More performance equals higher temperatures, and accordingly our review unit’s keyboard surface heated up to a maximum of 37 °C (~99 °F) under load.

While surface temperatures were comparatively low, overall internal temperatures were much higher. When running Prime95, the CPU started to throttle pretty much immediately and occasionally reduced its clock speed to just 400 MHz. On average, clock speeds settled at between 1.3 and 1.4 GHz after a full hour. We were surprised by the fact that a 17-inch notebook was incapable of dissipating the heat appropriately.

Running our benchmarks immediately following the stress test yielded scores of around 10% less than before. The fans slowed down almost instantly, but 3DMark 11 failed to match its previous scores.