Ask Slashdot: High-Performance Laptop That Doesn't Overheat? 325
AqD writes: Last year we started to replace business/multimedia-grade laptops with gaming laptops at work, after several years of frustration with overheating and throttling issues that plagued our laptops from Acer, ASUS, Dell, Lenovo, and basically every brand you can find on market, making it impossible to write code and run db/test environment all on the same laptop.
The first new batch comes from Clevo because their gaming laptops don't look like gaming laptops, and they offer 3-6 disk slots which we badly need. The result is acceptable, however, not quite as good as I had expected. Mine has i7-4700mq CPU which is more or less equivalent to an older i7 on the desktop, but its temperature is raised to 70-80C while turbo boost is on, even with the best thermal paste. My friend's i7-4801mq is worse — it could never stay at the advertised 3.6GHz for more than a few seconds before it burns up over 90 and starts to throttle. Its benchmark result is nearly identical to the 4700mq because of heat problems. And it's only 3.6GHz! The best i7 CPU on a desktop could easily run closer to 5GHz with 6 cores / 12 threads running!
So what should we choose next time? We're not looking for something cool or slim or light. We need real laptops which can at least run prime calculation at advertised turbo boost speed, full cores/threads for an entire day. A nice bonus would be manual fan control plus easy access to the fan for cleaning.
The first new batch comes from Clevo because their gaming laptops don't look like gaming laptops, and they offer 3-6 disk slots which we badly need. The result is acceptable, however, not quite as good as I had expected. Mine has i7-4700mq CPU which is more or less equivalent to an older i7 on the desktop, but its temperature is raised to 70-80C while turbo boost is on, even with the best thermal paste. My friend's i7-4801mq is worse — it could never stay at the advertised 3.6GHz for more than a few seconds before it burns up over 90 and starts to throttle. Its benchmark result is nearly identical to the 4700mq because of heat problems. And it's only 3.6GHz! The best i7 CPU on a desktop could easily run closer to 5GHz with 6 cores / 12 threads running!
So what should we choose next time? We're not looking for something cool or slim or light. We need real laptops which can at least run prime calculation at advertised turbo boost speed, full cores/threads for an entire day. A nice bonus would be manual fan control plus easy access to the fan for cleaning.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
These high end chips are designed to run at those temperatures. The headline speed is what you get under ideal conditions, e.g. low ambient temperature.
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or port your application to the GPU.
Yeah that's the answer right there, just port it to the GPU, that will surely be doable and solve all your problems.
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These high end chips are designed to run at those temperatures. The headline speed is what you get under ideal conditions, e.g. low ambient temperature.
That doesn't mean the laptop needs to overheat. You just need a thicker laptop with a more powerful fan. Then the CPU won't reach 90c.
ThinkPad W-series, or similar thick powerful laptops is a what is needed.
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That's not the point. Intel say that the chips are designed to run at that temperature. It isn't a problem, they are supposed to run constantly at 90C under load. To keep the fans as quiet as possible they only ramp us as far as is required to keep the CPU at 90C, no more. It's by design.
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No 90 is maximum. Running them at that temperature will reduce their lifespan, hurt other parts of the laptop, and if it is thin burn you if you touch it. Lower is better.
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
-- Lao Tzu [goodreads.com]
Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
Check the Intel documentation, if you have access to it (much of it is NDA protected). They state clearly what the cooling requirements are. Because everyone wants super thin and quiet laptops their newer CPUs are designed to run hot. Yeah, it does reduce their lifespan, but since the other parts of the laptop usually die long before the CPU does they make that trade-off.
Look at how they have designed the CPUs to throttle. They go full tilt under load right up to the point where they hit that 90C thermal limit, then throttle just enough to remain there indefinitely. Intel chose 90C deliberately, it's not arbitrary. Their chips are designed to work safely at that temperature. If they were not they would have set the limit lower.
You are right, lower temperatures are better. That's not what most people want though, they don't wonder around the shop checking CPU temperatures. They look for laptops that are thin, light and quiet.
