I got fucked by them over a decade ago. Naively bought an Alienware for college. Burned out two motherboards on it while it was under warranty which they replaced. Naturally it burned out a third one outside of my warranty window which they refused to help with unless I paid them half the value of the laptop. Told them no thanks, instead I’ll tell everyone I know that their hardware is garbage.
“Gaming laptops” are a lie anyway. You can’t generate that much heat in that small of a space without something eventually going wrong, this applies to all of them. They’re all hot and underpowered.
They’ve gotten a bit better within the Nvidia 1000-3000 series, but I can’t vouch for the 4000 series. Better thermal management techniques and lower target thresholds.
That being said, I’m sure there are manufacturers that buck the trend and set higher thermal targets for more performance. I’d say monitor your temps, and target for no higher than 75c if possible.
As in too high or too low? Maybe it might be that I’ve only had experience with a mobile 1060, 3060, and 3070 from Lenovo, but all of them seemed to have a target temp around 72-75, that or that was effectively where the fans could keep it at equilibrium when running furmark as a benchmark.
It really depends on the tdp. On my laptop which has a 2070 with up to 115 w and an 10th gen i7 with up to 45 w the cpu can go up to 95 deg and the gpu throttles at 86 deg.
Some laptops have Max q or low pwer versions of the same card which have a lower tdp and produce less heat. But for higher power gpus and CPUs they will most certainly go above 80.
Yeah, I expect any gaming laptop to have a shorter lifespan, but killing three mobos in the span of 3.5 years shouldn’t happen. Now that I’m older and wiser, I wonder if I had a bad power supply, but that’s something that should have come up on my second repair.
Different hardware type. Gaming laptops have dedicated graphics cards which generate heat from an additional source, and they have to drive 1080p/1440p/4k content, whereas the steam deck is a 1280x800 screen, which is absolutely perfect for an AMD integrated GPU with reduced thermal management.
The steam deck is a single spec tightly tuned machine and software package not unlike a game console, whereas a gaming laptop is an all purpose machine with hardware all over the spectrum that you can buy what you want/need.
I managed to get one of the “desktop replacement” laptops before they got sold to Dell, and that fucker was a solid brick shithouse, lasted like 7 years before functional issues. Heat was definitely a problem, couldn’t rest my left hand on the keyboard (above the GPU) after a couple hours and could probably sit outside in a blizzard without pants comfortably. Miss that bad boy… Shame Dell ruined them.
I’ve run into so many people who have had Dell laptops totally crap out / burn out on them. I saw several myself years ago through an old job. Mostly bad LCD displays right out of the box, but also an assortment of other problems. I vowed never to get a Dell computer of any kind after that.
Now in my current job we are forced to use refurbished Dell laptops. And guess what? All of them are total pieces of garbage. I’ve had two of them now. The first one became inoperable so they had to get me a new one. And now I find that the audio and USB ports are faulty on the new one.
I’m not surprised Dell is screwing over their lower-level employees, considering they consistently fuck over their customers. Fuck Dell.
Just sharing my experience here as well. I bought a Dell gaming monitor - it was a TN panel with gsync and 144hz it was quite expensive at the time.
Anyway, that piece of shit was replaced 5x under warranty. Faulty panel, backlight dying, lots of issues with input ports, broke firmware, etc. their warranty and service was top notch, but that was a lot to go through with a $500 piece of equipment. I bought an LG after that one died and have had 0 issues.
I got fucked by them over a decade ago. Naively bought an Alienware for college. Burned out two motherboards on it while it was under warranty which they replaced. Naturally it burned out a third one outside of my warranty window which they refused to help with unless I paid them half the value of the laptop. Told them no thanks, instead I’ll tell everyone I know that their hardware is garbage.
“Gaming laptops” are a lie anyway. You can’t generate that much heat in that small of a space without something eventually going wrong, this applies to all of them. They’re all hot and underpowered.
They’ve gotten a bit better within the Nvidia 1000-3000 series, but I can’t vouch for the 4000 series. Better thermal management techniques and lower target thresholds.
That being said, I’m sure there are manufacturers that buck the trend and set higher thermal targets for more performance. I’d say monitor your temps, and target for no higher than 75c if possible.
75c is impossible on a gaming laptop if you dont have a low power gpu (eg max q)
As in too high or too low? Maybe it might be that I’ve only had experience with a mobile 1060, 3060, and 3070 from Lenovo, but all of them seemed to have a target temp around 72-75, that or that was effectively where the fans could keep it at equilibrium when running furmark as a benchmark.
It really depends on the tdp. On my laptop which has a 2070 with up to 115 w and an 10th gen i7 with up to 45 w the cpu can go up to 95 deg and the gpu throttles at 86 deg.
Some laptops have Max q or low pwer versions of the same card which have a lower tdp and produce less heat. But for higher power gpus and CPUs they will most certainly go above 80.
Yeah, I expect any gaming laptop to have a shorter lifespan, but killing three mobos in the span of 3.5 years shouldn’t happen. Now that I’m older and wiser, I wonder if I had a bad power supply, but that’s something that should have come up on my second repair.
I had that in a year with Asus/ROG, garbage.
Why not the steam deck then?
Different hardware type. Gaming laptops have dedicated graphics cards which generate heat from an additional source, and they have to drive 1080p/1440p/4k content, whereas the steam deck is a 1280x800 screen, which is absolutely perfect for an AMD integrated GPU with reduced thermal management.
The steam deck is a single spec tightly tuned machine and software package not unlike a game console, whereas a gaming laptop is an all purpose machine with hardware all over the spectrum that you can buy what you want/need.
I managed to get one of the “desktop replacement” laptops before they got sold to Dell, and that fucker was a solid brick shithouse, lasted like 7 years before functional issues. Heat was definitely a problem, couldn’t rest my left hand on the keyboard (above the GPU) after a couple hours and could probably sit outside in a blizzard without pants comfortably. Miss that bad boy… Shame Dell ruined them.
I’ve run into so many people who have had Dell laptops totally crap out / burn out on them. I saw several myself years ago through an old job. Mostly bad LCD displays right out of the box, but also an assortment of other problems. I vowed never to get a Dell computer of any kind after that.
Now in my current job we are forced to use refurbished Dell laptops. And guess what? All of them are total pieces of garbage. I’ve had two of them now. The first one became inoperable so they had to get me a new one. And now I find that the audio and USB ports are faulty on the new one.
I’m not surprised Dell is screwing over their lower-level employees, considering they consistently fuck over their customers. Fuck Dell.
In EU at least there’s a new law-mandated warranty period for the replaced part but I of course can’t say if this holds true where you live.
Just sharing my experience here as well. I bought a Dell gaming monitor - it was a TN panel with gsync and 144hz it was quite expensive at the time.
Anyway, that piece of shit was replaced 5x under warranty. Faulty panel, backlight dying, lots of issues with input ports, broke firmware, etc. their warranty and service was top notch, but that was a lot to go through with a $500 piece of equipment. I bought an LG after that one died and have had 0 issues.
My old dell server hardware is surprisingly crap as well
I’ve gone through 4 PSUs in the last 5 years
Surprisingly? Not sure.
IMO it’s a bit surprising
I’d expect a company to at least sell decent hardware to their enterprise customers but I guess not in this case
If it breaks, you can just sell them more 🤷♂️