Discussion the Death of the Desktop CPU

[poke01]

desktop was simply a necessity of the past which does not apply anymore

what is a desktop?

 

[mikeymikec]

9950X3D-class CPUs are becoming so flexible/cold/light to run that are even in handheld devices

My 7800X3D going full tilt throttles with a NH-D15S cooling it. Sticking that kind of CPU in a laptop (let alone anything smaller) and expecting comparable performance is ridiculous.

 

[In2Photos]

8. what kind of laptops. there are 1000s models in the market, most are not good by design

but the good models are here to stay, their mobos rarely fry



9. wrong, you can buy replacement laptop mobos. if so worried just pay $200 extra for 3-4 years warranty

All kinds of Laptops, including the most expensive Alienware/Dell/HP/Lenovos out there. Many of which are using liquid metal to cool the CPU and possibly GPU. I've seen countless examples of boards with faulty power rails, power delivery inputs, and failing mosfets, some of them destroying the CPU in the process. And the use of liquid metal in these machines in so bad that it's leaking out from the dam and shorting components. You can't just take the average Joe and figure out what components are bad and need to be replaced. Sending your laptop to one of these repair facilities is easily $250 or more for a repair, which doesn't cover the cost of a motherboard.

Again, you can not buy CURRENT GEN or even a few generation old motherboards for laptops on Aliexpress. Laptop motherboards are proprietary and expensive to replace. Show me a motherboard on Aliexpress with a 9955HX3D, I'll wait.

Not to mention you can barely find a laptop with that chip in it, but you can find 9950X3D CPUs all over the place.

 

[poke01]

All kinds of Laptops, including the most expensive Alienware/Dell/HP/Lenovos out there. Many of which are using liquid metal to cool the CPU and possibly GPU. I've seen countless examples of boards with faulty power rails, power delivery inputs, and failing mosfets, some of them destroying the CPU in the process. And the use of liquid metal in these machines in so bad that it's leaking out from the dam and shorting components. You can't just take the average Joe and figure out what components are bad and need to be replaced. Sending your laptop to one of these repair facilities is easily $250 or more for a repair, which doesn't cover the cost of a motherboard.

Again, you can not buy CURRENT GEN or even a few generation old motherboards for laptops on Aliexpress. Laptop motherboards are proprietary and expensive to replace. Show me a motherboard on Aliexpress with a 9955HX3D, I'll wait.

Not to mention you can barely find a laptop with that chip in it, but you can find 9950X3D CPUs all over the place.

also the biggest benefit of a DIY PC, you are not reliant on the OEM for part sourcing.

Desktop is like Toyota cars, built to last and cheap to service and upgrade.

 

[Hulk]

most people here are super-powerusers i.e. max 2% of the total market 😉

my argument is that even for 99% of powerusers, proper 2025 laptops replace desktop 100%
(except edge cases needing more than 16TB NVMe storage or full desktop 5090 for 4K 120fps lol)


when super-powerusers here try to reach out for niche arguments like more than 16TB storage or other inaccurate arguments,

then....



yes lads

Good points but the large desktop display is still a big plus for users I think. It's something you don't need to be a power user to appreciate.

 

[fastandfurious6]

My 7800X3D going full tilt throttles with a NH-D15S cooling it. Sticking that kind of CPU in a laptop (let alone anything smaller) and expecting comparable performance is ridiculous.

give me a real scenario to test live

I don't believe your claim stands. Throttles where/how?

 

[511]

everyone seems to be missing the core argument which is:


9950X3D-class CPUs are becoming so flexible/cold/light to run that are even in handheld devices

let that sink in...... most commenters here live in the past


the future of computing is embedding top-end CPUs in small factors everywhere

desktop was simply a necessity of the past which does not apply anymore


I call this.... the fastandfurious6 law

And it only runs for 2 hrs unplugged better get 275HX

 

[DavidC1]

I'll add one more, and why I really like Framework's work in this area.

DIY, gives you control, in an era where it's increasingly being taken away. Why are there videos popping up about encouraging people to move away from Windows? Because Microsoft is forcing you to buy their spyware garbage. I don't want them spying on me, I don't want bloat. Yes, it'll take significant amount of work for most people, to even begin to transition. You think you are elite with PCs on Windows? Linux is a full step up from that, even the most "user-friendly" distros. Whatever difficulties are on Desktop Linux is made even harder on laptops with proprietary, often locked-down firmware. Command lines? Oh you just need to learn "one line"? Are you *kidding* me?!? Have people ever dealt with people outside of AT forums? Most average people can barely press buttons on the keyboard.

