My personal word on thin machines with a GTX 1070

D13H4RD · May 20, 2018

Let's be real. The NVIDIA Pascal generation of GPUs work wonders when it comes to performance-per-watt, delivering more performance at lower wattages. It's especially true for laptops, where the performance delta is usually 10% on average compared to the equivalent desktop model, sometimes more, sometimes less (hence why the "M" nomenclature was dropped entirely and they now share the same names with their desktop counterparts)

But no matter how much more efficient new chipsets have become, laptops still have an inherent disadvantage; their limited heat dissipation area.

There's just no getting around it. The internal volume of a laptop is a lot more limited compared to a traditional tower due to the need to make it as thin and compact as possible for portability, which means there's less space for heat to dissipate. It's precisely this that made early gaming laptops enormously large and bulky that were almost totally unsuitable for traveling. Couple that with severely gimped processing units that meant you basically paid more for a machine that is just barely portable and underperformed.

The current generation of processors have improved this greatly however, to the point where the aforementioned GPUs have a very small performance delta with their desktop counterparts and with a TDP that allows these beefier chips to be put inside more compact machines. We've also seen innovations like vapor chamber pipes, dust release tunnels and a cover that opens up to increase airflow to help improve thermals alongside some adding lots and lots of heatpipes. Despite all that however, the laws of thermodynamics can't totally be overcome.

Nowhere is that more true than thin laptops that have GeForce GTX 1070s or 1080s. As mentioned before, those laptops have limited internal volume to dissipate heat. The GTX 1070 for instance has a TDP that's slightly higher than the 980M it replaces and that GPU was most commonly found on large laptops. The same applies for the 1080 but there are also some thin machines that have it. Pairing a high TDP GPU with a thin chassis means that under load, a good cooling system is an absolutely must to keep it under control. And with the exception of some, many don't do that well.

Some thin laptops manage to make the best out of an unfavorable situation with the use of multiple heatpipes like the MSI Raider while others like the Zephyrus M utilize a mechanism that improves airflow significantly when the lid is opened. These machines throttle, but only under absolute worst case scenarios.

On the other hand, there are laptops that perform absolutely poorly even in games (which usually don't cause such high loads). The Razer Blade Pro with the GTX 1080 comes to mind with its abysmal thermal performance, alongside the ASUS STRIX line which has been notorious with some for mediocre thermals.

A GTX 1070 in a compact machine can be fine, but the cooling system should be engineered as such to ensure that such a fiery demon can be tamed without resorting to limiting its peak performance to protect itself. For some machines, it's just a case of using liquid metal to significantly improve thermals but on others, the cooling solution is just overwhelmed with the high TDP, especially with the new Coffee Lake chipsets, which have a slightly higher TDP compared with its Kaby Lake predecessors.

It's not impossible to make a machine that's thin while packing the fury of a GTX 1070. We've seen good examples. But manufacturers should make sure that the cooling system is up to snuff so that chip is allowed to stretch its muscles. Perhaps we will see it down the road as these get easier and more cost effective to implement. Until then, with a couple of exceptions, if you want a GTX 1070, my general recommendations go to desktop replacements and those who want portability may want a GTX 1060, which is still very powerful for most current titles in 1080p on high-ultra settings.

It's also worth noting that a slightly overclocked 1070 outperforms a 1080MQ and the same goes for the 1060 against the 1070MQ.

Dissitesuxba11s · May 20, 2018

Great read. Slight typo on paragraph 5, you mentioned 1070 twice:

46 minutes ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

The GTX 1070 for instance has a TDP that's slightly higher than the 980M it replaces and that GPU was most commonly found on large laptops. The same applies for the 1070 but there are also some thin machines that have it.