Fanless MacBooks, when?

[Cod3rror]

When do you reckon will the technology reach the stage where it allows for fanless laptops in the mainstream?

Will the Broadwell CPUs make it possible? Or will laptops always have fans?

 

[maflynn]

I'd say never, the heat generated by modern day CPUs is so high that fans will be with us for the foreseeable future.

The original Macintosh had no fans and had issues with heat, CPUs have gotten a lot more powerful, smaller and HOTTER.

 

[dusk007]

That depends on the size and performance you want.
An Ivy Bridge set to 7W can be used in a passive setting if one really wants too. rifle the backplate made of some metal and it should dissipate enough.

Given that usual heat at normal low load may get as low as 4W with a Haswell Single SoC you could also go passive.

I don't think they will do it though. The iPad runs ARM and the notebooks will continue to use higher TDP higher performance chips. Maybe some passive Air is possible.
A 15" will always be big and there is very little you gain from going passive. It limits a lot the performance that you can put in. Even in 4 years it will simply be much faster but still actively cooled. Battery is still big and the SSD and logicboard. There is little space one would actually save with passive cooling and the noise at 2000 rpm is barely noticeable even in quite settings.

 

[utekineir]

choose 2 of the following 3.

Quiet

Fast

Cheap

 

[KPOM]

It will be a while. That said, my 13" rMBP is extremely quiet, even when I run a virtual machine.

 

[Mrbobb]

Jobs hated fans, he insisted original Mac no fan. Macbook last 10 years = yes fan, so you know who won the fight.

Toshiba at some point sold a fanless, my guess is, the majority are more excited about performance than quietness.

 

[Cod3rror]

Well, thanks for the answers guy!