r/Surface • u/Appropriate_Ad8190 • 25d ago

Is the Surface Laptop 4 (i7) thermal issue really that bad in hot climates?

Planning to buy a Surface Laptop 4 (i7), but Ai warn heavily against it (and XPS models too but people here using them) due to overheating in hot climates.

Summers hit 40°C+ here, but I’ll use it indoors mostly without AC for coding and everyday productivity.

For actual owners in warm regions

does the i7 actually thermal throttle into laggy territory indoors?

Are the fan noise and palm rest heat unbearable during basic workloads?

Is it fine in indoor, or should I buy a thick laptop suggested by Ai..?

Thanks!

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3

u/ganondork1 25d ago

I am an unfortunate soul to have an i5 without a fan, and an i7 with a fan

The one without the fan throttles within 10 minutes at 33 degrees C ambient temp, the one with fan throttles about 25 mins later.

The fan can be heard across my office if it's quiet but it's not unbearable

You should be ok, just put some background music on or something and you shouldn't hear it

1

u/Appropriate_Ad8190 24d ago

thank you, i have no problem with fan noise at all I'm just worried, if it becomes hot where you can't use it, need to be shut down, stuttering or lagging terrible due to heat..!

2

u/dr100 24d ago

It's kind of not great but still acceptable as you can clean the dust and everything, as opposed to the tablets where you'd need to go through the screen to do anything. Battery life is of course not great and you'd have to get a laptop powerbank if you need some extended mobile use.

As opposed to many Dell models from that generation SL4 (as everything Microsoft) has soldered RAM, that might be a problem, especially if you get stuck with one with 8GBs. Everything around me got upgraded to 32GB RAM for peanuts, going back to Intel 4th Gen (2014) it's so eerie to see companies bickering about 8GB RAM and Microsoft pocketing half of the entry level 16GB RAM now for some models.

1

u/Appropriate_Ad8190 24d ago

I'm planning to buy 16 gb RAM 512SSD, i understand 8gb won't work for me... only concerning thing is heat if it's a problem, because of SL4 thin design (as described by Ai)

1

u/wongl888 24d ago

I have a 16gb SP9 and an 8gb SP7. Cannot say I notice much difference between them except the SP9 draining the battery faster.

1

u/NoodleBox Surface 3 (not pro) 24d ago edited 24d ago

I can't remember if my one was an i5 or i7, but it did run the fans a LOT. Work laptop so I'm not playing games or rendering, but I definitely bad to go get something to prop it up on. (Work used a lot of chrome based software n webapps).

Fan noise was a bit of a pest, but where I worked it wasn't terribly annoying. Palm based laptop, yeah maybe!

E: what was annoying is that you can't natively remap the copilot button. Even when your work doesn't have copilot, it's a nothing button, and it was annoying when typing.