One tip though, for Intel CPUs to work well you need to install Intel's drivers on Windows. Otherwise the CPU will tend to run close to the thermal limit all the time. The driver helps it throttle back when CPU load is low. I don't know what you need to do for Linux I'm afraid, maybe the kernel already does it. This issue is particularly common with corporate Windows images, where the IT guy thinks that the Intel driver is just bloatware or because there are no red crosses in Device Manager it isn't needed.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't mean the laptop needs to overheat. You just need a thicker laptop with a more powerful fan. Then the CPU won't reach 90c.
And it should have a good keyboard. And you shouldn't skimp on the display either. And have some sort of stand for it to sit on so it isn't directly on a surface that would interfere with airflow. And for the power requirements you'll want to have it plugged in most of the time. The battery will be have to be impressive, you should use one from a UPS.
I think they make this type of laptop. Normally you just put a chair in front of it, though.
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Yes but his comments specify how the GHz are dropped through throttling which occurs when temperatures are reached.
I believe he should contact the manufacturer and have them evaluate the BIOS. If the specs say the processor can run up to 125 C then it should only start getting throttled at about ~115 C. I suspect the fan running full speed will keep it under the threshold.
Because we don't know enough about what they are developing we can't even offer alternative solutions. Maybe cloud processing is a good a
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I believe he should contact the manufacturer and have them evaluate the BIOS. If the specs say the processor can run up to 125 C then it should only start getting throttled at about ~115 C.
Problem is that running it near the threshold for extended periods of time is going to significantly reduce the lifespan of the component, if the manufacturer has to warrant the system for say 3 years then obviously they are going to limit it to operating conditions such that it can achieve that lifespan if pushed to do it 24/7.
Yes the specs say the max temp is 125C but how long is it going to last if you do that?
Seems obvious but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you want desktops? Just a thought.
Re:Seems obvious but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remote work on desktop machine with cheap laptops. NVidia done a few things with citrixs to allow higher quality display.
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The processors in those old beasts just don't cut it anymore.
Re:Seems obvious but... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe you want desktops? Just a thought.
I was thinking about a huge fan myself, but I like your idea better..
Re:Seems obvious but... (Score:5, Funny)
I was thinking about a huge fan myself, but I like your idea better..
I'm not a big fan of that idea.
Re:Seems obvious but... (Score:5, Funny)
I liked it at first, but now I'm cooling on it.
Re:Seems obvious but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was thinking about a huge fan myself
I use a small $10 desktop fan from Walmart. When I am running something compute intensive on my laptop, I turn on the fan, point it at the laptop, and no more heat problems. I also use this laptop stand [amazon.com] (cost: $8) which allows the air to circulate all around the laptop. One more trick: If you use your laptop closed, with an external monitor, then flip it over, so the bottom (which gets the hottest) is up. That way you maximize the convection.
Re:Seems obvious but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the OP is going to see this answer repeatedly. Really their question is where can we get a laptop that gives us desktop features and desktop performance, without any explanation as to why they need a laptop.
By definition, a laptop has to compromise, for space and for weight. Both of which will impact cooling, and where cooling is limited and as they have experienced, performance has to go down. Either that or type fast to avoid burning your fingers.
There's a reason why cooling is one of the biggest costs associated with hosting servers - servers are designed to run at or near max capacity 24x7x365 in a relatively small form factor and they generate a ton of heat. In that sense, they're a bit like laptops except they can offload the cooling to the room's AC system. Also they have lots of fans and sound like you're next to a jet engine.
I see two options. Either staff switch to desktops, or use laptops with virtualization so the work is offloaded to something that is better suited to the task.
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OP: In addition to being a bundle of sticks, I would like to stick a 400W heating element inside a tiny small plastic box and have it not become too hot inside because I don't like too hot. Thanks!
Re:Seems obvious but... (Score:5, Funny)
Really their question is where can we get a laptop that gives us desktop features and desktop performance, without any explanation as to why they need a laptop.
I think you've missed the obvious reason. A desktop takes up too much space on the table at Starbucks.
