2013 Air Fan Noise - Clamshell

[ndriver182]

I was curious if any of you run a 2013 Air in clamshell mode and have any issues with fan noise? I'm considering picking one of these up (possibly even to replace my Mac Mini), but I'm concerned about potential fan noise in clamshell mode. I had tried once before using a 2011 MBA and 2011 MBP in clamshell mode and the fan noise when watching anything on Youtube or doing other processor-intensive tasks made the fans kick up quite a bit. As a result, I never ended up using either one as a desktop replacement (connected to an external display). I have a 2012 Mac Mini that doesn't make any noise at all, but if I can get a more powerful machine that is also portable to do both functions, that might be a good option.

 

[cake1]

I have used the machine for hours in clamshell mode. There was no difference in terms of noise. I used it for watching video and browsing.
2013, 13in MBA, i5

 

[kap09]

I've probably used mine in clamshell more than standalone in the two weeks I've had it. So far so good in terms of both heat and noise. The only time it's made a bit of sound was when I threw some encoding tasks at it and the fan kicked in...but not too loud to be an issue.

 

[hkim1983]

I'm not going to be receiving my Air until probably next week, but on my '12 cMBP, the fans only kick in in clamshell mode when I'm doing something processor intensive in Parallels. Watching streaming video or high bit rate 1080p blu-ray rips doesn't trigger the fans, at least in my experiences. I assume the Air would be somewhat similar to that.

 

[ndriver182]

That's encouraging. Maybe this has something to do with the new fan design. Obviously the 2011 models I tried had not been updated with this revision yet.

I'm not sure if I'm crazy to be interested in replacing a Mac Mini (2012 base w/8gigs RAM) with a 13" Air or not. Now that I'm not as concerned about fan noise, I see that the air is clocked quite a bit lower than even the base Mac Mini. It seems like to beat the Mini in terms of speed and equal it in RAM, I'd be looking at $1350 + tax. A retina 15" sounds nice, BUT that's a lot more money and doesn't have Haswell yet.