We performed our stress test with the two synthetic tools Prime95 and FurMark to simulate a maximum load scenario and reach the highest temperatures. This is certainly not a standard scenario for an office device, but you will probably do some gaming if you go for the SKU with the dedicated GPU. This means the load results are definitely interesting, especially when the ambient temperature will get higher (summer). Both the GPU driver as well as the BIOS version (1.10) are up to date.

We start with the good news: The GPU performance is very good, even in a combined workload scenario. The GPU clock fluctuates between 1000-1040 MHz and is not far off its maximum value (1176 MHz). The processor operates at a consumption of 25W for a short while and then levels off at the usual 15W, which is sufficient for 4x 1.8-1.9 GHz. However, this value cannot be maintained over the course of the test, and the laptop will eventually limit the consumption of the mobile quad-core processor to just 5W, which results in 4x 400 MHz.

Both the CPU as well as the GPU hover at ~75 °C on average during the stress test, which is not a bad result. However, the high surface temperatures show that the cooling solution is juts not powerful enough. We record more than 50 °C at the top and almost 64 °C at the bottom of the base unit. Compared to the E480, where we recorded more than 70 °C at the bottom, this is a small improvement (since the core temperatures are also lower), but these temperatures are still way too high for an office laptop in this performance class.

