5 ms·

I’d go so far as to say “laptops of late”, thermal throttling isn’t unique to MacBooks. My XPS15 regularly throttles and sounds like it’s about to take off.

rbanffy 6y ago
Gaming laptops are huge for a reason: they need to get rid of a lot of heat. Thin and light is great for short bursts of activity, but, when you need sustainable heavy usage, you'll need a bigger computer, even if it's just to have a bigger heatsink.
numpad0 6y ago
It was Surface that started the trend, then MacBook followed and became a feature. By the way, “throttling” refers to CPU _slowing down_ despite cooling working at full capacity, so loud fans in itself isn’t one. e: Another way to explain thermal throttling would be “thermal fading”, like brake fading on a car. Whether brake fading is considered a design fault or a feature that allow bursts of stronger brakes is semantic.
- dave84 6y ago
  I think the Surface was late to the party, the original Macbook Air had huge problems when it launched in 2008. https://www.theage.com.au/technology/apple-fans-burned-by-hot-airs-20080314-gds52o.html https://www.theage.com.au/technology/apple-fans-burned-by-ho...
- JosephRedfern 6y ago
  Sorry, yes, I realise that’s what throttling is but wasn’t clear. I meant to say in the original comment the fans normally come on followed by throttling.
- nbevans 6y ago
  If we're doing analogies, let's do them right :) Therefore I'd argue it is more like supercharger overheating on a car. As a supercharger gets hotter from prolonged load it gets hot and warms the air entering the engine which reduces cold-air intake thus reducing horse power compared to a cooler supercharger. There is a way to solve this: by fitting a chargecooler - which is basically a cooling system for the supercharger.
roel_v 6y ago
My XPS15's GPU runs at 100C (on benchmark loads), even after I replaced the heat pads and cooling paste. It took me weeks to get used to the idea. I guess that's just the new normal. I don't find mine to be loud though.

rbanffy 6y ago

Gaming laptops are huge for a reason: they need to get rid of a lot of heat. Thin and light is great for short bursts of activity, but, when you need sustainable heavy usage, you'll need a bigger computer, even if it's just to have a bigger heatsink.

numpad0 6y ago

It was Surface that started the trend, then MacBook followed and became a feature. By the way, “throttling” refers to CPU _slowing down_ despite cooling working at full capacity, so loud fans in itself isn’t one. e: Another way to explain thermal throttling would be “thermal fading”, like brake fading on a car. Whether brake fading is considered a design fault or a feature that allow bursts of stronger brakes is semantic.

dave84 6y ago
I think the Surface was late to the party, the original Macbook Air had huge problems when it launched in 2008. https://www.theage.com.au/technology/apple-fans-burned-by-hot-airs-20080314-gds52o.html https://www.theage.com.au/technology/apple-fans-burned-by-ho...
JosephRedfern 6y ago
Sorry, yes, I realise that’s what throttling is but wasn’t clear. I meant to say in the original comment the fans normally come on followed by throttling.
nbevans 6y ago
If we're doing analogies, let's do them right :) Therefore I'd argue it is more like supercharger overheating on a car. As a supercharger gets hotter from prolonged load it gets hot and warms the air entering the engine which reduces cold-air intake thus reducing horse power compared to a cooler supercharger. There is a way to solve this: by fitting a chargecooler - which is basically a cooling system for the supercharger.

roel_v 6y ago

My XPS15's GPU runs at 100C (on benchmark loads), even after I replaced the heat pads and cooling paste. It took me weeks to get used to the idea. I guess that's just the new normal. I don't find mine to be loud though.