Hi, I just took out my MacBook Pro 17" 2010 few days ago. While I like the large form factor, large screen and the very comfortable keyboard, it cannot connect to an external 4K display. With Intel's new chips, are there Windows PC with a 4K screen that is dead silent?
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Are there dead silent Windows laptops with a 4K screen in 2024?
- Thread starter hajime
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If in meaning something akin to a MacBook air with NO Fans then NO.
If you mean mostly silent even when fans come on unless the device is really being pushed then yes there are a bunch of new high end Intel Ultra laptops hitting the Market.
The HP Spectre 14/16 with Intel Ultra 7 is a good choice.
The Samsung GalaxyBook 4 Pro 360 or Galaxybook 4 Ultra 360 would also be excellent choices. I think the Ultra has 4k and the Pro has 3k or a little higher all on dynamic 120hz 2x Amoled display with Anti reflective coating and scratch resistant touch screen. It is literally the best laptop screen on the market and bests MBP miniled in everything but brightness. The screen is also gaming certified with a high response time unlike the MBP miniled with 20ms response. Also the 16" weighs less than 4lb closer to the weight of a 14" laptop in a 16" format. The device is very well made and designed. I think as someone who is used to the very good industrial design of Mac's would appreciate all the little design details Samsung has done with this laptop.
There are a ton of other laptops from Dell and Lenovo like the 9i, XPS, etc. But I would personally recommend the Samsung GalaxyBook 4 Pro 360. If Microsoft Surface line had updated internals and a design refresh I would have recommended it instead as the Surface experience most closely resembles Apple but Samsung is kind of the opposite approach with apps but hardware wise they are the best of the Windows world.
As a side note you can recover your laptop like you can with a Mac using recovery software and it is very fast. HP doesn't offer this. You have to buy a usb stick and hope they put the right laptop OS on there. One of my sticking points with Windows is I need to be able to completely wipe and re-install from time to time and in case of emergencies. If I can't do it for free it is a knock off in my opinion.
To specifically answer your question I have used Ultra 7 laptops with decent cooling and they can run silent most of the time. Much improved over past generations of Intel. But if you push em they are going to run hot and need the fans. You just have to push a lot harder than in the past. Battery life is better too. Not m series but with EVO certification you are getting a solid 8-10 hours of SOT generally and can get a lot more depending on settings and behavior. Again depending on settings you can get the same performance on battery as off.
Before the pandemic, I tried several Lenovo laptops but all of their fans got suddenly kicked in for no reason even I left the computers alone with no applications running. They were just running whatever jobs the OS created. Haven't tried any Windows laptop since then.
I think you find you can use the old windows legacy backup and restore that is still there to do this
Tech changes so fast if you try something one year and don't like it, odds are the next model could improve what you didn't like. Obviously Intel chips have run hot for a while and need active cooling most of the time.
The new Intel Ultra chips are designed on Intel's 7nm process and TSMC 5nm process depending on the part. They are much more efficient but still need active cooling when pushed but better fans that are more silent can run at lower rpm now and still cool. So the result is even when the fans are on you can barely hear them. Much better battery life and very good performance. NO, they don't match m series on efficiency or raw power but they are competitive enough to be in the ball park of m series. In some ways the Ultra is better than m3 in GPU and multi core but not single core nor efficiency. But it is good.
Look at a new Samsung GalaxyBook 4 Pro or Pro 360. Nice devices. A little expensive but they will go on sale. Or Spectre line for 2024 is also really good.
I like the increased brightness of the current MacBook Pro M3 Pro 16". The screen of previous generations were not bright enough for me. About 10 hours of battery life when doing basic productivity work is fine. Main thing is dead silent all the time even running Windows. No gaming. In this case, am I still stuck with Apple?
It depends. Do you need full x86/64 Windows or could you get by with Windows for arm?
Are you willing to wait and see what Intel and AMD release in the next year or so.
Otherwise the answer is no.
Once Intel hits 3nm or 1.8nm then it is possible that fans may not be as much a thing as in the past but there is also a good possibility Intel pushes frequency so high that it still needs active cooling. 2 nd gen Qualcomm chips for laptops looks pretty good with Orion cores.
Apple wins on multiple fronts though. The Apple OS is better at managing battery and performance and is generally more efficient than Windows, All of Apple's OS are on ARM architecture which is more efficient than x64, Apple builds hardware and software and designs one for the other and optimizes for the hardware better than most Windows PC's. So even if the hardware is identical Apple has certain advantages and I don't see that changing.
Surface PC'S would be the closest to Apple in terms of software optimization. Still I think Apple has the advantage.
I can get by with Windows for Arm.
It depends on what Apple is going to announce next week. If M4 Mini is more desirable than M4 Pro/Max MacBook Pro 16", I may buy the new Mini for temporary use until next year when Arrow Lake laptops become available and decide.
Surface PCs have smaller screen so out of the equation.
We don’t know yet but maybe the upcoming MacBook Pro 16 may run Windows faster than next year Intel/AMD/Qualcomm while being dead silent?
Another thing is I don’t want any AI in my computer.
It depends on what Apple is going to announce next week. If M4 Mini is more desirable than M4 Pro/Max MacBook Pro 16", I may buy the new Mini for temporary use until next year when Arrow Lake laptops become available and decide.
Surface PCs have smaller screen so out of the equation.
We don’t know yet but maybe the upcoming MacBook Pro 16 may run Windows faster than next year Intel/AMD/Qualcomm while being dead silent?
Another thing is I don’t want any AI in my computer.
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On your last point unless you are running Linux you don't have a choice and even within a lot of distros AI will be introduced at some point soon.
I can guarantee there's at least one Snowflake iMac G3 out there. I had to shove it into a customer's MIATA when he bought it. I still remember that 21 years later.