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Comment by frankjr | Hacker News Reader

One thing I always miss in these benchmarks are noise levels. Being completely silent is a major selling point for me and I would be willing to sacrifice some performance for it. The Air should be silent as it doesn't have any active cooling. I assume that's not the case for the Ryzen.

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That'd be a comparison of two specific laptops, not a comparison of an M2 vs. a Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U.

The test you want is valid, but for a completely different review category altogether.

This isn't an M2 benchmark, as the CPU will be throttled.

The 6850U will also be throttled. They are going to both be throttled to a comparable envelope.

This test in the post is for laptops? They used specific laptop models which just had these CPUs.

But it's not a comparison of these 2 laptops in particular. They are only comparing the CPUs in a similar deployment form factor and with a (mostly) comparable power envelope.

Nothing about the laptop quality (fan noise, build materials, speakers, display, track pad, keyboard, etc etc etc) is ever discussed. That's not the comparison here.

How can you compare CPU without handling variables like cooling? The MacBook Air and MacBook Pro both use an M2, but they tested the one without active cooling versus a competitor that does have active cooling. Wouldn't the MBP be a better comparison between the CPU? The MBP performs better with the same CPU as the MBA due to additional cooling capabilities.

That wasn't the OP's complaint. OP's complaint was that noise levels weren't compared. We don't know if either of them throttled, which is yet again a distinct question from noise levels. It takes the M2 Air a few minutes to throttle, it's quite plausible that phoronix just had cooldown pauses between tests and this wasn't an issue at all.

An M2 13" Pro would have been a better comparison point though sure.

Yep. Even the 14 & 16" MBP with M1 Pros stay much cooler & quieter than your typical AMD/Intel Windows laptop.

Silence is golden, and even on the odd occasion where the fan on the 14" M1 Pro starts spinning (e.g. running Cinebench to purposefully max all cores), it's extremely difficult to notice without your ear right up against the laptop.

By comparison, my Windows work laptops (previously an XPS 15, now a ThinkPad T14 Gen2) become plainly audible from 10ft+ away just attending a Teams meeting.

> Being completely silent is a major selling point for me and I would be willing to sacrifice some performance for it. The Air should be silent as it doesn't have any active cooling.

If you're willing to tolerate a low amount of noise, I find that laptop coolers with very large fans (200mm) work great. The large fan generates a high volume of airflow, but the the low fan speed means that it's almost silent.

Sure, but tell me where I can find a laptop that is as thin, light, cheap, and has the battery life of a MacBook Air, while also having this Ryzen part and your favored large fans.

They are talking about using an external laptop cooler, I believe. Not feasible for some but if you do 90% of your work at your desk then it certainly makes sense as a suggestion.

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