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He probably does want a desktop but his boss heard that desktops are old and dying (Netcraft confirmed it), and mobile is the new revolution. Laptops are kinda mobile, right?
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Maybe you want desktops? Just a thought.
Yea, I never got this... Laptops suck. The fact that you're trying to use a laptop as a workstation makes me question your competence as a developer because you seem to be valuing form over function. Get the job done on a desktop and use a cheap laptop for travel. To run a high performance computer properly you need low ambient temperature and lots of air flow. You get neither with a laptop because it's more than likely in your lap having your body heat compound the issue and you just can't fit a decent siz
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Yeah cause wanting a laptop means you can infer developer ability. Wait, I can play this game too: I question *your* competence as a developer because you've just made a load of assumptions on a person based on virtually no evidence.
There's a bunch of reasons he could want a laptop, perhaps he works from different sites often?
Re:Seems obvious but... (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, OP is asking for a truck that's as fast as a Ferrari and has 18 seats. And can fly.
Is that intelligent?
Re:Seems obvious but... (Score:5, Interesting)
For the price they'll spend on an ultra-high-end laptop (I'm guessing stuff that meets their requirements will be in the $2000-3000+ range), you can get a mid-low range desktop that still blows it away in performance AND a midrange laptop you can remote into the beast with.
I stopped buying high-end laptops long ago. I do a lot of Android platform development in my spare time - most of the time I do it on a Chromebook running Crouton, remoted into a quad-Haswell i5 buildbox with 16GB RAM and multiple 256GB SSDs. (Actually, I ran out of space, so I'm putting in a 480, retiring one of the 256s or expanding the ccache size.) (Note, by "remote" I mean "across the room" - the assumption is that laptop and desktop are on the same LAN. I intentionally made my buildbox small in order to make it easy to lug around for car trips. I didn't get it small enough to suitcase in checked baggage, should've gone mini-ITX for that.)
The initial investment (single SSD) for the buildbox was $600-700, and that was around a year and a half ago.
A Dell Precision M2800 that barely matches what the buildbox is capable of (actually, it's significantly less capable CPU-wise due to thermal limits, 2.9 GHz nominal instead of 3.4 GHz nominal, for sustained loads turbo is useless.) costs $1799
Note that the assumption here, based on what the OP has described, is that the system will primarily be used for CPU/RAM-bound tasks, not GPU-bound.
Except when you are wrong, which is often. (Score:3, Informative)
A properly equipped workstation laptop (read: Lenovo W series Thinkpads, or Dell Precision) would have to be configured deliberately low for that to happen.
If one were to consider something on the order of a larger W series Thinkpad (W540, for example), there would be plenty of room to not only outdo that buildbox, but to also have room for a long service contract, a feature that OP's company may want.
Yes, these kind of laptops do get hot, but it's not as if manufacturers haven't paid attention to getting i
Re:Seems obvious but... (Score:5, Insightful)
The one requirement that seemed off to me was "3-6 drive slots".
In what universe does a laptop need more than 2 drives? (I'm assuming SSD and magnetic for the two drives). The need for optical can be handled by USB if needed.
So what should we choose next time? (Score:4, Insightful)
Desktops?
Origin PC's New Laptop Line (Score:5, Informative)
I have the last gen laptop that utilizes a mobile processor and I love it. It takes everything I can throw at it.
Definitely check out their new lineup, seems like it would be a perfect fit for what you are trying to accomplish.
-americamatrix
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As an Origin owner, I will second this notion. My laptop has handled 18-hour-long video rendering jobs without a significant performance degradation over time. The support is unrivaled, and they can have some quite powerful specs. Additionally, both the CPU and GPU are removable/upgradeable/replaceable.
The original poster did say that he looked at the Clevo units; Origin basically hand-assembles, tests, and rebadges them. If Clevo is close, and you want a company to stand behind it, Origin is a great one.
I
wrong tool for the job (Score:4, Interesting)
If all the laptops you've tried are failing to meet expectations perhaps you should look at your approach. Laptops are great for portability, but I've long since lost a desire to do development work directly on the laptop.
