Introducing the New Puget Traverse Laptops

Thermal Performance

To test the thermal performance of these new units, we put each of them through our full suite of benchmarks to get an accurate idea of how hot each unit runs at various levels of load. High performance laptops like these are generally intended to be used on a flat, hard surface, but often laptops get used on other surfaces (such as a lap, a bed or even the floor). In order to see how hot these laptops run on a non-ideal surface, we ran the exact same set of benchmarks with the laptops sitting on top of a thick blanket.

Since the intake for the CPU and GPU fan(s) are on the bottom of the laptops, having them on top of a blanket means that the feet on the bottom of the laptops cannot raise the units high enough to keep the fan intakes clear. This will always result in higher temperatures, but we want to know at what levels of load are the temperatures still acceptable, and when you should absolutely avoid using these units on a blanket or other soft surface.

Temperatures well below threshold

May have issues in some situations

Above acceptable temperature ranges

Hard Surface	V150i	V550i	V750i	M550i	M750i
Light Load
Medium Load
Full Load
Gaming

On Blanket	V150i	V550i	V750i	M550i	M750i
Light Load
Medium Load
Full Load
Gaming

On a flat, hard surface, all five of these laptops passed the majority of our thermal testing, although the V550i, V750i and M550i started to get up into warning levels when put under a full load. As we stated earlier in this article, the V150i does not have powerful enough cooling to keep the unit under safe temperatures under full load. However, getting any system (even full desktop systems) under a 100% load on both the CPU and GPU is very rare without very deliberately causing it to happen. Because of this, the slightly high temperatures we saw under full load still pass our qualification. 

When the units were tested on a blanket, we saw a very large temperature increase at almost all load levels. All of the units still had acceptable temperatures at light and medium load, although a few of them started to get into warning levels. At full load, none of the units had temperatures we would deem safe, although the V550i, V750i and M750i had acceptable temperatures while gaming.

If you would like to see the exact temperature readings we recorded under the different loads, feel free to click on any of the thumbnails below.

	V150i	V550i	V750i	M550i	M750i
CPU
GPU

Conclusion

After working extensively with these units, we are very confident in both the speed, usability, and stability of each of these new units. There are a few things that are worth keeping in mind, but overall they are all great units that will work well for a variety of uses. Compared to previous models, these laptops are faster, more battery efficient and provide greater customization.

To summarize this article, here are the key points to know for each of the units: