Introduction

Methodology

Results



Bars measure the sum of GPU and CPU temperature (C). Lower is better.

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A screenshot taken from my Blade. Aren't these little computers amazing?? ​

Conclusion

I recently bought an external monitor, and I'm incredibly happy with how well my setup looks/works when my Razer Blade is plugged and closed.I, like many others, started to wonder how this would affect the temperatures of the CPU and GPU. Will it be throttling if I game while the lid is closed? Will it affect the life of the system? I found a lot of opinions here on the forum and out on reddit.. ..but no one was providing any actual numbers.So I decided to test things out for myself today.I knew that I wanted to test a variety of games, since I figured some really demanding titles would probably push my system up to max temps regardless of whether it was open or closed (and that wouldn't provide good information about which was cooler). So I chose a game that I would consider "light" (Hearthstone), "middleweight" (Borderlands 2) and a heavyweight (Kingdom Come: Deliverance), and monitored my temperatures using MSI Afterburner while playing.For each game I played with the lid open, closed, open with the back lifted, and closed with the back lifted. I kept track of where the temperature seemed to settle for the CPU and GPU, and if it didn't settle I averaged out the range. Then I added up the temperatures for the CPU and GPU to produce a score.Also, please note that I've undervolted both my CPU and GPU. Still I think the relative temperatures between open and closed would be similar for systems running at stock voltages.As it turns out, having the lid open did lower temperatures, but only by a very small amount (a few degrees for the CPU and GPU). Curiously, temperatures went when I opened the lid to play Hearthstone, though I think that this was a fluke. Playing Borderlands and Hearthstone, the temperatures never exceeded 75 degrees C for either component. What this says to me is that it really shouldn't matter if you play games like these with the lid open or closed. I didn't feel the need to test these games with the back lifted--I just moved onto the meatier game: Kingdom Come.Where things got more interesting was with Kingdom Come. It's a really demanding game, and I keep settings at a mix between medium and very high to maintain ~60FPS. In the case of Kingdom Come, the GPU temperature reached into the 80's even with the lid open.the temperature slowly climbed all the way to 91, and Afterburner reported the GTX 1060 reaching its thermal limit, and clock speeds went down slightly to maintain temperature. There wasn't an apparent drop in performance, but at that temperature I was putting undue wear on my graphics card.was where it was really apparent how big a difference opening the lid and lifting the back makes. Lifting the back of the laptop reduced temperatures by around 9 degrees C for both the CPU and GPU.And having the laptop open and back lifted reduced temperatures even further: the GPU maintained a cool 78 and the CPU hovered around 74).Gaming with the lid closed won't really matter if you aren't running demanding games. But if you're firing up new, triple-A titles, you might want to think about opening that lid, orlifting up the back of the laptop. Otherwise you're likely to experience reduced performance and increased wear-and-tear on your pricey computer.Would love to know what everyone uses to lift the back (I was using my cell phone, but would love to pick up a new stand!)