How loud is the fan noise from a Macbook air (13 inch, i7, 256 GB)?

Hello!

I currently am a PC-user (Sony Vaio Pro 13 inch) and although I love how light my laptop is, the fan noise drives me insane. The laptop gets so hot that I can't keep it on my lap any longer. That's why I'm in the market for a Macbook Air, but I wanted to know before I spend the cash:

Can you hear the noise from the fan, and if so, is it loud?

I just want to manage my expectations.

Also, do the specs of the laptop actually affect the fan noise? In other words, if I bought an i7 or upgraded to 512 GB, would it would be louder or quieter than an i5 with 256 GB?

Thanks in advance for any help!

igl2101 said:

I currently am a PC-user (Sony Vaio Pro 13 inch) and although I love how light my laptop is, the fan noise drives me insane. The laptop gets so hot that I can't keep it on my lap any longer. That's why I'm in the market for a Macbook Air, but I wanted to know before I spend the cash:

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Laptops are laptops…they can all get too hot to hold on the lap sometimes. That's why it can be better to call them "notebooks" (since it's really not a laptop if you can't keep it on your lap).

igl2101 said:

Can you hear the noise from the fan, and if so, is it loud?

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Under low loads…you can't hear the fan. But if the fan ramps up to max. rpm's (6000+)…sure you can hear it.

igl2101 said:

Also, do the specs of the laptop actually affect the fan noise? In other words, if I bought an i7 or upgraded to 512 GB, would it would be louder or quieter than an i5 with 256 GB?

Click to expand...

I think that there's some confusion here. You're talking about the computers storage (256gig vs. 512gig)…this does not significantly effect fan noise (or heat generation). I think what you want to ask about is the amount of ram. More ram does help the computer to do things more efficiently…but how much more or less heat is generated with 4gig or 8gig of ram (for example)…I'm not sure how much that would be.

Most of the heat is generated via the demands put on the cpu and graphics hardware.

Bottom line (since your main concern is fan noise). All laptops/notebooks if asked to do some serious computing (demanding computing tasks)…will generate heat…and fan noise will be noticeable. It really depends on what your doing on the computer. If you are not doing anything demanding…MacBook Air's are usually mostly silent.

- Nick