Rather having a strong backend that can spin up and host multiple VM's is much much more efficient for me. I also have less stress as my laptop isn't hampered with development / test software. I'm not sure what value you have in doing the calculation / testing on your lap vs in a lab with a remote connection.
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This. Give your devs slower laptops, and watch how fast they manage to migrate all of their DB/test VMs to the cloud.
If you really want a portable test rig for offline demos or whatever, throw a bunch of souped-up NUCs at it or something.
Luggable? (Score:3)
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HP Workstation with a handle bolted to the top.
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I have same problem. What is a good luggable pc? I was looking at Brix or NUCs, but from the reviews it looks like they have the same problem as laptops. Unlike the OP, I am not worried abouth throttling; I just want it to stay on and not freeze.
Sterling [theportablepc.com] has been selling them for years. I had an old Pentium version that just wouldn't die that I wound up giving away.
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advertised turbo boost speed (Score:5, Informative)
They call it "turbo boost speed" precisely because you can't run at that speed for an entire day. Otherwise they would just call it "speed".
Re:advertised turbo boost speed (Score:4)
They call it "turbo boost speed" precisely because you can't run at that speed for an entire day. Otherwise they would just call it "speed".
"My God! They've gone to plaid!"
"We can't stop! We are going too fast.. Have to slow down first!"
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Yes it's pretty clearly outlined on the website:
Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.01 accelerates processor and graphics performance for peak loads, automatically allowing processor cores to run faster than the rated operating frequency if they’re operating below power, current, and temperature specification limits.
Note: Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 allows the processor to operate at a power level that is higher than its TDP configuration and data sheet specified power for short durations to
Never had such issues (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know what you're doing with your laptops to cause such issues, are you working in the Sahara?
There are plenty of laptops out there but if you want a somewhat decent one, go for a Macbook Pro. Sure they're a bit more expensive (although not as expensive per feature as Dell) but I haven't had issues with them doing serious dev, cross-compilation and heavy computation (MATLAB, Python etc) work that can take 100% of all cores for days on end.
If you need desktop performance, get a desktop or get the building/compiling to work on your compile farm. A laptop with a desktop processor will overheat/melt/break and there are plenty of builders that will mash together whatever you specify without any real testing. And "boost" speeds are just that, they're only there to boost the occasional spike, physics will take over at some point. For the work you describe (prime calculations) you'll get much more efficiency out of a decent set of servers and have your coders check in their work after which a bot will automatically attempt compilation.
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There are plenty of laptops out there but if you want a somewhat decent one, go for a Macbook Pro.
That was my first thought, until I noticed that the submitter specified this: "...3-6 disk slots which we badly need...."
and this: "....manual fan control plus easy access to the fan for cleaning."
My counter-point would be, why do you need 3-6 disk slots? Could any of that storage be networked?
Also, there used to be third party utilities for OS X that could manually control MBP fans, but I don't think that's been the case for several years and I don't think it could ever be done reliably in Windows.
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there's a utility for MBP's called "SMCFan Control" - however, it has been a bit "flaky" in my experience.
If you boot to either Fedora or Ubuntu, there are some great temperature/fan/CPU controls that can be used to moderate heat.
The MBP is absolutely fucking amazing hardware. You pay for it though. And there are trade-offs (no 3-6 disk slots, that's for sure).
Re: Always had such issues (Score:3)
Yeah, this... I got a Macbook Pro late last year to use as a dev box. I did manage to learn some of the dazzling array of shortcut keys and got used to their touchpad gestures somewhat quickly. But the thing gets hot pretty fast, and I can already hear the fan starting to grind and struggle a bit. It gets hotter than the i7 Lenovo z710 I bought for my wife last year.
To be fair, the Lenovo has lots of other problems... they threw in the crappy Intel AC 7260 wifi/bluetooth chip, which just plain didn't
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It gets hotter than the i7 Lenovo z710 I bought for my wife last year.
