If you frequently pay attention to the disassembly images of laptops, you will find that fans and heat sinks occupy a lot of space. Many high-end gaming laptops even require dual fans and four sets of heat sinks to address cooling concerns. If a laptop wants to achieve a more attractive slim design, it is reasonable to “cut down” on the bulky fans and heat sinks.
Benefits of Fanless Design
When a laptop eliminates the fan (including heat sinks), it can achieve the following benefits:
Creates a zero-noise working environment when paired with SSD;
Enables a slimmer and more compact appearance;
Allows for a larger battery, resulting in longer battery life.
The Huawei MateBook X 2020, known for its extreme slimness (13.6mm, 1kg), enjoys these three advantages. In fact, this type of fanless passive cooling is not unique to Huawei; we often see similar designs in many ultra-slim laptops and 2-in-1 devices, with the Microsoft Surface Pro series being the most representative.
Disassembly image of Surface Pro 6, with the groove in the upper left corner reserved for the fan position in the high-end version
Recent generations of Surface Pro have continued a strategy: the low-end/mid-range models equipped with i3 and i5 use a fanless cooling module, achieving passive cooling through multiple heat pipes and large-area graphite pads.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has been somewhat lazy; the mid-range Surface Pro has not utilized the space saved by eliminating the fan for anything significant, merely resulting in a slightly lighter weight and zero noise.
Cost of Fanless Design
We all know that the design of a laptop’s cooling module depends on the TDP (Thermal Design Power) limit of the processor.
In the ultra-slim laptop segment, one fan, one set of heat sinks, and one 8mm wide heat pipe (if it’s a dedicated graphics platform, dual heat pipes or dual fans are needed) are the basics to ensure the high performance of a 15W TDP processor.
If the fan and heat sinks are removed, relying solely on heat pipes makes it difficult to dissipate the processor’s heat, easily triggering the throttling mechanism and causing a sudden drop in performance.
Therefore, Intel derived the Y-series Core processors from the 15W TDP U-series Core, reducing the base and boost frequencies further to meet the requirements of a fanless passive cooling environment.
Internal Design of MateBook X 2020
The MateBook X 2020 is a somewhat special case; it has no built-in fans or heat sinks but uses a 15W TDP i7-10510U or i5-10210U. To enhance cooling efficiency, this product eliminates traditional heat pipes and instead uses a large-area VC (Vapor Chamber) cooling plate, tightly integrating the VC cooling plate with the hinge to transfer heat through the hinge to the back of the screen, thus achieving a larger cooling area.
Internal Design of MateBook X 2020
However, even so, the fanless design of the MateBook X 2020 comes at a significant cost. In the AIDA64 CPU stress test, the i7-10510U’s real-time power consumption under full load is only 7W, and the clock frequency can only be maintained at around 1.8GHz, essentially matching the performance of Y-series processors.
Huawei has also recognized this issue, so the latest MateBook X Pro 2021 (which is slightly thicker than the MateBook X 2020, measuring 14.6mm and weighing 1.33kg) adds two fans on top of the large-area VC cooling plate, allowing it to run stably at 18W power consumption under full load for both CPU and GPU, realizing over 80% of the 11th generation Core’s performance, providing a more reliable experience. Of course, we also hope that the 2021 version of the MateBook X can adopt a similar cooling design.
In summary, under current technological conditions, it is impossible to balance fanless design and high performance. If you pursue extreme thinness and absolute zero noise, you must accept the reality of compromised performance. Otherwise, traditional thin laptops and gaming laptops are more suitable for you.