Hi there!
My old XPS13 9370 i7 just died, and I have to find a replacement…
It’s a long time I keep an eye on Framework: I like the concept, so perfect time to go in deeper details on which one is best for me.
I am currently checking the laptop 13 with Ryzen 7640U or Intel Ultra5 125H which are roughly in my budget and almost same price (60€ difference).
One question is still difficult to answer for me and I found pretty little to no detailed reviews of FW laptop 13 with those processors (compared to 7840U & 155H)
So, I was wondering: which one is best to avoid turning on the fan in average use ?
Considering I use like (likely manjaro) and my current use case is plenty of firefox tabs (a lot), vscode, command line tasks, emails… nothing hardcore, except web browsing that become pretty heavy when you have a lot of windows and tabs). No gaming.
No problem if the fan turn on in case I do some heavy tasks, I can deal with it if I have to do heavy video encoding or whatever one or two times in a year.
Also, I would rather use balanced mode than others (at least it was working perfectly on my previous laptop, while power saving mode what lagging some time).
I’d second this. I’m on linux, so ymmv but 7640u is pretty good with basic work. I’ve also written my own software to limit processor power usage to prevent ramp ups / save battery when on heavy loads, so I pretty much have a silent laptop.
The caveat is that I haven’t tried the 125H. My previous laptop was the 12th gen Intel FW13. That one was a little too much. I even changed the thermal paste to the PTM phase change one just to get some better thermals and reduce the ramp up.
I reckon the 7640u will be slightly lower in general, but i don’t think you will be that far off either way.
Your main challenge will be preventing the ramp ups during heavy load (an issue for both intel and amd). For that you’ll need custom software. I’d recommend using the framework hub if you’re on Windows to control this.
Intel has historically had better power management, hover with the latest version of zen it’s about the same. If you do alot of dedicated compute, video, ML, and similar the zen might be better as it has avx512 that is more power efficient in thoes kind of scenarios. assuming the software package has dedicated assembly routines for your hardware.
its good on windows too
i like it and its quiet and good battery life and it runs cool (fans almost never ramp up even when editing video [not exporting] on the 7640u with ptm7950)
In terms of energy, all electricity input is eventually converted to heat and needs to be dissipated, so the lower power draw when doing the same work, the less heat is generated and the less noisy the fan. Intel Core Ultra has lower energy consumption when idling, while AMD Ryzen is more efficient when loaded, so the selection depends on the work you do with your computer.