Are you looking at actual CPU temps or just going by feel? Keep in mind that aluminum conducts heat rather well, while the plastic case of that z710 is an insulator. The case of a MacBook does get hot as it also acts somewhat as a heatsink, but that would make the hardware in that case cooler, not hotter.
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I don't know what you're doing with your laptops to cause such issues, are you working in the Sahara?
Doing actually work probably ;)
Joking aside. Some work requires a lot of CPU and that maxes out most modern laptop leaving them at their envolope temperature of 90C. Macbooks are especially reknowned for this as they overheated before everybody else copied them
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MacBooks are no better than quality Windows laptops. They use the same chips, same thermal envelope as recommended by Intel. A quick google reveals lots of people worried about their i7 MacBook Pros running at 95C, which is actually as they are designed to do.
I'd suggest an NEC or Thinkpad. Good performance, excellent quality, reasonable prices and easy to upgrade.
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According to Intel, the CPUs are designed to operate at these temperatures (100C is the failsafe, with throttling optional over 90C). And my 4 year old Nahalem laptop whic
I run HD Win7 apps on ... (Score:2)
Apple Mac Book Pro. Yup, I need to crank the fans to 6000 rpm when I am doing heavy duty 3D, image, video work, but it runs Windows 7 just fine.
Dear Slashdot: (Score:5, Funny)
I want to break the laws of physics. Please instruct me.
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Which in this case means a liquid cooling system with an external huge radiator.
The heat radiators that you can find on laptops are microscopic compared to the radiators that you can find on a stationary computer.
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Having a proper cooling system is not breaking the laws of physics. :)
There is no proper cooling system that will do what they want.
You cannot get a modern high end CPU/GPU running at full capacity for any legth of time inside a laptop without them overheating. I often hear comments like yours followed by "I have a laptop and dont have problems!" only to find out later you're running WOW most of the time. Yea, you don't have a problem but your GPUs only hitting 10% load. Load up a bitcoin miner and see what happens.
Intel says no. "short durations" - Intel.com (Score:5, Informative)
> We need real laptops which can at least run prime calculation at advertised turbo boost speed, full cores/threads for an entire day.
Intel says:
Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 allows the processor to operate at a power level that is higher than its TDP configuration and data sheet specified power for short durations to maximize performance.
Turbo Boost is designed to kick in for one to two seconds while rendering some enormously complex page or something. The CPUs are not designed to run at Turbo Boost speeds all day; so says Intel, and I suppose they know something about Intel processors.
Non-obligatory car analogy: Nitrous Boost would have been a more analogous name. It's used for seconds, like nitrous oxide, not all day, like a turbo can be.
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Non-obligatory car analogy: Nitrous Boost would have been a more analogous name. It's used for seconds, like nitrous oxide, not all day, like a turbo can be.
Best car analogy so far this year. Well done!
Workstation Laptops (Score:2)
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Disable the turbo (Score:5, Interesting)
I can now run all-core 100% usage renders all night long without a hiccup.
I've always preferred stability over bleeding-edge speed anyway.
( especially when an image or animation sequence takes anywhere from several hours to a day or two )
Acer Aspire V15 Nitro (Score:2)
I just got an Acer Aspire V15 Nitro and one of the things I like about it, is that it runs quite cool even after compiling software for half an hour. Then again, that doesn't require the NVIDIA card to do anything, and I don't know how that would affect the temperature. As I just got it, my experience with it is limited, but I like it so far. It's a very fast machine.
These temperatures are Ok in the mobile world (Score:4, Informative)
I have this kind of laptop (an old Clevo D900F with a desktop Core I7 950). And those are the normal temperatures of the current gen (even old gen) under load. The new Clevo series (P650/670 SE/SG) are said to run cooler, maybe in the 60-70 range. But this comes at the cost of having both CPU and GPU soldered to the MB. Do not expect ANYTHING lower, even over the next year in the laptop market.
Consider elevating your laptop, or even using a cooler [amazon.com]. It might help reducing from a couple of degrees to about 5.
