For gamers looking to buy a gaming laptop, the main considerations typically boil down to two key factors: specs and cooling.
In terms of specs, no matter your brand preference, it's undeniable that the combination of Intel processors and NVIDIA graphics cards dominates the market and is the first choice for many gamers.
AMD Ryzen processors have made rapid progress in the past two years, but in terms of brand impact, they still fall short of Intel, and their new mobile GPUs have consistently underperformed.
As for cooling, it directly affects the level of hardware performance that can be unleashed. However, almost all gaming laptops currently face a dilemma: the stronger the cooling, the better the performance, but also the louder the noise, which can easily detract from the gaming experience.
Recently, we've discovered such a gaming laptop—the ThundeRobot Blade R16 2024—which, while offering powerful cooling, also boasts outstanding noise control.
The Thunderblade R16 2024 is equipped with the Intel Core i7-14650HX processor, belonging to the 14th generation Core HX series. It can be considered as the mobile version of the 13th generation Core desktop, maintaining the original design, architecture, and features. However, due to its focus on the mobile platform, there are differences in frequency and power consumption.
Currently, high-end and even mainstream gaming laptops and creative laptops commonly use the 14th generation Core HX series, allowing users to experience desktop-level performance on mobile devices.
The Core i7-14650HX processor in this model has 8 P cores and 8 E cores, totaling 16 cores and 24 threads, compared to its predecessor, the Core i7-13650HX. The P cores have a maximum turbo frequency of 5.2GHz, and the E cores can turbo up to 3.7GHz. This represents an increase of 300MHz and 100MHz, respectively. The level 3 cache has also been expanded from 24MB to 30MB.
The graphics card is the RTX 4060 Laptop, currently one of the most powerful GPUs. The Thunderblade R16 2024 can unleash its full potential with a power consumption of 140W.
Paired with a 2.5K 240Hz IPS screen from BOE, and featuring dual display with three modes, the Thunderblade R16 2024 truly delivers an impressive gaming experience.
It's worth mentioning that the mold for the Thunderobot R16 2024 was developed over two years by Thunderobot, combined with their Xia dispersing heat technology (three fans and five heat pipes), which allows for maximum performance while significantly reducing noise and temperature under full load.
Most gaming laptops come with two fans, but the R16 2024 adds an extra one, referred to by Thunderobot as the Auxiliary Cooling Fan, aimed at creating a direct cooling mode.
According to the official introduction, this effectively reduces the temperature of the PCH components by about 10°C, while also keeping the noise under 50dB when under heavy load.
The configuration we received includes an Intel Core i7-14650HX processor, RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, 32GB DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. It's important to note that the RAM size may vary slightly from the retail version.
Next, let's take a look at how this laptop, equipped with the Core i7-14650HX processor, performs.
