GS60 – Thermal Performance
During our previous overclocking tests of the GS60 we discovered that it comes with a nice performance to weight ratio, but we were also slightly surprised by the fact that the computer had no trouble supporting quite serious overclocking of the graphics card either.
Logic dictates that the slimmer a notebook is, the harder it is to fit large cooling solutions – that’s why we can cool the 980M and any mobile CPU in the GT72 with ease, while keeping it quiet. The GS60 though, is under 20mm thick including screen, meaning that space for cooling is critical.
The obvious way is to throw in a couple of fans with massive RPMs, but that would be extremely noisy. Another way would be to make the system thicker to allow more space for the cooling fins, allowing for a larger convection area helping you exhaust the heat, which of course makes the system bigger, heavier and less mobile. Instead, we’ve worked with the space available and managed to create a system that stays surprisingly cool even under full load.
Yes, we’ll have to admit – it’s not whisper quiet, but nowhere near as bad as you might imagine by looking at how slim the GS60 is. All things considered, we believe it is at a sweet spot where it stays quiet for everyday use, while making itself known during gaming, which is when you have a headset on anyway, right?
We’re always partial to a benchmark, so we set about finding how hard we can push the GS60’s thermal solution… In doing so, we got nowhere near the limits of the GTX 970M, despite a 20 minute loop of game test 4 in 3DMark 11, meaning constant 100% load on the GPU. In 22°C room temperature, we maxed out at 85°C on the GPU, despite overclocking it to the max, thus creating extra â€excess†heat.
Of course the system was audible, but even when set in an office landscape with people working all around during the benchmarks, nobody as much as lifted an eyebrow.
In case you’re worried about the cooling of the GS60, you shouldn’t be, it leaves plenty of headroom for the processors.