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Thermodynamics (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Gaming Laptops are going to be your best bet... (Score:2)
Take a look at Sager Systems (Score:2)
http://www.sagernotebook.com/h... [sagernotebook.com]
They've built for multiple companies at one time or another.
Their in-house systems tend to be beefy in the extreme and engineered right (powerful internal fans, rather than passive cooling).
Their desktop replacement are generally LOUDER than other laptops, but tend to have fewer problems overheating.
I'd call and talk with them about "Desktop Replacement" systems. And let them steer you towards what you're looking for.
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Sager is just re-branding and re-naming Clevo's barebones.
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FYI, TFS mentioned that they've found Clevo, which is the manufacturer for Sager. And that's about as good as they're going to do without going over four grand. I'm running an NP2740 [amazon.com], which is an ideal laptop for me that doesn't have an RTG instead of a battery. As a "desktop replacement" the battery life does suck - full-tilt Linux DE sucks it dry in a little over two hours, but I'm not waiting for a slow laptop, so it's a trade-off worth my time. I'd love 10 hours on it, but that's not the world I hav
Maybe a slight modification to your strategy... (Score:2)
Like you, I've had reasonable performance from Clevo/Sager for software development. One thing I would possibly look for: Get the _heaviest_ laptop you can find with them. Those typically have much more aggressive cooling systems than the lighter models. Case in point: Sager 9377s at XoticPC [xoticpc.com]. If you go to the gallery and locate the view of the bottom of the laptop, you'll notice multiple intakes with extensive venting out the back. XoticPC in particular can do a copper cooling upgrade which might be worthwh
Notebookcheck tests this stuff (Score:5, Informative)
You will benefit from the reviews at Notebookcheck.net [notebookcheck.net].
For every machine they test precisely the thing that you are talking about. They run the laptop at maximum load and keep an eye on temperatures and CPU/GPU operating frequencies.
Have you thought about dividing to reign ? (Score:2)
the only cool one (Score:2)
One solution I used on an older overheating model was putting aluminum VRM coolers with 3M thermally conductive adhesive on all the VRMs on the l
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"even with the best thermal paste" (Score:2)
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What you want is a way to remove heat quickly from the chips. That's not going to happen with the tightly packed frame of a laptop.
On the other hand, with a good thermal design the tightly packed frame of a laptop can act as a great air guide.
Sager (Score:2)
I got one for about 1200 USD and it runs every game in the book and only overheats when I cover up the vents.
That is a big deal by the way, do NOT cover the vents.
I cannot imagine.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Dell Precision Mobile Workstations (Score:2)
I have used the Dell M6600 to death (literally, they had to change it for an M6700 towards the end of the second year), but I've ran renders and other intensive photo and video editing jobs on it and it took everything like a champ.
What they do best, though, is the next business day support thingie - you have a problem, you phone it in and the next business day a Dell engineer shows up with all the tools and replacement parts needed and the laptop is back on track.
I've given up on using the Precision, thoug
Workstation?? (Score:2)
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Wrong requirements (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't want to be rude, but I think you have unrealistic requirements. Like, to the point of being silly.
As others point out, you're not going to get the "Turbo Boost" speeds all day long, since the whole point of the "Turbo Boost" speeds is to ramp up performance for short periods. You're looking for balls-out performance from laptops, whereas manufacturers have been pushing mobility and power-efficiency. And you're looking at gaming laptops for business use. It makes me thing that you don't know what you're doing.
My guess is-- and don't take this personally, I'm just basing this off of my experience with working with people who've asked for similarly unrealistic expectations-- that you don't actually need the kind of performance you're asking for. It is not "impossible to write code and run db/test environment" on a single laptop. People do that kind of thing all the time, and not even with very high-end machines. No, your performance will not be quite as fast as running on a super-high-end server, but it should be good enough for development work. If you want good performance, look to workstation-class laptops (e.g. Dell Precision laptops), get the best quad-core processor available, max out the RAM, and be sure to get a fast SSD. With that, you should be able to run a couple virtual machines with reasonable performance.
