Laptop with good sustained performance for video work.

[kavinreed]

Laptop with good sustained performance for video work, without insane cooling fan noise
Looking at laptops for video editing and the usual encoding tasks, and most of the ones that keep their performance under long loads also sound like a jet engine. Has anyone found a model that holds its clocks reasonably well without being painfully loud?

Would also like to know if liquid metal vs standard paste on laptops makes a noticeable real-world difference, or if that's mostly marketing.

[Selur]

Would also like to know if liquid metal vs standard paste on laptops makes a noticeable real-world difference, or if that's mostly marketing.

in a laptop: I doubt it, the liquid metal will increase the transfer speed of the heat away from the cpu, but you still would need to get rid of it somehow.
So, for short encodings it would help, but for prolonged encoding, probably not so much.

To keep a laptop silent during encoding, your best bet is using a format (and software) which supports the hardware encoder of you gpu.
if you max your cpu for encoding/filtering/..., your system (especially cpu&ram) will get hot and require active and probably loud cooling

I suspect the most suitable would be a Mac Book Air 13 (with m5) assuming hardware encoding H.264, HEVC (H.265), ProRes is enough.
Otherwise a ASUS Zenbook S16 (UM5606) might fit the bill, if you prefer AV-1 over ProRes encoding.

that said: depending on the tools you use and what " video work " entiles for you, there might be no silent solution when using a laptop.

Cu Selur

[fred_abila]

For sustained encodes the limit is almost always cooling and power, not liquid metal. Liquid metal can drop peak temps a bit, but a long handbrake or Resolve export will still hit the thermal wall and the fans will spin up. Practical picks people actually use for editing: a MacBook Pro with an M-series chip if you can stay in that ecosystem, because sustained encodes stay quieter than most Windows thin-and-lights; on Windows look at thicker creator chassis with a full-power CPU and a real GPU, for example Lenovo Legion / HP Omen class machines rather than ultrabooks, and prefer models with a MUX switch or clear GPU encode path so you can use NVENC or Quick Sync instead of a long CPU-only encode. If you must stay thin, an ASUS Zenbook / similar with a dedicated GPU helps only if you actually route exports through hardware encode. Paste vs liquid metal is a small real-world difference compared with choosing hardware encode and a chassis that can dump heat for 20 to 40 minutes.

[Columbo]

Great advice, guys. Helps me too.