Quiet Gaming Laptops?
June 8, 2021 1:57 PM Subscribe
There are so many gaming laptops! Help! Looking for something quiet but that has a lot of memory, good screen quality, can be used to run and design games with
Looking for something quiet but that has a lot of memory, good screen quality (I've heard a lot of them have a dull screen?), can be used to run and design games with, doesn't get laggy, has a camera, and stays cool and quiet more than the average.
Any one find anything like this? Prioritizing for quiet- I'd give up some other features for cool and quiet. Battery power not as important as it's always used plugged in.
Looking for something quiet but that has a lot of memory, good screen quality (I've heard a lot of them have a dull screen?), can be used to run and design games with, doesn't get laggy, has a camera, and stays cool and quiet more than the average.
Any one find anything like this? Prioritizing for quiet- I'd give up some other features for cool and quiet. Battery power not as important as it's always used plugged in.
So initially my laptop was quite noisy (Acer Helios Predator 300), but there are tweaks you can do to really bring the noise down and should be done on any gaming laptop. ThrottleStop is the program everyone recommended to me for undervolting and controlling other things.
My model is the 2019 version so I don't know about future ones, but if your goal is total quietness it'll be hard. Mine is pretty silent now because I have my "normal" profile which has the cores lowered for turbo and it isn't just blasting the fans 24/7 under no stress. I would open a word doc and it would sound like a jet engine out of the box.
This might seem off topic but I really just wanted to stress that the work you put into it will be important regardless of what reviews say. The discord/reddit of recommend a laptop or whatever it was called was super helpful.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 2:25 PM on June 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
My model is the 2019 version so I don't know about future ones, but if your goal is total quietness it'll be hard. Mine is pretty silent now because I have my "normal" profile which has the cores lowered for turbo and it isn't just blasting the fans 24/7 under no stress. I would open a word doc and it would sound like a jet engine out of the box.
This might seem off topic but I really just wanted to stress that the work you put into it will be important regardless of what reviews say. The discord/reddit of recommend a laptop or whatever it was called was super helpful.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 2:25 PM on June 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Look for high end laptops with vapor chamber cooling. Mine has it and it's incredibly quiet.
posted by Splunge at 2:40 PM on June 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Splunge at 2:40 PM on June 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Some indication of your probable budget range would help the gaming laptop gurus around here narrow things down.
My not-answering-your-question suggestions would be: any laptop that lets you throttle fan speeds (fans being the noisy part of any noisy laptop), some kind of laptop "cooler" (usually a USB-powered platform with, hey, more fans in it!) platform, and good headphones. I would not trust a water-cooled laptop but fully admit that's a me thing, rather than a tech thing.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:02 PM on June 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
My not-answering-your-question suggestions would be: any laptop that lets you throttle fan speeds (fans being the noisy part of any noisy laptop), some kind of laptop "cooler" (usually a USB-powered platform with, hey, more fans in it!) platform, and good headphones. I would not trust a water-cooled laptop but fully admit that's a me thing, rather than a tech thing.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:02 PM on June 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Lenovo Y series (like Y740) and Razer Blade series (like Blade Pro 17) are reputed to be pretty quiet when you're not going full-blast.
posted by kschang at 2:56 AM on June 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by kschang at 2:56 AM on June 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
I don't have one, but it's my understanding that the new Apple Silicon Macbooks are very quiet and efficient and can actually handle games pretty well, even with the x86 emulation penalty. Running Windows-only games through Wine/Crossover can be a pain though.
I can anti-recommend the Asus Zephyrus. Mine can get pretty loud when going all-out, and the screen is junk (only 1080p, almost totally unusable in sunlight). I got mine as a desktop substitute and it works great for that, but pretty lame as a laptop. Also no camera.
posted by neckro23 at 8:45 AM on June 9, 2021
I can anti-recommend the Asus Zephyrus. Mine can get pretty loud when going all-out, and the screen is junk (only 1080p, almost totally unusable in sunlight). I got mine as a desktop substitute and it works great for that, but pretty lame as a laptop. Also no camera.
posted by neckro23 at 8:45 AM on June 9, 2021
My 2017 Razer Blade is pretty quiet when doing ordinary low impact stuff like web browsing or editing text files. The fans don't run at all or come on briefly in low speed. The system has a pretty reasonable set of power and heat management features. Like the fancy gaming GPU turns off entirely when not gaming, letting the lower power Intel graphics run the screen. Also it has a reasonable set of performance mode options that I think are Windows stock.
However it sounds like a monster train when gaming. Like so loud I can't have a phone call in the same room. The fans are loud enough that they make game sound through the speakers a problem so I play with headphones. The main problem is just trying to cram a GTX 1060 into a laptop is awkward. Also I think their air flow management is not awesome; the fans are working on the bottom of the laptop right against the surface they're sitting on.
It's a four year old laptop now. I don't know if newer models have improved. Personally I vowed that next time I bought a gaming laptop I'd buy one built around a purpose-built laptop GPU, not a desktop GPU crammed into a laptop.
posted by Nelson at 7:25 AM on June 10, 2021
However it sounds like a monster train when gaming. Like so loud I can't have a phone call in the same room. The fans are loud enough that they make game sound through the speakers a problem so I play with headphones. The main problem is just trying to cram a GTX 1060 into a laptop is awkward. Also I think their air flow management is not awesome; the fans are working on the bottom of the laptop right against the surface they're sitting on.
It's a four year old laptop now. I don't know if newer models have improved. Personally I vowed that next time I bought a gaming laptop I'd buy one built around a purpose-built laptop GPU, not a desktop GPU crammed into a laptop.
posted by Nelson at 7:25 AM on June 10, 2021
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posted by xarnop at 2:08 PM on June 8, 2021