If that's not enough-- if you really need much faster performance, and you need to work on a laptop, then put your development environment on a server that you connect to remotely. Set up a big bad-ass powerful VM host, and give all the developers remote access to create VMs and connect to them. Use that whenever you're internet accessible, and only use a local VM when you're stuck without access. It's not complicated.
I got one for you (Score:2)
I have a Asus G75vx it's a i7 16gb bluray-burner buy mine in december 2013 for less than 1500$ I just upgraded the HDD to 1tb-ssd and 2tb-spinning.
It have very BIG air vent in the back like 12% of the laptop size are vent.
I use it for gaming and compiling, never run over 50-60C.
The support from Asus is a very great.
The "Engineers" really don't know how to design .. (Score:2)
..them to run cooler.
They don't teach thermal management to EE's or ME's. The two groups each work on their own portions of the laptop and then cram a heat pipe and fan assembly into the case that the heat pipe supplier says might work. Thermally conductive thermoplastics have been around for decades yet they never seem to make it into laptop enclosures. Some are more thermally conductive than aluminum and are are not too costly for them to be incorporated into the design.
There is a new open laptop project
Disable Turbo Boost (Score:2)
If you are running cores are 100% on a routine basis, Turbo Boost should be disabled for maximum stability. It's really that simple. Additionally, a good IT solutions professional will provide management a financial model that shows the ROI of routine an regular hardware upgrades. For development work, don't be stupidly bound to 3-5 year IT lifecycles especially if a newer CPU generation will yield big productivity gains.
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Turbo Boost is automatically disabled when the temperature gets high. Turbo Boost's entire purpose is to crank the core frequency up when there is thermal headroom.
Of course, if the system firmware is a bit crusty and cannot properly deal with these circumstances in practice, your suggestion might still be a good idea.
laptop cooler or desktop (Score:2)
laptop coolers are cheap when you're planted for a bit. I have a couple of them but with my new setup I'm finding I don't need to use them. I have an ASUS G751JY with the I7-4710HQ processor right now, no overheating problems. It's more of a luggable desktop than a laptop and for everything else I have servers and big desktops to handle the workload.
Dude (Score:2, Informative)
Simplify your work (Score:2)
I have both a MB Pro and a Clevo laptop. The MacBook Pro sits in a corner gathering dust, because the Clevo is a more capable machine for the work I'm doing.
But one thing you might try is reducing the load on your machine. The latest and greatest IDE is fine, but you do pay a cost for it. A tool like vim will put a much smaller load on your system. Even a lighter weight IDE might be workable. I love CLion, for instance, but for large projects it crushes the machine. I can work on the same project in Q
Unicorns, unicorns, unicorns (Score:2)
What you need is servers. Laptops aren't designed to work like that. You could possibly get away with custom desktop PCs with crazy cooling but if you're pushing envelopes all day every day laptops are a piss poor excuse for productivity. You could get some high end laptops for local processing, and push all the major work to a few dedicated servers or even a blade system if you really needed sustained calculations. But laptops are not and most likely won't be designed for all this. Some other posters
macbook pro with debian (Score:3)
i realise several people have said it already, but i wanted to add that i bought a macbook pro with the 2560x1600 LCD, dual core with 8gb of RAM and it wasn't until loadavg went above 4.0 for over a minute that i even realised that it had a fan at all. it's an aluminium case (watch the edges: they are actually quite sharp).
now, people may say they are expensive but i managed to get hold of one that had been imported into the UK, and had a US keyboard, it was only $USD 1500 where all the ones with UK keyboards were $USD 2,000. given the resolution of the screen and the amount of RAM i considered it to be a serious major bargain and a long-term investment: i anticipate running this machine for at least 5 years.
now, the only down-side is that it has a 256gbyte SSD, which these days is quite small. it does however have USB3 so can use external ultra-fast USB3 SATA drives. but that's not the main down-side: the _real_ problem is that in the EU, power is not earthed properly. so when you plug the PSU in, there is considerable EMI which can actually give you an electric shock if you happen for example to put your foot on a metal radiator.
