Sony SZ temperature/heat/noise, your experiences here.

After long while of consideration, I'm thinking of getting a Sony SZ series, but most probably I'll wait until the Centrino Pro come out and see what's gonna happen, cause I'm not in a hurry for a laptop right now.

What I'm really concern about is it's heat generated, or how good is the cooling system. I'm sure the faster CD or C2D generate less heat than the old Pentium M series, but what do you experienced with the cooling system in overall?

I've read lot of reviews of this model, including user review and pro reviews. Some said it's basically warm but not hot, some said it's not warm at all, some said fan is noisy, and some said the laptop is very quiet.

I'm seriously curious regarding this matter. I wish whoever use owned this laptop can share your opinions/experiences? How do you use your laptop? How much heat generated in different part of your unit e.g. top, bottom, keyboard, palm rest etc? Fan noise?

Hope to keep this thread like the "SZ - heavy user" thread, anyone concern about this matter can check out this thread before buying.

Thanks in advanced!

 

New 260P/C user here. Warm, not hot, fan becomes a bit noisy when it's charging - extra battery heat? Anyway, when it's too noisy - 3AM alone in the house - press S2 and fan slows down to tolerable level.

 

I can say only one thing, If you want lose peace of mind, Buy sony. Otherwise not!!

I am the owner of 360 P/c. Fan noise is loud. Its embracing for me to use it in library. Even it is idle, fan runs continuously.

 

Thanks for the responses! That's really surprise that there are people who never complain on the fan noise e.g. the most recent SZ review on here. By the way, how loud is loud? My girlfriend has a Asus M5N, the fan is annoying simply because when it operates, it generate a high pitch noise which can be heard from far. OTOH I have a fujitsu S6240, it seems that the fan never shut down but never get as loud, it's obviously could be heard but never "annoying"...

Perhaps I should go to the Sony store and switch on the 3D screen saver, see if unit will go warm and how loud the fan is...Hope to see more responses here, especially whoever satisfied with the fan noise.

 

Depends what you compare the noise with.

Compare with my desktop, SZ is quiet.

Compare with my S2110, SZ is kinda noisey.

Compare with my Wii, SZ is quiet.

Compare with iPod with Volume @ Max, SZ is quiet.

 

I have an SZ2VP (European model with the old Core Duo 2.16). It can get very noisy for me compared to some of the other notebooks I have, especially when running on AC power. It does run reasonably cool though - unlike the quiet but 'Hey, anyone for a barbecue?' Macbook Pros. It's one of the major reasons I'm looking for a direct (or more powerful) replacement - but have been unable to find better than the SZ3 (which seems just as noisy).

 

For reference I have the SZ150P with the CPU swapped out for the T2600 (2.16 gHz), normal should be T2400. In addition, also have the Hitachi 7k100 hard drive installed.

Prior to this SZ150P I had the S360P.

When the computer is on the fan is always on. But it is a very low sound that is not annoying to hear but it is not whisper quiet. My desktop is built on the T2400 I swapped out and it is more quiet then my laptop.

As for heat, it gets warm sure. Hot? That depends on ventilation.

If I use it on a bed where there is very little ventilation, it definetly gets hot. However if I have the laptop on a book then on the bed, it is just warm.

When comparing to the S360P, I like the SZ better. Just the placement of the cooling system is a big plus. THe S360P had the cooling blow out on the right side of the laptop. The SZ series blows out the rear.

Btw, to note. I have thought about swapping in the Merom core, T7400 but couldn't justify the cost since the performance gain is maybe 10% at most but realistically don't need it. And no real power difference in consumption.

If you have more specific questions, feel free to ask.

 

"the fan is always on" is set by default by Sony???

 

Yeah it seems the fan always being on is set by Sony. I don't know if anyone else has a different experience where their fan isn't always on. But on my SZ150 it is always on. I don't mind because it is low volume and not very audible unless you are in a completely silent room. Even then its very low... comparison wise I'd say maybe volume generated by a low speed 120mm fan?

I don't find it bad because on the S360P, fan would go on and off and the worst part is how noisy it was... that was embarassing to have in class / library.

 

In general SZ is very quiet laptop. Of course, under full load the fan kicks on. But the sound is more about air flow whisper rather then annoing fan rotation. Running on battery, sz is significantly quieter than on AC even though CPU control is set to "battery life" in both. When working with word/excel on battery I use to close as much background app as possible (skype, nod av ...), which virtually stops fan for about 50+% of working time. So it's completly dead silent. Also, thermal compound change and regular dust cleaning of the heat sink & fan keeps temp down a few deg....

 

WHile many people have reported the fan is always on, how could you manage to stop the fan when idle?

 

I have a SZ320CP, the fan noise in low-use conditions is quiet, unless in a silent room, it can barely be heard. Under high/intesne usage (playing games) the fan does get louder, but not loud to the point that it's annoying, defintely quieter than my old Compaq and my bro's HP with its fan running, (both are 15inch widescreen laptops).

