The main reason I love my M1 is that it's cool to the touch after switching from an intel based mbp to an m1, I went from an average of 90 degrees Celsius (there was definitely an issue in the factory with thermal paste I think) to an average of 40-50 degrees Celsius.
I can't imagine ever going back to an intel based laptop because of this (and in my experience, thinkpads don't run that cool for my uses with arch linux)
tbf it is a design consideration from intel: they openly consider that they are leaving performance on the table if they're not running close to 100C.
Which, while great for a desktop, is very uncomfortable (and loud) on a laptop.
So far I haven't seen a way to configure it, turbo boost is commonly not an option to disable in laptop bioses (at least not the Dell Precision I had).
Yes, I won't begrudge them that choice on desktop but given the fact that most of the consumer market as switched to laptops, it's not a great strategy...
Apple intentionally used terrible cooling, letting the CPU passively heat up rather than spinning up the fans because they didn't want or couldn't figure out how to deal with fan noise. The chassis got hot because Apple decided that was the better alternative.
Intel's approach of "just send more power through the chip to make it faster" is definitely worse than Apple's own chips, but Apple has neutered their laptop CPUs for years. Had they gone with a modern cooling solution, the difference in heat wouldn't be so noticeable.
I had a 2019 i5 MacBook and the fans would be blasting and the thing still roasting hot. It’s incredible how just one year later they released something revolutionary
I'll scream about Apple's bad practices any day of the week, but I used to go out of my way to configure my Macbook Pro's with max RAM, upgraded SSD, and an i5 specifically because that meant my fans were never audible.
Yeah, everything i7 was a thermal problem, but that wasn't unique to Apple. And the i9 systems were laughable. However, with an i5, I never had noticable thermal issues.
If you're having thermal issues with an i5, something specific to your computer is broken.
Now, my daily driver is a Lenovo Carbon X1 7th Gen. I'm quite happy, but I did the same thing. Big RAM, big SSD, and a reasonable i5. I never hear a fan.
I don’t think anything was broken with this MacBook. It was the 13” one and I had to run docker which just made it hot all the time. Now I do an even heavier load on the 13” m1 and the thing is cold while being so much faster.
I can't imagine ever going back to an intel based laptop because of this (and in my experience, thinkpads don't run that cool for my uses with arch linux)