I use a similar trick: I try to find a laptop that comes in both discrete-GPU and integrated-GPU configurations, and both version must share the identical chassis.

This way, when I buy the integrated version, I know the chassis has been designed with the heavier airflow of the discrete-GPU version in mind. If I'm lucky, my integrated-GPU config might even use the identical size heat-sinks as the discrete-GPU version.

That's smart! I'm going to try the trick next time~

That's interesting. Any model you can recommend?

Dell XPS 15's and Precisions 55xx's allow this trick.

You can buy them from the manufacturer with no discrete graphics cards.

I have one with a card which is physically turned off for the same trick.

Do you mean the XPS 13? I've never seen an XPS 15 in recent years without an NVIDIA card. The cheapest XPS 15 from 2019 that I can find still comes with the mobile NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, as does my own XPS 15 9560 from 2017.

I'm 2 days late! I'm so sorry!

If you go to dell.com and select one of the more entry level varients you can customise more things:

https://i.imgur.com/deQFdyU.png

In my experience the XPS 15 7390 with the 6c12t cpu with Windows had the fan running very often. Each time a single cpu thread ran at 100% the fan turned on.

The thinkpad T470/T480 dual-pipe dGPU heatsink is a drop-in replacement for the iGPU version, so if you buy the version without dGPU, you can pretty easily double your heatpipes quite cheap.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/9ohpyo/psa_t470t4...

Not OP, but from experience I know the Razer Blade Stealth 13 has the same cooling for both integrated GPU and dedicated gpu versions - and it's a very beefy cooling system as is, even with the dedicated gpu the system can stay at full load indefinitely without any issues.

What laptop are you using currently?

Does this trick apply to the 15" MacbookPro (2015)? If so, I guess I'm in luck!

They stopped doing that with the 15" MacBook Pro after 2015 :(

This has been true since the days of desktop computers, too (when laptop wasn't even an option). Gaming specs always make for simply great all-around machines — largely due to component specialization indeed, including thermal outtake.

Note that to this day it's magnitudes of order cheaper to build a desktop for crunching numbers. There's no beating the thermals of that, and thermals = cost either in money or time in this very physically-underpinned market.

I was running video on a Lenovo desktop, CPU was at 100% the whole time, and it didn't heat up or make a lot of fan noise.

I do the same thing for my personal laptops. While it certainly has a few quirks, I've found the Razer Blade to be a good balance between size and cooling performance. It is noticeably thicker than a Macbook Pro, but still light enough to carry around.

but then you end up with a monster of a machine.

Why can't laptop engineers just find a way to break physics, it's not that hard, Einstein did it...

edit: /s

Maybe laptops are not supoosed for heavy lifting...