Repair goes mega mainstream with the launch of Lenovo’s new T-series business laptops, which earned our highest honor with a 10/10 repairability score.
Mine actually has a dGPU and at 20W it doesn’t thermal throttle, but it still runs way too slow. Today I tried unlocking the boost again so it goes up to 50W or so… but it barely makes a difference as the CPU hits 100°C in 0.5 seconds (:
I was even toying with the idea of repasting that crap, but it’s a work laptop, so nah. Annoyed the IT department about a replacement PC again. We switched to Dell, so the new XPS 14 looks kinda nice, but when you look at benchmarks and noise it also sucks. So desktop PC it is, I’m sick of it.
Yup, 100% intentional. Any time there’s any sort of a load (even opening small programs) the CPU will go balls out to load it as fast as possible, then when the loads done should cool down quickly… Unless the load doesn’t stop then it hits PL2 and performance drops off a cliff. Any Intel laptop you buy will do the exact same thing. 30 watts seems to be the sweet spot to me. The factory 20 basically disables the P cores, and above 35 and you’re at the point of diminishing returns. If you set the fan speed manually to 100% it will sustain almost 40, but then it’s screaming and burning hot.
IMO never buy an Intel laptop unless you have no other options. AMD is much better about keeping their clock in their pants unlike Intel. But they still do something similar. I have a one gen older T14s AMD and it’s faster in almost every single way in real world usage.
Dell seems to be really busy trying to be Apple with their XPS line, but they don’t have the Apple Silicon that makes their laptops so good.
Mine actually has a dGPU and at 20W it doesn’t thermal throttle, but it still runs way too slow. Today I tried unlocking the boost again so it goes up to 50W or so… but it barely makes a difference as the CPU hits 100°C in 0.5 seconds (:
I was even toying with the idea of repasting that crap, but it’s a work laptop, so nah. Annoyed the IT department about a replacement PC again. We switched to Dell, so the new XPS 14 looks kinda nice, but when you look at benchmarks and noise it also sucks. So desktop PC it is, I’m sick of it.
Yup, 100% intentional. Any time there’s any sort of a load (even opening small programs) the CPU will go balls out to load it as fast as possible, then when the loads done should cool down quickly… Unless the load doesn’t stop then it hits PL2 and performance drops off a cliff. Any Intel laptop you buy will do the exact same thing. 30 watts seems to be the sweet spot to me. The factory 20 basically disables the P cores, and above 35 and you’re at the point of diminishing returns. If you set the fan speed manually to 100% it will sustain almost 40, but then it’s screaming and burning hot.
IMO never buy an Intel laptop unless you have no other options. AMD is much better about keeping their clock in their pants unlike Intel. But they still do something similar. I have a one gen older T14s AMD and it’s faster in almost every single way in real world usage.
Dell seems to be really busy trying to be Apple with their XPS line, but they don’t have the Apple Silicon that makes their laptops so good.