Benchmarks: Temperature and Noise
We see mixed results when it comes to core temperature. On the one hand, we're impressed to see EVGA manage to tame the GTX 980M, which keeps below 70ºC under load even when overclocked.
CPU cooling performance is also healthy at stock speeds, but core temp on the Intel chip takes a turn for the worse when the pre-configured overclock is applied. Note that the Video Encoding graph doesn't tell the whole story - the 77ºC temperature is an average from the last few minutes of the benchmark. Peak temperature was in fact a toasty 93ºC.
As is the case with most thin gaming laptops, fan noise ramps up considerably when either the CPU or GPU are stressed, and the SC17 inevitably gets loud. There's plenty of heat exhausted from the vents, yet we did notice that the chassis becomes quite hot just above the top of the keyboard where the processors are situated.
