Benchmarks: Temperature
Idle CPU temperature is a little higher than normal, but there's no cause for concern, at least not yet...
But load-up the CPU's cores and the chip gets really, really hot. Our sample would regularly hit 97ºC when transcoding video, and the box quickly becomes hot and bothered as the fan ramps up noisily in a vain effort to keep the processor cool.
And it makes no odds as to whether the load is of the 2D or 3D variety. Push either the CPU or IGP components, and the chip is quick to soar past 90ºC.
It's worth mentioning at this point that we didn't run into stability issues during use. The CPU only rarely dipped below 3.4GHz, and on the whole it seemed happy enough running at such extreme temperatures. Question is: would you be as comfortable?
It's a little too hot and loud for our liking, and though we've no reason as yet to question long-term reliability, we don't feel entirely at ease having a 65W desktop processor in a chassis as small as this.
