My iMac once was super quiet, but many years later is less so. Unfortunately, I cannot clean its fans, which would probably reduce the noise levels quite a bit.

Personally I would be more than willing to pay a premium for exceptionally quiet PC cooling, even if that meant having to use a case, CPU cooler, and GPU cooler all designed for each other.

Apple only has something like 10% of the desktop market yet they seem to be the only company in that space doing anything interesting. Dell, HP, Lenovo, and all the other big desktop computer makers look pathetic in comparison. I say that as someone who has only bought Lenovo computers for the past 15 years.

Is there any chance at all that six months from now Dell or HP will wow us with something that is faster, quieter, and as aesthetically interesting as the Studio? Or will they crank out another version of a black sheet metal case that is loud and hot and inexpensive? There have to be people in those companies that want to do something interesting, right? Or do they assume that anybody with money and taste are already out of the Windows market?

Maybe it is all the fault of Windows. There's a pretty good story about the problems of Windows elsewhere on HN right now. The comments there are so damning it makes me think nobody believes in the platform anymore. You know how there's no M in FAANG? Is Microsoft stuck with people not good enough to work elsewhere? There might be no point in building interesting hardware that is ultimately going to run Windows.

My work gave me this and it’s the worst! I thought mine was faulty. Sent it for repair 2 times and then I realized it’s just garbage thermals and noise. The i9 + dGPU is too much for that form factor.

I own both a 2019 and 2022 MBP. The former is the loudest laptop I've ever owned when doing day to day compute tasks. The latter is the most quiet. It's shocking how bad the older Apple laptops are.

Used to own an Intel. Recently purchased an M1 Pro, and it’s astounding how quiet it is.

My old Intel MBP would sound like a jet engine just by opening Chrome.

This one… I hammer it all day with multiple servers running, JS projects, tons of tabs, Docker containers, many misc. software utilities… not a single noise.

I’ve only heard the fans once while using Handbrake.

Apparently it makes a difference which side you plugh the monitor in.

> My 16” Intel MB pro would not agree. Loud fans kick up the moment you plug in a screen

Plugging in an external screen enables the discrete GPU so your energy usage and temperature will go up.

Yes, addressing that was a major theme when they redesigned the MBPs in 2021. People complained that they looked chunky compared to the sleeker 2016-2020 models but acknowledged that cool and quiet might be worth a little more utilitarian appearance.

I have hit more cases of "burnt a body part" with Windows machines than with Apple laptops. Apples tend to run with more warm surface area because the aluminium spreads all the heat on the entire surface, but high-power Windows laptops can be downright nasty if you manage to touch the area around the fan outflow because all the heat concentrates there to form an incredibly hot spot.