Look at Louis Rossman's videos, his Right-to-repair movement. You think it's just about money? No, it's about control, it always has been.

I went and developed my electronics skill *because* of DIY space. Laptops? Proprietary nonsense? Couldn't care less. We're meant to create, not endlessly consume.

We(including me) endlessly rant on Intel's lack of competency nowadays right? Well, during their low revenue days, I noticed that Desktops were more resilient and even gained. Why? Because Laptops are expensive and fragile, and Desktops make far more sense. Sure if you are a millionaire and have no debt. Our ENTIRE economy is based on debt, every single bit of it. Absolutely unsustainable. Just like the throwaway garbage that's being sold. Creating, learning, repairing, allows you to actually go against that.

 

[mikeymikec]

give me a real scenario to test live

You're kidding, right? It's well-documented that high-end desktop CPUs these days can't be stopped from throttling with purely air coolers. But just in case you're speaking at length on a topic that you clearly haven't paid much attention to for years, sure:

Handbrake video encoding in software, h.264 or h.265. In the last few days I've been ripping DS9 seasons to my computer. The first stage is to decrypt and dump the disk image to fixed storage with MakeMKV, then in Handbrake I use the following settings: Super HQ 576p h.264, decrease quality to RF20, make sure deinterlacing is enabled (it is by default).

My CPU + NH-D15S at full tilt can sustain 4.6 to 4.7GHz, temp hits 80C in less than 10 seconds.

 

[DavidC1]

All kinds of Laptops, including the most expensive Alienware/Dell/HP/Lenovos out there. Many of which are using liquid metal to cool the CPU and possibly GPU. I've seen countless examples of boards with faulty power rails, power delivery inputs, and failing mosfets, some of them destroying the CPU in the process. And the use of liquid metal in these machines in so bad that it's leaking out from the dam and shorting components. You can't just take the average Joe and figure out what components are bad and need to be replaced. Sending your laptop to one of these repair facilities is easily $250 or more for a repair, which doesn't cover the cost of a motherboard.

Yup, modern laptops are no more reliable. That's why I basically ignore the claims of "no moving parts = reliable". Because I'd argue machines that have handful of components which are moving parts are far more reliable than modern day 1000-plus component electronics. I went and helped replace a door switch for an old dryer. It had a schematic on the door. Couldn't be simpler. It will probably last another ten-plus years before it dies. I reverse-engineered a chest freezer for our family that broke, repaired the board, and that has been 4 years now.

Also, laptops put more things on one board. In a laptop, touchpad has it's own controller, keyboard has another, even a dGPU is on the same PCB, RAM is often on the board. It's just more chances for failure. If people didn't associate their financial sink with emotional sink, more would understand especially on gaming laptops, something more than a token battery capacity makes no sense.

I did attempt laptop repair before. I know for a fact that you can't hook up any LCD. You need the exact replacement, because even the same model name, same year, same CPU, RAM, GPU, may have 5 different panel variants. It's stupid.

I ACTUALLY care for the environment unlike the fake ones that think paper straws are needed, banning plastic bags on grocery stores, when the same group of people care a zit about 100 different chemicals going into the landfill with disposable electronics, while being outright lobbying against small repair stores. Hypocrites.

Vanessa Wingårdh

Developer exploring the dark side of tech

www.youtube.com

Louis Rossmann

Contact: youtube@rossmanngroup.com - Louis reads this - UNLESS YOU COPY & PASTE FROM CHATGPT, IN WHICH CASE I DELETE. I TALK TO VIEWERS, NOT ROBOTS. I started as a studio repair technician at Avatar & started a Macbook component level logic board repair business. This channel shows repair &...

www.youtube.com

You can't just take the average Joe and figure out what components are bad

Most of Anandtech visitors can't figure out what components are bad. Most actual average joes can barely push the power button, and vast majority aren't even aware of how to find the reset switch on their desktop PC. They aren't dumb, they just don't have their lives revolving 24/7 around computers and electronics. They need patience and understanding.

 

[fastandfurious6]

high-end desktop CPUs these days can't be stopped from throttling with purely air coolers

Not really throttling... what you describe doesn't threaten grinding anything to a halt, it's just limiting the maximum-maximum performance i.e. some extra 10% to be achieved with top-end liquid cooling or whatever in heavily demanding workloads i.e. handbrake

Throttling usually refers to perf degrading resulting to grinding everything to a halt. That doesn't happen in proper CPUs anymore



About the rest, it's market/vendor problems, not laptop problems

Proper Framework solves the only real issue, upgradability/replacement

 

[mikeymikec]

Not really throttling...

