I tested Razer's new Blade 18 to see how hot (and loud) it gets — is this RTX 5090 gaming laptop a space heater or the real deal?

I recently got my hands on the latest iteration of Razer's Blade 18 (2025) for review, and, much like its similarly ludicrous 18-inch gaming laptops, it was an adventure in the absurd as it shredded through my usual benchmarks with fervor. It's no real surprise given that the maxed-out NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 laptop GPU paired with Intel's almost-max "Arrow Lake" Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, so it was always going to score high.

Then again, nothing much is perfect, and this is Razer, a brand known for its premium tastes, so the prices usually start on the higher end and only go up from there. However, a decent discount brought the configurable Blade 18 down to a more "reasonable" starting cost of $2,999.99 at Razer.com for a 5070 Ti model instead.

Again, my sample was far from modest, and it felt like a trivial exercise to run the RTX 5090 with my collection of PC games only to remark something along the lines of "Wow, look at that, it runs well" — because of course it does, it's one of the most powerful gaming laptops in the world. Nevertheless, I did skimp on some significant insights into thermals and noise levels, so I'm fixing that today.

First up, people want to know how hot these dominant gaming laptops get. It's understandable, especially when they carry components that match the naming convention of their desktop counterparts. Sure, it's called an RTX 5090, but the 175W laptop equivalent is dwarfed by its monstrous 575W desktop RTX 5090 that I tested in January. Even so, it's still the top-level GPU option, so the thermals must rise in response to the extraordinary performance, right?

For a baseline test, I ran the Blade 18 (2025) on AC power via the 400W GaN charger with the 'Balanced' profile activated in Razer Synapse. The CPU temperature sensor reported around 57 - 62°C while watching a YouTube video on Microsoft Edge, keeping the idle GPU closer to a middling 52°C, which gives a hint at the ambient temperature inside the chassis. Sitting completely idle on an empty Windows 11 desktop didn't drop the CPU thermals by much either, still bottoming out at 57°C.

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Externally, my 'FLIR ONE Gen 3' thermal camera detects the lower chassis at around 33.9°C during this kind of almost-idle state, with a comfortable placement for your wrists flanking either side of the gigantic touchpad. The middle of the keyboard jumps a little to around 37.8°C while the hinge-mounted vent exhausts recycled air measuring 44.1°C.

You can feel the vapor chamber working without a real need for a thermal camera, as it pushes cool air directly into mirrored spots that you can feel above the 'Esc' key and the higher end of the number pad, measuring around 27.3°C and highlighted as purple-to-black spots in most thermal imaging cameras.

Kicking the RTX 5090 L into gear with a looping 'Steel Nomad' stress test via 3DMark while keeping the 'Balanced' profile active in Synapse shows the internal GPU sensor report around 72°C as the Intel CPU reaches 69°C and the fans ramp up closer to 2900 RPM — all quite normal for high-end PC gaming.

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Using the 'Performance' profile in Synapse keeps the CPU and GPU at the same temperatures for this synthetic benchmark while the fans rise to a noisy 3300 RPM instead, but I wanted to revisit my 3840 x 2400 benchmark in Cyberpunk 2077 with DLSS 4 upscaling and frame generation for more of a real-world test. I originally set NVIDIA's 'Transformer' model to 'Ultra Performance' in an effort to chase extra frames, but I'll leave it on 'Auto' this time.

As the in-game benchmark plays out, averaging 149 FPS, the GPU sensor hits 74°C while the CPU reads around 84°C, and the fans max out at a slightly lower 3000 RPM. Externally, that translates to the "wrist rest" areas of the chassis measuring slightly higher at 39.3°C while the center of the keyboard moves to 43.3°C, and the hinge throws out hot air, hitting 59.7°C — an average external increase of about 9°C from its idle state.

As I mentioned, the 3-fan internal vapor cooling chamber is in place to tackle these kinds of raised temperatures, but it comes at an audible cost. I called the fan noise "loud — tornado loud", and I stand by it, even if it felt quite similar to the Razer Blade 18 (2024) sample I tested last year. It is borderline unbearable at full blast, which contributes in part to the review score's missing half-star, because I'd never subject my family to this wooshing commotion.

In its idle state, or while watching a (muted) YouTube video, the Blade 18 (2025) fans reach about 36.3 dBA while running at 1600 RPM. Moving to 3000 RPM sees that number jump to 52.1 dBA, and benchmarking 3DMark pushes the fans to 3300 RPM, increasing noise slightly to 54.2 dBA. Just for fun, I can manually set the fans to their maximum at 4600 RPM in Razer Synapse, which peaks at around 66.1 dBA, practically mimicking a vacuum cleaner.

So, yes, it's loud, but it's because the fans are keeping the internal temperatures at a reasonable level. You can't have maxed-out graphics in one of the best gaming laptops without introducing CPU and GPU heat, which is where the Blade 18's vapor chamber comes in. I still think you'd have a better gaming experience if you used a headset, like Razer's refined BlackShark V3 Pro, because the fan noise is hard to ignore, but there's a reason those blasting sounds are audible in the first place.

I'm not done with the Razer Blade 18, either. This comment on my review made a fair complaint about Razer skipping on Mini LED or even OLED options this year. It's not that the IPS panel is dim; it reaches around 590 nits at 100% brightness, but the contrast doesn't touch Mini LED. I'll reach out to Razer itself to see if there's a reason behind the move to this dual-mode IPS option, possibly relating to the massive 400Hz refresh rate on offer in 2025 — and whether that's worth the trade-off. Stay tuned.