a substantial change to fan noise, with little effect in most games.

 

Yes. I know that generally, most systems fan noise is not that terrible. But...

...it seems that TS have a very sensitive ears that even minute noise will sound like mosquitoes flapping it's wings around TS head. That where i was trying to tell TS that fan noise is not avoidable... but mostly not so audible.

 

Well... for "light" gaming and longer period of use per charge...
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