Whether it's gaming, browsing the web, or doing serious work, there's pretty much a laptop that has enough processing power to handle almost anything. Unfortunately, it can get very loud, but there are ways to curb this noise.
Clean vents and fans, and use hard surfaces
If your laptop is louder now than it used to be when running the same software, there's a chance that your fans and vents are clogged with dust. This means that the computer is increasing the fan speed to compensate. The way to do this is to remove the dust from your laptop.
If your vents aren't clogged with dust, you might be clogging them in other ways. Make sure you only use your laptop on hard surfaces, such as a laptop table.
Change the fan settings
The quickest way to reduce the noise of your fan is to lower the volume of your fan. It's easy to say, but it's not always obvious how it should be done.
There are three places to look for fan controls on your laptop. First, look at your keyboard to see if there are any physical fan controls. Normally, you have to hold down the "Fn" key on your keyboard and then press the function keys to switch between different fan modes, one of which could be the quieter mode with lower maximum performance.
The second place to check is any utilities installed on your laptop. This is more common in gaming laptops that have manufacturer utilities that allow you to control RGB lighting and fan profiles. If your laptop doesn't have an official fan control utility, you can use a third-party app like SpeedFan, but do so at your own risk.
Finally, you can check out the BIOS/UEFI menu, some of which have fan profile settings that can be adjusted. Refer to your laptop's manual to determine how to access the BIOS/UEFI menu, and if there are any settings that will affect the fan profile there in the first place.
Change the power settings
Most operating systems allow you to customize your laptop's power plan to find the right balance of performance, noise, and battery life. If the laptop performs a little worse in exchange for less noise, then you can change the power plan to a power that produces less heat and therefore requires less cooling.
In Windows, you can right-click the battery icon in the notification area and select Power & Sleep Settings.
Then change the "Power Mode" to "Best Power Efficiency", which should reduce fan noise in the deal.
Use GPU features that reduce fan noise
In laptops with dedicated GPUs, the GPUs have their own cooling fans, which increases the overall noise level. Major GPU manufacturers offer special features in their utility software to limit fan noise. This comes at the cost of performance, but GPUs often produce performance that you don't actually need.
For NVIDIA users, the feature is called "Whisper Mode" and can be activated from within the GeForce experience. The feature for AMD users is called Radeon Chill and is configured by Radeon Software.
When these modes are activated, your GPU will only render to the specified frame rate limit, keeping temperatures and noise low in less demanding games. These special modes go beyond simple frame rate limits by managing GPUs with lower power targets and actively enforcing the boundaries between maximum safe temperature and fan speed.
Use a frame limiter in your game
Many modern video games allow you to set a maximum frame rate in the monitor or graphics settings menu. Reducing the frame rate to 30fps will significantly reduce heat and fan noise during gameplay.
You can also throttle the game frame rate by turning on Vsync in the game menu, which limits the frame rate only to the monitor's refresh rate. Most laptop monitors don't fall below 60Hz, so this is a rough method of frame rate limiting.
Move the laptop away
If you're using your laptop as a desktop system connected to an external monitor, an effective way to reduce fan noise is to move your laptop farther away from you. The sound intensity obeys the inverse square law, which means that the intensity of the sound decreases dramatically with increasing distance.
For example, you can use a wireless mouse and keyboard in combination with a long display cable and keep your laptop's noise vents away from your ears. This simple fix makes it much less noisy without compromising performance or temperature.
Use noise-cancelling headphones
If you're using headphones on your laptop, you can use a high-quality noise-cancelling headphone kit to completely eliminate fan noise.
Even the less expensive headphones are noticeably able to eliminate monotonous hum sounds like fan noise. This is undoubtedly one of the most effective solutions, although it will cost you some money.