The limiting of the CPU speed within the manufacturer's specs is throttling. Furthermore, when a desktop CPU is reviewed, no-one in the business benchmarks it with a sliver of heatsink that one may find in a tablet.

what you describe doesn't threaten grinding anything to a halt

This is your made-up definition of what throttling is. Please, go read up on the topic.

 

[fastandfurious6]

it should be differentiated because 99% of throttling cases are actually grinding stuff to halt, not in what you describe i.e. more power to give under stronger cooling

 

[mikeymikec]

it should be differentiated because 99% of throttling cases are actually grinding stuff to halt, not in what you describe i.e. more power to give under stronger cooling

Source: trust me bro

Example:

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X Cooling Requirements & Thermal Throttling

High temperature seem to be an issue on the new Ryzen 7000 processors. We're pairing a Ryzen 9 7950X with a $10 stock cooler, a Noctua air-cooler and a 420 mm AIO to get a feel for what the differences are like in terms of °C, MHz and performance in both applications and games.

www.techpowerup.com

Certainly the most important takeaway is that the performance differences are really small, even 2.5% performance loss on average will be something you'd never notice. Props again to AMD for making the thermal throttling so well-behaved and gradual.

Just think about where the word comes from.

throttle - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

en.wiktionary.org

Even if you want to quibble over the use of that word, my original point is still valid: If you stick a high-end desktop CPU like an X3D into a laptop or even worse, a tablet, you're going to forego *a lot* of performance. If the cooling system made basically no difference, then why on earth would anyone bother spending $$$ to bring down temps. Just glue a copper coin to your processor and call it a day! It'll be fine!

 

[Hulk]

Yup, modern laptops are no more reliable. That's why I basically ignore the claims of "no moving parts = reliable". Because I'd argue machines that have handful of components which are moving parts are far more reliable than modern day 1000-plus component electronics. I went and helped replace a door switch for an old dryer. It had a schematic on the door. Couldn't be simpler. It will probably last another ten-plus years before it dies. I reverse-engineered a chest freezer for our family that broke, repaired the board, and that has been 4 years now.

Also, laptops put more things on one board. In a laptop, touchpad has it's own controller, keyboard has another, even a dGPU is on the same PCB, RAM is often on the board. It's just more chances for failure. If people didn't associate their financial sink with emotional sink, more would understand especially on gaming laptops, something more than a token battery capacity makes no sense.

I did attempt laptop repair before. I know for a fact that you can't hook up any LCD. You need the exact replacement, because even the same model name, same year, same CPU, RAM, GPU, may have 5 different panel variants. It's stupid.

I ACTUALLY care for the environment unlike the fake ones that think paper straws are needed, banning plastic bags on grocery stores, when the same group of people care a zit about 100 different chemicals going into the landfill with disposable electronics, while being outright lobbying against small repair stores. Hypocrites.

Vanessa Wingårdh

Developer exploring the dark side of tech

www.youtube.com

Louis Rossmann

Contact: youtube@rossmanngroup.com - Louis reads this - UNLESS YOU COPY & PASTE FROM CHATGPT, IN WHICH CASE I DELETE. I TALK TO VIEWERS, NOT ROBOTS. I started as a studio repair technician at Avatar & started a Macbook component level logic board repair business. This channel shows repair &...

www.youtube.com

Most of Anandtech visitors can't figure out what components are bad. Most actual average joes can barely push the power button, and vast majority aren't even aware of how to find the reset switch on their desktop PC. They aren't dumb, they just don't have their lives revolving 24/7 around computers and electronics. They need patience and understanding.

Yes.

My desktops (outside of Raptor Lake degradation) never fail. I use them and use them for years and they still are in use when I upgrade.

Laptops not so much. I do have a Dell Inspiron from 2005 in my garage that survives winter cold and summer hear year after year and just won't die. Credit where credit is due.

But my Lenovo T something from 2015 got weird and the screen stopped turning on reliably, struggled for years to figure it out.

My Surface 2 lasted 5 years. Over that time the trackpad died and then when going to sleep would wake up without wifi and only a reboot would fix.

Something weird/annoyoing/unfixable seems to always happen with laptops. At least that has been my experience over the last 15 years or so. Generally the CPU is so outdated after 5 or so years it doesn't matter but it's still annoying. Desktops on the other hand generally just need a CPU upgrade or at worst CPU/Mobo/RAM and you are up-to-date performance-wise.

Like many here I would gladly give up 3mm in thickness and 8oz for a laptop with easily replaceable CPU, RAM, SSD, trackpad, display etc...

