TDP, Fan Noise, and Felt Heat.

[oayarc]

Several months ago I had an older HP DV7-3180us that would almost burn my hand after being on for 20 minutes and would hit its thermal ceiling (90c even after a fan cleaning and new thermal paste) running any game at all. It had a i7-720QM and an Nvidia 230m.

I currently have a Lenovo Z-50 with an i5 4210u with an integrated intel HD 4400. It stays cool unless running newer games, but will eventually get warm with a loud fan.

I don't want something that produces a huge amount of heat or noise. I figure I have a few options, but I do not know enough to make a decision. I do not need high end graphics, an 860m is probably overkill for the games I run.

Will waiting and upgrading to a better integrated chipset (since they typically have lower TDPs) such as the FX-7600p or even skylake in 8-12 months with its improved HD 6XXX series be best? Or will a laptop with a dedicated card running at only partial capacity keep the temps down and allow for cooler quieter usage?

 

[darkbreeze]

Any unit with discreet graphics is going to get warm if you're gaming. Period. They ALL do. If you wait for a unit with the Iris Pro integrated graphics you may not have that issue, but you're gaming experience isn't going to be anywhere near the performance of even the lowest of the discreet GPUs. Even integrated graphics will cause units to heat up, since those kinds of models don't generally come with as good of cooling configurations, at least if you're trying to game on them. Gaming equals heat. End of story. You're best option may be to try to find something with a Maxwell GPU and good cooling as the 9xx series graphics uses much less power than previous generations, or perhaps the upcoming Iris Pro graphics, but clearly I can't speak to that since there is nothing to base it from yet.