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by Tade0 1074 days ago
I suppose some of it can be attributed to general unpleasantness of 37°C and impatience that comes with it, but I have another data point:

A while ago my laptop started running around 10°C hotter than it should have - turns out the iGPU was going wide open throttle for no apparent reason.

What I found was that CPU-intensive tasks slowed down as well, because those 10°C make a huge difference in terms of when the CPU starts throttling.

I wasn't bothered by this too much, even though I had to disable turbo altogether, until the first heat wave of the season hit - +10°C from the iGPU combined with +10°C from the heatwave slowed the device to a crawl - it was the first time I briefly saw it hit 102°C - that is actually above the usual safety threshold.

I think people in different climates either have A/C or are used to different levels of performance.

1 comments

I live in Asia and summers are routinely 37 C.

Apple's new chips are a GODSEND for laptops. My old Intel laptops would nearly instantly thermally throttle under any trivial load without air conditioning at full blast and a fan aimed at the machine.

I also live in Asia (Vietnam) and my previous two laptops have had Intel chips (current: MSI GE66 i7+3070, previously an old Clevo with a 970m). I've never had noticeable thermal throttling even when running in very hot summers in rooms with barely functioning AC (which is basically every room here). My northern European body struggles - a lot - but I haven't seen my laptops being much bothered. I do a lot of intense 3d work, I would notice if it started throttling. Maybe the problem was your laptop?
Are your tasks CPU-intensive though?

My laptop idles at less than 20°C above ambient, so usually in the high 40s, but the fans already speed up when it reaches 60°C - at 37°C I have just a few degrees of wiggle room until inevitably it starts cooling more aggressively.

Yes, I used to do a lot of rendering on the CPU. Fortunately GPU rendering is better now.
I live in Alabama and I cannot imagine places that you can happily exist in without AC.

It routinely hits 37-40C here during the summer /and/ 80%+ humidity.

A week ago it was ambient temp 39C with a Heat Index of 45C.

I hadn't thought about the Apple Silicon being a pro in that environment but now I'm tempted to get one lol.