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Comment by semi-extrinsic | Hacker News Reader

To be fair though, it is physically impossible to run a discrete GPU on any reasonable workload without overheating in a chassis like the XPS. You simply cannot dissipate 100-ish watts on a continuous basis in that form factor.

I guess it's a philosophical question whether Dell should stop selling these kinds of machines, or continue to separate those who ignore basic physics from their money.

I have a semi-portable Dell Precision M6500 from 2011. It still runs and does what it should, but it weighs 4 kg and is 3.5 centimeters thick. Both those numbers are twice that of an XPS 15, and it still throttles down the quad-core i7 after about 120 seconds at full load IIRC.

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> or continue to separate those who ignore basic physics from their money.

This comes off as victim blaming.

As a consumer, I would expect the hardware I buy to be able to dissipate its own heat. If it can't, that's a design flaw that Dell needs to either fix or stop selling the product.

Some people prefer to buy a GPU and underclock it. Maybe you need fast GPU memory more than GPU compute cores for some algorithm.

I do that with one of my GPU servers, because the alternative is switching to liquid cooling and that's more work than I want to put in right now.

The term "victim blaming" is overused as a piece of manipulative rhetoric 90% of the time, but in this case, I think it's completely accurate - as a consumer buying a product from a large company (as opposed to a shady man in a trenchcoat in an alley), you absolutely have the right to expect and demand that your purchase works as advertised, and the responsibility is on the seller to ensure that their marketing matches reality.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that false advertising is illegal in most countries, including the relevant one here (the US).

> The term "victim blaming" is overused as a piece of manipulative rhetoric 90% of the time

Going off-topic, but yup. It's not victim blaming to point out when a victim didn't even take normal precautions. For example, if you're crossing the street, then even if the walk signal says WALK, you should still be looking to make sure there aren't any drivers running the red light. While yes, if you get hit by a car, it's the fault of the driver, you still failed to take the necessary actions for self-preservation.

Hell, there's a pedestrian crossing near me that isn't at an intersection, but has yellow flashing warning lights that turn on when you press a button. There's also a speaker that says "Cross street with caution, vehicles may not stop".

Dissipating a 100W GPU isn’t that difficult in a thin laptop, you can find plenty of companies doing so. Dell presumably has an issue because they don’t want to redesign the internals to dissipate that much heat.

Back when dual GPU’s where still a thing they actually needed laptops to be thick or wide, but 100w isn’t that bad.

They shouldn't sell the hardware then.

I have one of those too out in the garage. It runs a hobby CNC router, so it's basically bathed in very fine sawdust often. I'm astonished every time it actually boots up.

What about using those cheap vacuum cooler attachments like the ones sold on Amazon? https://www.amazon.com/laptop-vacuum-cooler/s?k=laptop+vacuu...

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