checking in /var/log/syslog it was *swamped* with SATA resets, so much so that i actually had to move to a tmpfs for /var/log and restart all services so that they used it (there are better ways to do this). the debian page for macbook pros with SSDs describes a workaround which carries out a reset on the SATA device (i forget what it is) but i found that this was *nowhere near* adequate, even if added to a cron job and run every single minute. the problem was of course compounded by the fact that each SATA reset was accompanied by a syslog message which, of course, resulted in a write, which, of course, went wrong, causing another reset. by moving /var/log to a tmpfs i broke the loop, and the resets only occur every 5 to 30 seconds, which i can live with.
it's actually good that i'm running debian because if this still had a proprietary OS on it there would be nothing i could have done about the problem.
anyway, _despite_ this, i would *still* recommend 100% getting a macbook pro [and replacing its OS]. the screen is awesome: i left xterm at its default font size, very quickly got used to the tiny characters, and - get this: i can fit *TEN* 80x51 xterms on one screen! i think that's absolutely hilarious, and for programming it's absolutely amazing. currently i have 4 xterms *on the same screen* with a firefox window that's at 1300 x 1200 pixels! i could make it more but i find that web pages don't really properly stretch beyond that as they're usually designed for around 1200 pixels wide at the most, these days.
so, yeah - get macbook pros but please for goodness sake dump the OS.
Asking for the impossible (Score:3)
Ok, so the OP wants a desktop i7 chip in a laptop case that doesn't overheat. Hmm. Ain't gonna work, pal!
You can have fast, cool and portable - but pick two. All laptops are at best a compromise from a thermal design/cooling point of view and if you add desktop chips that aren't designed to really run cool, because powerful cooling is assumed, you are asking for the impossible. BTW, this is the same (or even worse) on mobile devices - a today's smartphone cannot run on full power for more than about 15 minutes before it overheats and shuts down.
There simply isn't enough cooling, because customers are asking for devices that are smaller, slimmer, less noisy, ideally fanless, all the while demanding high performance. There used to be times when a laptop could run with power management disabled and at worst it was a bit noisy and the battery drained quicker. Modern laptop will fry itself if you disable it.
Do you really really REALLY have to have laptops? For running those test databases on? I know, laptop is cool, but can't you, you know, have a server farm to connect to instead? Do your engineers lug those machines somewhere constantly? Doubt it, those gaming machines are neither robust nor lightweight to lug around on a daily basis.
Re: (Score:2)
They are going to need a BIG fan too.. Maybe a can of freeze spray for the times you just need another few seconds of top speed...
OR.. Just get a desktop and remote in to the test environment... That only requires a modest network with low latency...
Freeze spray? (Score:2)
They are going to need a BIG fan too.. Maybe a can of freeze spray for the times you just need another few seconds of top speed...
OR.. Just get a desktop and remote in to the test environment... That only requires a modest network with low latency...
Laptop day
See you there
Turbo boost
Turboing
Want to say
Why a game machine
But I'm just
Mumbling
With my freeze spray
I will stop the heat
With my freeze spray
I will install a CPU
A much too big CPU
Tell you how
Jam it in
Make it work
A laptop case
Like a fool
Kind of sick
Special needs
Anyways
With my freeze spray
I will stop the heat
It's not some heat paste or a big fan
That's all Ars Technica
I just think you need time to know
That I just want a gaming machine
I'm finally going to come clean
I'll say what I actually mean
Play ga
Re: (Score:2)
Just go for liquid cooling straight away.
Re: (Score:2)
And it's much easier to get a "higher performance machine" in a blade server form factor, than you will ever get in a laptop.
Re: (Score:2)
I've been running my Clevo for the last six months and quite happy with it. But I also power down when not in use, and that might make the heating issue better.
If you do go the Clevo route, let me highly recommend buying the Sager rebranded Clevos via http://www.xoticpc.com/ [xoticpc.com] It was probably the best purchasing experience I've had. They're very hands on and keep you in the loop about what's going on with your product from the moment assembly starts to the time it ships, and they will follow up with you af
Re: (Score:2)