Do laptops these days have fans?

I want to buy a laptop but have had bad experiences with previous ones where the fans broke and the computer would shut down from overheating. I'm not tech savvy so I have no idea how to replace a fan and wouldn't want to spend a lot of money to have it serviced (places like Geek Squad charge an arm and a leg).

So my question is, do laptops these days have fans? Laptops these days seem to be much thinner and I'm wondering if they are like tablets where a fan is not needed. If they do still have fans, I would rather buy a desktop PC.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Korusa

 

I think most laptops have fans, but some of them are so modern that you can barely hear them make noise. Mine is like that, it's super thin and the fans are not audible at all

 

Many laptops do have fans, but there are a handful that don't (they tend to be quite expensive though). As long as you keep the laptop clean, you shouldn't have problems with the fans - I've had many over the years and it has been very rare to have a fan problem. I've serviced a few that just needed a good vacuum of the exhaust ports!

 

My previous two HP laptop had these overheating problem too. I won't take it to Geek Squad because they charged you your savings Find a local repair shop with great reputation, or read the reviews, and call them for an estimate of the cost before you take it in.

Sometimes, using the air-compressed spray can help cleaning out the dirt/dust.

 

Most have fans. Some have other cooling mechanisms in addition to fans or without fans. For example, macs have a brilliant cooling system in place that apple has patented.

 

Most will have fan. However, the new Intel Core m is design to use passive cooling instead (no fan), and the Surface (not pro) 3 also has passive cooling. So I reckon we will see a lot more fanless design from now on.

 

Most still have fans, but they seem to be pretty much useless unless the computer has a massive heat sink on it, like the Origin laptops.

 

Most of them do have fans because they need to maintain a safe operating temperature. Unless you have a reduced power CPU that can give you the same performance without as much heat or energy use, you're going to need a fan or a way to keep it cool. They get dusty too over time. Keeping them clean is important, otherwise they'll build up dust and stop working well or at all until you clean off the dust or replace them if the motor stops working for the fan. They're pretty cheap to replace and easy to do...provided the laptop is not a chore to pull apart just to get to it.

I have an HP 2000 laptop that is that way right now. Perfectly fine except for the fact that the fan went out on it (again) from too much dust. I don't have the time to pull it apart like I did before to clean the fan, so I do another trick to use it for now. Most laptops like that one keep working and run ok as long as they stay under a temperature threshold, but any type of excessive GPU use is going to push them over that temperature and make it shut itself down. The way to overcome that to where you can keep using it until you can get another fan is to place a box fan next to the air intake. There's enough air flow from that (plenty!) to keep it nice and cool even with a little extra use that would normally make it shut down without the system fan in place.

That's not always practical unless you're using your laptop at home as a desktop most of the time. It's better to keep the fan clean by blowing out the air with a compressed air canister if you can't take it apart to clean it every now and then. The smaller the fan, the less it does to keep it cool for you. The larger the fan the better the result, but the more battery power it'll use if it's larger and the louder it will be (usually) to keep it cooler. A good heat sink always helps, but an efficient airflow design and a clean fan of any size are usually best to have on it.

There are fanless designs, but most of them are embedded systems that are never going to go over 1.3ghz on average. There are tradeoffs on performance to make them that way. With current demands by the market and users, it'd be extremely rare to find one unless it was a really old and slow laptop that never justified having one, or something underpowered like a Chromebook that won't need one.

 

Yes they do and you can replace the fan but you obviously need some experience with it before doing anything that could damage your laptop. Keep in mind that overheating may be a sign of a variety of problems not just with the fan. I'd recommend you to be patient with it and ask some friends or acquaintances (if you have) who know about that stuff if they can do anything about it. If you say that you don't want to spend money so that services may repair it then don't.

 

Almost all laptops have fans. If you work on your computer for long hours then it will overheat. Thanks to the introduction of an external laptop cooling pad that you can connect to USB port to cool down your laptop. Some cooling pads have upto 5 fans. The cooling pads are not expensive and you can get one for not more than $30. You can buy one at your local store or order for it online.

 

Cooling pads are they only way to do most anything on a laptop without suffering 21nd degree burns

 

This seems to be a common problem for me too. It's always the fans that seem to pack in and end up frying my computers. I think the only other option would be water cooled, although that still relies on similar mechanisms. Tablets don't have fans but I'm not sure about Android mini-laptops/netbooks/etc.

 

If your laptop becomes old, and you continue to use for a long time overheating becomes a problem. If the fan stops working, you can get a cooling pad, that is cheaper than replacing the fan.