As for the temp, low usage = very cool, high usage = gets warm but not hot. Your palms never really feel the heat because it comes out the rear left, so unless your hands are placed there, you won't really feel the heat.

 

When I use my SZ in stamina mode, with all my battery-saving features enabled, and am just doing word processing stuff, or light web-work, the fan doesn't kick in. The virus scan seems to trigger the fan, and then the fan will kick in when the SZ is charging (on an off-and-on basis, anyway). When the computer is running the dedicated g-card, the fan is usually on.

When gaming, the computer gets warm, but definitely has never reached that "painful to touch" level that other machines get to.

As far as the loudness of the fan goes, the fan noise of the SZ has never bothered me. My older, piecemeal desktop has an annoying, higher pitched fan noise. No sound made by my SZ360 has ever grated on my nerves.

 

My SZ260 is always warm and always has the fan on..this is a replacement as my first one got so hot that the heat melted the rubber cones under the keyboard keys so they became loose.
While it was being repaired I used a Dell which was like a silent fridge in comparison.
Temperatures on NHC of CPU is 51 and HD, 35..a lot better than the 70s I was getting earlier and which needed a complete system board change.
The heating system is awful...ah but the screen is unbeatable.

 

It stops only when on battery, with all power saving features on, in stamina and closed background applications. As I said earlier, the fan is not 100% time off. It's off for about 5 min then kicks on slightly for another 3-5 min and then turns off again. When browsing the web, it much depends on a website; e.g. java applet kicks fan on right away.

I'll try to capture some sounds of my SZ in those situations...

 

While playing WoW on my SZ150, the fan gets loud. I'm not sure if it's because dust has accumulated inside, but it seems to be louder than when I first had it. The pitch is not low, but rather a loud higher pitched sound that can be heard from pretty far. The upper left side of the laptop gets extremely hot. Not warm, HOT. I cannot play WoW and keep the laptop directly on my lap. It will burn my leg if I do so.

Keep in mind WoW does run both the cpu and videocard at full load. When doing normal tasks like surfing the web, the notebook is pretty quiet. It is not silent but acceptable. The fan does seem to run at all times and the S2 button does not change fan speed for me at all.

 

Many thanks everyone!

That's what I see from various threads and reviews, the noise and heat doesn't bother some, and others seems to hate it...

It seems like if CPU and GPU at full load will make the laptop really hot, which I think it's inevitable in most laptop design. I'm planning to setup a powerful SZ for audio usage with virtual instruments and FXs (which can eat up tons of CPU resources) but even with built in GPU it's more than enough, so I guess the SZ is pretty ok for audio purpose. I do need the 7400 GO for some entertainment and games...

I find that when people talk about the heat, I think they're mostly talking about the heat blow out from the fan, but not the heat on the palm rest/keyboard/bottom part etc, so I think the SZ is pretty good on the cooling system.

Neoguri stated that playing WoW can get the laptop really hot, but playing games on the lap is pretty annoying, right? I think most of the time if we have laptop on our lap mainly we're doing web surfing or word stuffs, so I think the bottom gets hot is not really an issue to me, but fully not to melt the keyboards! BTW the Asus M5N gets so hot that lap use is never possible but keyboard never have any problem after 2+ years of usage, I think SZ should be better, hopefully won't be worse than my current Fujitsu S6240 as I'm pretty satisfied with the heat and noise, not hot, but warm.

Oh and I think some of you all are from western country right? The weather/room temperature won't be as warm as my situation, which everyday can get up to 33 degree average (so air-con is a must!). I can imagine using SZ in my country will be noisier and warmer, hmm...

I'll pay a visit to Sony store and see what I can do, cause currently I don't know anyone own the SZ series, or else it'll be extremely helpful.

@imrichard - If you can make an effort to capture the laptop noise by simply press record using the built in mic it'll be very helpful and it can give a general impression, and thanks in advanced!

Thanks again everyone! Any more sharings are welcome!

 

I agree with neoguri

I have a SZ360 and play WoW

If I switch to Speed and play WoW it gets really hot. Cannot let it sit on my lap. I think most people don't experience this because they are not playing graphic and cpu intensive games. This will run it to the max.

However on Stamina and just surfing web it is easily set on the lap.

I usually run WoW with a lapcooler (fan).

Notebook fan is not loud under normal conditions. Under gaming situations the fan kicks in and is somewhat loud.

 

I'm not sure about others. I think my SZ fan is quite loud even when using "Ultimate Battery" settings with the DVD drive & stuff turned off & running on the 2nd dimmest LCD brightness & Intel graphics. The fan noise is the same as if I used the highest settings (Nvidia 7400, DVD on & running CPU intensive programs).

The fan doesn't stop once the laptop is up & I'm quite embarrassed to use it in the library. I usually hide at one corner of the library at those personal desks as you can hear the fans from quite a distance away. I used my SZ in class once & ended up getting stares from other classmates with the instructor asking me to turn my laptop off because of the fan noise! I didn't want any unnecessary attention but needless to say, I ended up being talked about by all the rest after class saying what a showoff I was & stuff like that.

