Hi,
I decided to try committing to using Linux a few weeks ago. Tested on an older computer first (Thinkpad T530/i7-3520M/consumer-level SSD, running Fedora 23/KDE Plasma 5) and was happily running memoQ and SDL Trados (I am a professional translator) in a Windows 8.1 Pro VM in seamless, idling at 2%, averaging around 10%, occasionally maxing out at 40%, but rarely. (Values measured with KDE activity monitor). Noise was occasional, levels non-distracting.
I used the same setup (very same VM, in fact) on a Thinkpad T450s (i5-5200U, Sandisk SDSSDHII480G, same OS/DE) averaging about 12% CPU, with the fans running loud about 70% of the time, which is very distracting.
I'm hoping to find out what kind of trade-offs are possible/can be minimised between:
- Fan noise (most important in this case - I want to eradicate it as far as possible)
- System performance (I work with translation memory databases, but not large ones, so VM performance doesn't have to be outstandingly snappy)
- Battery life (least important, but would like to elongate this where possible)
So, my questions here are about the factors which might affect my system - i.e. what can I change now, how do they interact with one another, etc:
- Would I be better running an i7 laptop, or would the heat generated by the extra power make my fans run harder, despite presumably recording lower CPU usage percentages?
- The T530 is older, and far from compact. The T450s is technically an ultrabook - does this mean fans have to work harder because thermal management is more demanding for ultrabooks?
- Can host hardware/software settings be safely altered to reduce CPU use/fan noise? How?
- I have played around with memory allocation, execution caps etc. in Virtualbox settings, resulting in even higher CPU usage in guest and host. (Spending longer on achieving the same result?). How could I tweak these settings to reduce CPU usage/fan noise?
- Is there any way of permanently shutting down certain Windows 8.1 processes to save on CPU? Like Arch Linux-style Windows?
- Is there a better host distro/desktop environment for my needs?
Obviously, the fixes a) use Windows or b) dual boot would deal with my noise issue, but I'm hoping to use this as a chance to learn more about virtualisation. Would be great if anyone has some advice on these questions to help me get started.