[neonstatic]

Hey there, quick question - are the alternatives perfectly quiet? Been on M1 Max train for almost 5 years now. I see people talk about performance, battery life, but the key feature for me is just how I never, ever, hear the fans.

[dangus]

I can find a few benchmarks that might help answer that question:

On this MacBook Pro review [1], yes, Macs are at the top of the list, but they aren’t wildly out front during high-intensity tasks.

MacBooks have been getting louder since the M1 generation, which is notable.

The M5 10 core is louder than the M4 Pro 14 core, which is louder than the M3 12 core in the same MacBook Pro chassis.

At the bottom of the benchmark you can see that a couple of Windows PCs aren’t that far off: both the ASUS TUF A14 and HP Omen Transcend 14, 5 and 3 dB higher, respectively.

The Omen Transcend 14 is a major cost savings over the MacBook Pro. If I configure it with 32GB of RAM, RTX5070, and 2TB storage, I’m at $1919.99. The same configuration for the MacBook Pro is $2599, but I’ve got no OLED screen and far worse graphics performance than the 5070.

If I want to spec it up to be match the graphics performance of the 5070 I’m probably at the M4 Max model and my grand total is at $3200-3700 depending on the choice of GPU core count.

[1] https://youtu.be/3Q837Uclwp8

6:19

[neonstatic]

Thank you. Sounds like things have not improved in the Apple land since I made my purchase. I just wonder what the "normal" fan level is like. Sure, if I load up an LLM locally and talk to it for a while, I can get my M1 Max to spin fans audibly, but I have to really be determined to do that. I also own a 2024 HP Spectre laptop. Fan noise starts the moment I press the power button and doesn't stop until it shuts down. So I suppose my question here is not so much how loud the Windows competition is at some heavy workload task, but is it "fanless" for most / all daily tasks just like my M1 Max is in practice. I spend a lot of time compiling Rust code - zero noise.

I appreciate that price is a concern, but for me it's a secondary concern. Not that I am loaded or anything, with the Macbook I am confident I will be using the device for 5+ years. Being very sensitive to noise, I'd rather pay up than be upset for the next few years.