Laptops that DONOT get hot or sound like a plane?

[LilWhiteChris]

Is there a list anywhere of laptops for gaming that DONOT get as hot as the sun and sound like a jet engine starting up? Imo if it fails in these to categories it’s NOT fit for purpose and therefore cannot be classed as a gaming laptop, i don’t want to spend £2000 on a laptop to find it has these two flaws...

Would be nice if it was a i7 and had either a gtx 1050,1060 or 1070.
£2000 ish budget give or take a bit depending on wether there’s something better i can get for a small amount more.

 

[luckymatt42]

Some may be quieter than others...but when you're cramming a big gpu into a laptop form factor, ya gotta keep it cool somehow.

As a general rule, probably the ones with the least powerful graphics card will be the quietest.

 

[LilWhiteChris]

Would the ones with the least powerful gpu not get louder if struggling to play some games? I was thinking a bigger gpu would have to work less therefore be cooler...

 

[Solandri]

There is no substitute for airflow. The rate of heat transfer is proportional to the temperature differential (CPU/GPU vs the air you're using to cool them). So the faster you can replace hot air with cool air, the more heat you can dissipate. That means higher temperatures require higher airflow rates for cooling. Fancy design can't help you, only increased airflow. The only design parameters you can play with which affect noise is the cross-sectional area of the fan vs. the speed it pushes the air. A big fan pushing air slowly can generate the same airflow (m^3 per second) as a small fan pushing air quickly. On a desktop you can go with a big fan pushing air slowly. But on a laptop you're limited to a small fan pushing air quickly, which means it'll be noisy.

So you're highly unlikely to find a quiet gaming laptop with a high-end GPU like a 1050/1060/1070 and HQ (45 TDP) processor. They just generate too much heat. The newer i7-8xxxU processors are quad cores with only a 15W TDP, but none of the true gaming laptops are using them, opting instead for the hexacore i7-8xxxH processors.

The quietest laptop I've used which was passable for gaming was a Thinkpad with a 940m. You could barely hear the fan when it was running at max speed while gaming. But most people wouldn't consider a 940m to be a gaming laptop.

On my gaming laptop (i7-4702HQ + 970m), I noticed the CPU was getting much hotter than the GPU despite only hitting 30%-50% use. I've had luck turning off hyperthreading (in the BIOS) and limiting the processor to about 50%-60% max speed (power options -> create a new profile -> advanced -> processor power management -> max processor state). Heat generated rises disproportionately quicker at higher clock speeds, so this strategy limits the CPU to clock speeds which generate a lot less heat. I lose about 20% FPS in this "quiet" power profile, but the fan runs a couple notches below max making it tolerable for gaming without headphones.

 

[luckymatt42]

Well at that point it becomes about what exactly you are playing, how high you have the graphics settings, etc. But generally no, the bigger graphics cards use more power, which means a beefier cooling solution.

How a system "sounds" is so subjective, if it is a big concern you may have to go out to some old fashioned brick and mortar stores and see if they have a floor/display model you can use just so you can hear how it sounds. If you're asking online, someone might say "mine's totally quiet!!"...but is their "quiet" YOUR "quiet"? Probably not. However, some good review sites may offer a more scientific approach to noise (if they have a sound chamber or whatever). You can look at dB numbers from them. I think Tom's does some sound testing, not sure of any others that specialize in laptop testing though.