Years ago (~2010) I learned that companies sell laptops which can't cool themselves properly. I had an Acer "gaming laptop," which from the factory had fans which didn't sufficiently cool the CPU. After about 2 years of normal use, it cooked its thermal paste, and would shut off under even moderate use / stress.
This is obviously a different situation than what's occurring with Dell laptops, but it's not too far afield. When I bought the Acer, I never even considered reading up on cooling. I figured I'd only have to understand cooling if I built a computer myself: surely one from a manufacturer would already be able to cool itself sufficiently. Well, it turned out I was wrong. Keeping laptops cool is actually a pretty tough engineering problem, and too many companies and consumers aren't will to pay the price (either in higher dollar amount, or constrained capabilities) to ensure that this a standard.
Reminds me of the issue I remember with old Dell gaming laptops where the cups just had an insane amount of thermal paste on them so they always ran way hotter than they should.
You really can't trust the manufacturer to know what they're doing, especially if the potential problem is unlikely to be covered under warranty.
Doesn't seem to be much better for desktops: my wife just bought a Dell PC for gaming, and we have to replace the cpu cooler and case fan because what was supplied was clearly inadequate. Just because Dell wanted to shave a couple bucks off the manufacturing cost.
This is obviously a different situation than what's occurring with Dell laptops, but it's not too far afield. When I bought the Acer, I never even considered reading up on cooling. I figured I'd only have to understand cooling if I built a computer myself: surely one from a manufacturer would already be able to cool itself sufficiently. Well, it turned out I was wrong. Keeping laptops cool is actually a pretty tough engineering problem, and too many companies and consumers aren't will to pay the price (either in higher dollar amount, or constrained capabilities) to ensure that this a standard.