I feel like there has to be something wrong with the thermals on my laptop. Whenever I’m watching videos on YouTube, or even just browsing the internet, my CPU temperature gets up to like 70C, which I’ve been told is a normal temperature for a CPU, but the issue is the entire laptop frame gets super hot. It gets to the point where I can’t rest my palms on the laptop next to the track pad because it’s uncomfortably hot, the track pad is fairly warm, and the entire bottom of the laptop ranges from “painfully hot” to “I have to yank my hand away from it if I touch it because otherwise I would get burned”. This is with TLP set aggressively enough that it impacts the performance of the laptop. This cannot be normal.
Unfortunately doesn’t seem to be available on Nix. Also, I think the issue is more a physical problem than a software problem, in the sense that (as I understand it) 60-70C isn’t that bad a temperature for the CPU, but the entire laptop body is acting as a heatsink for the laptop so if I watch YouTube for like half an hour the entire laptop gets super hot, and it stays hot until the laptop body can passively dissipate all that heat into the air, which takes a while.
I would look at booting up into another Linux distro live session and doing what you are doing there.
Specifically Ubuntu or Fedora.
If the fan reacts appropriately (and it really should) then you know something in NixOS is causing the problem (which is what I am betting on). If this is the case you really should not ignore it. High temps kill components. (IE: they reduce lifespan)
Please open a support ticket as the chassis while it can get warm, should not be burning you. We can get you sorted in once we have a log capture a better idea of your nix config.