Expected Temperatures for 115W GPUs

Hi,

I was on the lookout for a 115W GPU powered 15 inch laptop (2070/2070 Super). But I saw some videos where the GPU reached 86 degrees. Can anyone please tell me, what is the acceptable temp for a laptop with 115W GPU inside, given an ambient temperature of 24 degrees?

 

Depends on the laptop, but from my personal experience I would say my average would be around 78c-80c for 115w in a decently thin and light machine.. 80-90 watt machines i'm seeing between 64-74c.

 

I was looking forward to the Asus Scar 15 with the 115W 2070 Super, but from the reviews online (other than notebookcheck), all reviews point at high GPU temperatures, touching 85-86 degrees. One video even showed that the GPU was throttling. Which is totally absurd as the Scar 3 had no such issue, and the 2020 model has this problem. So can it be a batch issue, or a widespread issue, and possibly by design?

 

It's just mediocre design decisions on Asus' part.. I'm the biggest Asus fan but they really need to start doing vapor chambers for CPU and GPU in these laptops going forward. They expect to cool a 60 watt (under load) Intel CPU + 115 watt GPU in something thin and light with standard heat-pipe setup? It's getting ridiculous.. If they didn't do factory liquid metal on these machines, it would be laughable.

I had the Legion 7i with 2080 Super MaxQ and it's an amazing device to be honest.. I actually had 3 units and man, the paste job was ridiculously bad on two of them, and one was quite decent. So the quality control is pretty bad there however, I liquid metal'd the two "bad" samples and they ended up outperforming the "good" one so it really was just down to a crap factory paste job... After my tuning (undervolting, etc.) and running triple A games that beat up the cpu and gpu, the GPU never exceeded 62-64c and CPU was 62c (with turbo disabled) and about 68c with turbo enabled... All while having excellent fan acoustics (use Balance mode). Balanced mode was the sweet spot as it basically performed the same as Max/Turbo/High mode.. Which was only louder in fans. Quiet/Silent mode was even impressive since it was only about 5% slower in GPU performance and fan acoustics were even lower..

It's my current favorite "top end" GPU machine, however I ended up returning it because the 2080 Super maxQ didn't perform radically different from the 90watt 2070 MaxQ in the Asus M15 for the extra +$1200 cost for the 7i.

Considering the M15 is now on sale at Best Buy for $1329 for the 240hz panel, 2070 MaxQ it's kind of hard to get mad at that machine so it seems this is the machine i'll keep until the Nvidia 3xxx series laptops start rolling out. The M15 isn't without it's faults though..

 

Okay. I'm also afraid of getting a badly pasted Legion 7i. Dave 2D also showed that vapor chamber was inferior to standard heatpipe solution on the legion 5i, and himself ordered 2 units and it didn't make any difference. So I stopped myself from ordering after reading your experience with the 7i.

Also regarding the m15, can you please let me know the cons? It looks quite an appealing laptop to me, being a thin and light. Also if you're given a chance to buy a laptop now, what would you prefer?