Desktop replacement with good thermals?

Makhaira

Makhaira

Makhaira

Soldato
Joined
23 Nov 2007
Posts
4,969
Location
Lancashire, UK
I'm giving serious consideration to replacing my desktop setup and XPS13 with a single more powerful desktop replacement (assuming I can sell them!), but one thing I'm quite wary of is thermal throttling, even with cooling pads.

An XPS 15 or 17 would suit me really well, but I can find a lot online about thermal throttling due to inadequate cooling. Whilst a laptop will never match the thermal performance of a desktop, are there options out there that will at least avoid throttling themselves at max performance?

Peak usage will be some moderate gaming, but also a lot of CAD in Fusion 360.
 
My experience having ditched desktops a few years ago is that a decent gaming laptop won't thermal throttle the GPU, but will almost always thermal throttle the CPU.

That's including re-doing the thermal paste and upping the fans to maximum.

However, I'm very happy with the gaming performance of the laptop in my sig.
 
Sig is: Lenovo Legion 5 :: Ryzen 5800H :: RTX-3070M

I'm terribly biased towards AMD CPU and Lenovo now, having had:

Medion 1070 (cheap build quality, chip on the GPU blew after a couple of years, but I was mining 24/7 on it! :D)
Lenovo Legion 2060 / Intel i5 - lovely build quality
MSI 3070 / Intel i7 - OK build quality but prefer the Lenovo style / look 'n feel
Lenovo Legion 3070 Ryzen - sold the MSI and got this instead. Ryzen runs cooler than the Intel.
 
I've heard great things about Lenovo, and mostly great from MSI and Asus. HP I haven't had any experience in other than cheap as chips lower end build (£500odd). My old work laptop was an XPS and it's thermals were atrocious. CPU throttling to 0.7ghz was not fun.
 
Makhaira said:
Right, back to re-assess my downselect then (Omen 17-ck1000na for £1480) and see if I should rethink! Thanks for the input both.
Click to expand...

I had an Omen 17 11800h/3070/16GB/1TB SSD for a couple of weeks but ended up returning it.
Build quality was disappointing. The lid felt flimsy, the touchpad felt loose and there was a little screen wobble when typing. RGB on the 4 zone keyboard wasn’t very bright at max. The screen always felt like it needed the brightness dialled up a little higher. The screen didn’t have g-sync.
Gaming performance was fine, but there were too many other negatives for me.
 
Was very happy with my Omen 17's but they were slightly older models. Helped that I also ended up with top specs for WAY below everyone else in the UK.

You have to check out the individual models though, the Omen 17's can be very, very good for the money, but it does depend on the particular generation and which chassis design they're using at the time. I did not have any of the touchpad or screen issued Stuartd did for example, although the RGB keyboard wasn't that bright. The screen also did have G-sync, so issues are model to model. (I had a 7th gen and 9th gen one)

My slightly older ones still had the numpad too!

The Lenovo Legions, especially the Pro models, are meant to be good :)
 
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Lenovo is running now 15% with Buildyourown code but the card in it is 3060 ....comes at £1376 atm (Ryzen 5 6600H + 16GB DDR-5 +512GB SSD and 16" 165Hz 1080P display)
 
I made the same shift recently.

Lenovo Legion 5
Intel i9 11800H
RTX 3070M
16GB RAM
512GB NVME
165Hz 1440p display

Cost me £1k. Also had the option of the Ryzen 5800H at the same price point, but the screen was 144Hz 1080p instead.

I've had it about a month now and would highly recommend it.
 
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