I currently have a 12th gen Intel Framework 13 with an i7-1260P. I’m thinking of getting another Framework 13 and passing the current one on to my partner. For the new one I’m thinking of going AMD.
One thing that slightly bothers me about the 12th gen Intel one I have is how often the fan activates and roars away. I’m not a particularly demanding user and I was wondering if I could expect that to be better or worse with the lowest end AMD option, the Ryzen AI 5 340?
If not then I might consider the 13th gen Intel Ultra 5 125H, though I was quite keen on trying AMD this time.
I have the ryzen 350 and its pretty quiet, much quieter than my 12th gen before it. Its not macbook air quiet of course, it has fans and it will use them if you do something demanding, but its the second quietest laptop I’ve ever had behind my work macbook.
If you stick it on power saving mode and just do browsing or text editing or stuff like that, its silent. If you compile some small project it’ll spin up briefly a little bit. If you boot up cyberpunk on performance mode while plugged in it’ll obviously scream.
Get the fastest FL13 option, at this moment, that’s the AMD AI 370, I believe.
Reason is that all FL13 pretty much have around the same sustainable TDP OOTB, 28-30w ish. The idea is that the faster / fastest chip is always going to be more energy efficient (Wh per instruction execution)…and therefore less heat as well, which means the fan needs to spin less cycles to dissipate that lower amount of heat per given period. Lower RPM, quieter.
I’m trying to decide between the AI 370 or the 7840u (or lower tier models of there’s a good reason). I’ll be using Kubuntu (25.04 is fine).
On the 300 series is there a way to underclock / undervolt / disable cores to keep the underside temperature under control (say under 40-45C)? I’m moving from a very underpowered i5-1130G7 at 1.1GHz so there’s plenty of performance I’d be happy to give up on the AI370 for lap use, and then crank everything up when I’m not using it on a lap. I know there are power profiles but those are more about battery life than skin temperature.
Often my CPU usage is some stupid browser tab or Xorg / Xwayland pegging a CPU core at 100% for no reason, so there’s no guarantee that a faster laptop will ‘race to idle’ but capping the performance should limit heating from busy-work.
Or should I stick with the 7840u as the tried and true that’s had all the power optimisation already done to it?
Apparently ryzenadj doesn’t work with the ai 300s jet but once it does you can literally set a skin temperature target (and min throttle level) and it’ll throttle to meet that. The 7840U kneecapped to 10W still has a surprising amount of performance.
The 7840U being more mature is definitely a reasonable argument at this point, especially since it’s much better price/performance than the ai 300 series (unless you actually need the ai engine, the ai 300 series sacrifices a lot for that).