Old 08-11-2013, 03:35 AM   #1
gosam
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Default Fanless laptops

Does anyone know any fanless laptops? They would be great for recording and also watching movies without annoying fan noise.

I'm asking because I've discovered these laptops called Toughbooks in a car repair shop. They don't have fans and are really sturdy excellent for on location recording. But the guy in the shop told me they cost around 4K, which is out of my budged.

While googling for it delivers some Asus EeePCs that are supposedly fanless but they sport only an Intel Atom processor which is too weak for recording.

Anyway hopefully someone knows any or other solutions to no-noise laptops.
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Old 08-11-2013, 04:13 AM   #2
hamish
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I have a lenovo laptop with i5, 6 GB of RAM and 7200 spin HDD it is really quiet, and all for well under 1K - good budget mobile recorder, I think you can get them with SSD too, which may be even quiter.

What I did is just use a high-speed (cat 10) 16 GB SD card for recording.
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Old 08-11-2013, 05:59 AM   #3
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The laptop is already cramming a lot in a small space. Higher heat is the concession to this. You will not find a laptop with pro performance with no fans. My Macbook Pro is extremely quiet most of the time but pull up a serious audio session (live sound + recording or huge studio session) and you will hear the fans when they rev up to higher speed.

We have the iPad and all it's clones now but these things are more suitable for remote controlling of your computer.

Give it a couple more years and I think we'll see a pad device that's a real computer though.
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Old 08-11-2013, 06:52 AM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gosam View Post
[...] Anyway hopefully someone knows any or other solutions to no-noise laptops.
... or move to e.g. northern Canada and set up your recording rig on your porch.
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Old 08-11-2013, 08:18 AM   #5
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What I do, and it works well, is I have Touch OSC installed on my iPod Touch. I use that to remote control Reaper on my laptop, and I use a USB extension to get the laptop as far away from the mics as I can; preferably behind a wall or in a closet. For now, it works, but I too am looking forward to the day that a touch pad has the same versatility and power as a laptop or tower. I don't think they are quite there yet.
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Old 08-11-2013, 08:22 AM   #6
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Ever since I put an SSD drive into my laptop the fan has really stopped coming on as much. I deploy thousands of laptops professionally and I can say that ALL of the ones with SSD's are drastically quieter than their spindled countertparts. They run cooler, quieter and have longer battery lives. Best hundred bucks you can spend.
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Old 08-11-2013, 01:09 PM   #7
gosam
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Thanks for the adive guys.
I already have an SSD. I have a HP Ultrabook because they are supposedly quiet.

Quote:
Originally Posted by serr View Post
The laptop is already cramming a lot in a small space. Higher heat is the concession to this. You will not find a laptop with pro performance with no fans.
I don't know your definition of pro performance however the Toughbook CF-19 comes with an i5, plenty of RAM, etc.

The i5 in the CF-19 would even be better then the one in my current HP rig.

And to the state of the art in laptops the i7 used in Macbook's the i5 used in the CF-19 is only slightly worse: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i...-Core-i5-3340M

Quote:
Originally Posted by serr View Post
My Macbook Pro is extremely quiet most of the time but pull up a serious audio session (live sound + recording or huge studio session) and you will hear the fans when they rev up to higher speed.
Yes, that is my problem exactly.
I'm currently using a fan control tool so I can make the fan spin heavy when mixing and editing and when recording a take I can suppress it. However if the session progresses the computer is so heated up the fan can not be suppressed. Or worse I sometimes forget to let the fan rip away when not in a take and the the fan kicks in in the middle of a take.
I mean for rock music this isn't a problem and in my home rig it also isn't because the computer is in a separate room. However doing on location recordings with singers and songwriters it is mostly at their place which is a small one room apartment with no options other than having the laptop in the same room as the "vocal booth".

Also having lots of VSTis running doesn't help the fan noise.

Quote:
Originally Posted by serr View Post
Give it a couple more years and I think we'll see a pad device that's a real computer though.
My hope is on the new Haswell thing by Intel: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7168/h...ater-this-year
Hope the big companies will adopt it and make cheap fanless laptop otherwise I will safe up for one of those Toughbooks or maybe this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcprrICA5_M
All those industrial computers seem to be fanless, but they cost a shit load of money.

Last edited by gosam; 08-11-2013 at 01:18 PM.
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Old 08-12-2013, 07:59 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gosam View Post
Does anyone know any fanless laptops? They would be great for recording and also watching movies without annoying fan noise.

I'm asking because I've discovered these laptops called Toughbooks in a car repair shop. They don't have fans and are really sturdy excellent for on location recording. But the guy in the shop told me they cost around 4K, which is out of my budged.
Toughbooks are great. I used one out on a geelogical survey in the middle of a major storm. I can confirm that they survive heavy drops too

I remember a decade ago having a Toshiba Satellite laptop that was incredibly noisy. The difference between that and my current Asus K55V is absolute night and day. The Asus is very very quiet. In fact, in my 4 metre by 3 metre room, I have both the laptop and the desktop on and both are beautifully quiet. Silent CPU coolers FTW!
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Old 08-12-2013, 05:41 PM   #9
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One thing I did before on my cheap Toshiba notebook was undervolting and disabling CPU throttling/C states to a fixed frequency bellow the stock max this kept the fan from going high-speed and making noise.


Really dont know how it is nowdays, maybe its worth looking on the option for your specific machine, search for overclocking, learn how to do it, then do the opposite.
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Old 08-24-2013, 11:21 PM   #10
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I believe most modern Toughbooks do have one or more cooling fans.

The issue with "fanless" laptops is performance. You can generally get any two of the following, and occasionally three, but never all four:

- Compact and lightweight form-factor

- Cool and quiet operation

- Cutting edge performance

- Reasonable cost

So for something like a DAW, the biggest issue with a fanless laptop is going to be the performance hit. Fanless netbooks and tablets with Atom processors and the like are available, but a typical DAW user wants high-powered multi-core processors, which means a lot of heat. That, in turn, means either big, heavy heat-sinks, fans, physically big air-spaces, or some combination.

Some thoughts, in no particular order...

- You can absolutely do tracking on a netbook- or tablet-type low-power processor.

- The demanding stuff is running virtual instruments, effects, pitch-shifting, samplers, and so on. That's hard to do on a fanless notebook.

- There is a new-ish breed of battery-powered solid-state pora-studios that works great for portable recording, such as the Zoom R24. they are silent, instant-on, with very simple and reliable pushbutton operation, can handle multiple tracks and inputs simultaneously in one battery-powered box, and are generally much better suited to recording "on the beach" than laptop rigs with breakout boxes, etc.
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Old 08-30-2013, 10:32 PM   #11
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Unless you're using some heavy-duty CPU-intensive plug-ins, I don't see a big issue with an Atom-based laptop. I use a pre-netbook 10-inch Averatec 1000-Series XP laptop with an older Intel Pentium-M Centrino 1.1-gig CPU with 512 megs of ram and a mechanical hard drive to record on the road with an M-Audio Fast Track Pro interface, and I have no problems laying down tracks. If I need to embellish a track with FX I use Cuckos FX which are very efficient. If the project requires heavier processing I transfer it to my home workstation. So if ancient laptop can handle laying down multiple tracks, I'm sure an Atom-based machine with a 1 gig of ram and an SSD running XP will have no problem recording on the road.
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Old 09-19-2013, 07:43 AM   #12
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You might want to check out the first Haswell fanless notebook:
http://liliputing.com/2013/09/hands-...tre-13-x2.html
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