 

[Doug S]

You live in the reality that desktop PCs are already obsolete for 99% of users

yes!

So your argument is so weak you have to make up fake quotes to respond to?

 

[fastandfurious6]

If you stick a high-end desktop CPU like an X3D into a laptop or even worse, a tablet, you're going to forego *a lot* of performance

forego performance yes, but not *a lot*. that's the point

So your argument is so weak you have to make up fake quotes to respond to?

come on it's an obvious joke

the argument is not weak at all and it's the first time it's possible with zen 5

zen 4 was the first to put 16 full cores with X3D in 2.5kg laptop but it was still too hot and only one model.

zen 5 is much more efficient with much better model

zen 6 literally is death of desktop, you'll see it happen next year

 

[AnitaPeterson]

[...]

Handbrake video encoding in software, h.264 or h.265. In the last few days I've been ripping DS9 seasons to my computer. The first stage is to decrypt and dump the disk image to fixed storage with MakeMKV, then in Handbrake I use the following settings: Super HQ 576p h.264, decrease quality to RF20, make sure deinterlacing is enabled (it is by default).

My CPU + NH-D15S at full tilt can sustain 4.6 to 4.7GHz, temp hits 80C in less than 10 seconds.

My god, man, that's brutal! Get an Nvidia GPU and run NVENC instead, give that poor CPU room to breathe!
I have a 5900XT, and I've been playing with Handbrake as well, but the hardware encoder on the RTX3080 is still much faster and just as good!

 

[Thunder 57]

My god, man, that's brutal! Get an Nvidia GPU and run NVENC instead, give that poor CPU room to breathe!
I have a 5900XT, and I've been playing with Handbrake as well, but the hardware encoder on the RTX3080 is still much faster and just as good!

Not for the same quality/bitrate I would bet. Sometimes that matters.

 

[johnsonwax]

Not for the same quality/bitrate I would bet. Sometimes that matters.

Not sure why GPU compute has a 'lower bitrate' than CPU compute.

 

[Covfefe]

Not sure why GPU compute has a 'lower bitrate' than CPU compute.

GPUs have dedicated hardware called media engines for encoding and decoding video. It isn't done by GPU compute. Hardware accelerated encoding is very fast and energy efficient, but videos encoded this way have worse visual quality for a given bitrate.

 

[johnsonwax]

GPUs have dedicated hardware called media engines for encoding and decoding video. It isn't done by GPU compute. Hardware accelerated encoding is very fast and energy efficient, but videos encoded this way have worse visual quality for a given bitrate.

I know what media engines are. Do any modern media engines not have full codec support? Apple's do. I thought the latest gen Nvidia ones did as well.

 

[Jan Olšan]

Not sure why GPU compute has a 'lower bitrate' than CPU compute.

You realise you are talking about a lossy compression scheme? Resulting bitrate has no meaning on its own, it is fully configurable, in the first place. Quality achieved at given bitrate varies massively between encoders.

Though you mentioned "GPU compute". Note that the encoders in GPUs basically are separate ASIC blocks (same as those integrated into x86 and mobile SoCs), it's not really a GPU compute usecase.

In general, the programmability and flexibility of CPU code means that the highest quality per bitrate is achieved by software encoders, since those can use the most complex analysis, RDO and psychovisual optimizations.

 

[mikeymikec]

My god, man, that's brutal! Get an Nvidia GPU and run NVENC instead, give that poor CPU room to breathe!
I have a 5900XT, and I've been playing with Handbrake as well, but the hardware encoder on the RTX3080 is still much faster and just as good!

I used an old GeForce 760 that once belonged to a customer for the initial DVD ripping work of my entire collection, but IIRC it can't do H.265. That card is now in my wife's PC doing multi-display work. My RX 6700XT can do AMD VCE but it's not as file-size-efficient as doing it in software is. I haven't tried doing a comparison of NVENC vs software in this respect, but most of the time these days I'm ripping H.265.

DS9 episodes are ripping at about 170-270FPS so the CPU is carving through them pretty quickly.

- written later - Out of curiosity I decided to rip an episode I had done already in software but with AMD VCE (to do a valid comparison) and I had to laugh at my comment earlier about 270FPS being 'pretty quick'... the graphics card went >1000FPS Still, I ended up with a file that was 20% larger than the software rip and was a little lower quality despite using the 'quality' preset.

 

[Covfefe]

I know what media engines are. Do any modern media engines not have full codec support? Apple's do. I thought the latest gen Nvidia ones did as well.

It's not a matter of codec support. Even with the same codec, resolution, and bitrate, hardware encoding has worse visual quality than software encoding.