Curiosity question: Do fanless Atoms run with narrower thermal margins than e.g. a fanned i?

I'm curious, because despite the fact that I really like the thing (Most Unexpected Thing Vogelbung Liked In 2013 Given His Total Dismissal of Anything Atom Award), the Lenovo Tablet 2 is easily my least stable Windows 8 machine. It's only really annoyed me a couple of times since getting it, when it locked up during really crucial times, but I do have to say I'm used to a more stable experience these days.

I'm basically wondering whether increased instability is an Atom thing, and how much of it is to do with the CPU running fanless - i.e. something that's unavoidable with any vendor - or how much of it is Lenovo engineering. Most of the times that it has locked, ambients have been in the mid-to-high 20C's and I'd have been notetaking (freehand) for a while in OneNote, along with doing an audio recording. Though to be honest it's not always been ambients that's been the culprit (like just now it's locked in ~15C ambient while not doing much, about a day after a reboot).

 

I've had apps crash on occasion on mine and it definitely wasn't thermals. Overall it has been pretty stable, but not as stable as a laptop running Windows 7 or 8. Like you, I still like the thing a lot. I've had it crash with the Netflix app a few times, probably due to the weak IGP that comes with the Z2760.

On thermals, atom has a max temp that is rather low compared to the core i series at 90 ^oC and running CPU intensive tasks will get the TPT2 to come dangerously close to that (might vary from unit to unit). Mine is in the slim Lenovo case by the way, so that adds a layer of resistance to the heat transfer.