I'm pretty mad with my SZ fan for this incident as I didn't want to draw any attention to the fact that I'm using an SZ even though I feel that I'm fortunate to be able to afford one at the time I bought it... I definitely do not want to show off.

In terms of fan noise, the SZ is easily the loudest when I compared to other laptops that I've used such as the Dell Inspiron E1705, XPS M1210,.....

 

So sad! Why dont you call the service support to fix the problems?

 

pigcat, give me a few days.... i'm thinking of making the recording using a different computer, so my sz is not under any load. but i have to install my soundcard on that computer first. btw i do a lot of audio stuff on sz (1.8 GHz/2GB RAM/5400rpm HDD). @44.1/24 i got smooth plaback/recording of about 16 tracks with tons of plugins. this is in stamina and with performance setting on "battery life". only @96kHz/24 bit I had to switch to "adaptive" and i'm still at about 80% of processing power....

 

Core2Duo has higher heat dissipation (34W) than CoreDuo (31W):
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mobile/display/core2duo_3.html
That is a solid 10% more heat to deal with. I suspect the same is true for CoreDuo vs Pentium M.

If it is dissipating more heat, generally speaking, it is using more power.

BTW. Pentium M (ie Pentium III Mobile) was generally acknowledged as being very good on heat dissipation. It was the Pentium 4 (desktop chip) that was a furnace. Which is why Intel stopped there and moved on to Dual Core.

 

@imrichard - Thanks for the extra effort! Just go ahead with anything you're comfortable with, and looking forward to your audio clip! I'm glad to find audio guy that use SZ as workstation! I'm planning to do so, so I'm really concern of its DAW capabilities. Anyway I'll be using external harddrive for gigastudio and kontakt, rarely multi audio tracks running at once, the laptop will just act as a brain of the whole system. I'm sure it'll perform well! BTW one more question for you, do you use the internal soundcard for your DAW? I read somewhere that it's capable to run ASIO driver thus I think DAW will be running smoothly without the need of ASIO4ALL. I do use M-Audio FW410 but if the internal soundcard perform well then I can eliminate the need of bringing extra brick around (monitoring quality is less important, I'm basically a composer/arranger). Let me know...

@skagen - If that's the case regarding the extra heat of the core duo, I think I've been fooled by the marketing strategy by Intel then...But wait, it make sense that C2D/CD generate more heat than Pentium M but I think it's when they're on AC right? I think new core duos have more advantage when they're on battery, correct me if I'm wrong...

I hope Sony will come out an even enhanced cooling system with more quiet fan (that is, a new design/better fan instead of down voltage/speed of the CPU gimmick).

Hopefully there'll be a fully working Vista 64bit so that I can fully utilize the 4GB RAM max (and hopefully they'll do something to their motherboard/BIOS!!).

 

here is an audio clip of my SZ start.
http://download.yousendit.com/2FA780DA5F574A5A
(can anybody save this clip on free ftp space?)
The first 5 sec is a background noise of room&other equipment. at 5 sec SZ is started, at 25 sec fan kicks on just like on full load (XP startup screen), other win sounds you know pretty well ...
volume of the clip is normalized. a pair oktava mk012 was placed about one foot in front of the screen and about foot above keyboard, just like user's head is.

pigcat, SZ's audio card runs asio drivers ok. i use audiofire 8 FW interface with it's own drivers though.

 

Wow thank you so much for the sound clip! The fan noise certainly comparable with my Fujitsu laptop, if not, even more quiet! I think on full load my laptop's fan is more noisier than the full load fan noise in the sound clip (assumed that the harddisk noise is very quiet)! That's certainly very helpful! But what's with the beep noise at the beginning? The CD drive noise? lol... (BTW i'm sure you didn't have the speaker volume at max don't you? )

I guess this is the one I'm looking for, moreover it's the only one (correct me if I'm wrong) which offer ASIO driver for the intergrated soundcard, and the size fits just perfect! Now I can have a bag full of my audio workstation on the go! I can even bring along an extra LCD for dual display whenever I wish to move!


Thanks again imrichard! And thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts!

 

I have the Sz450 and it is pretty loud and it can get very hot depending on what you are doing. The fan runs constantly.

 

I think anyone who reported that the fan is very noisy, perhaps can download a copy of the audio clip by imrichard and report back if it's as like what you experienced with the noise level. I think many people are comparing to something almost dead silent, I don't know. Perhaps the audio clip can be like some sort of 'benchmark' or something, so probably your unit is noisier than the sound clip...

 

the sounds & clicks in the first few seconds of the clip are indeed from cd drive, i'm not sure if they can be disabled...it never bothered me too much. the volume was at about 90%.
fan noise would be more audible if i placed mics behind the screen where air is blown out....