YMMV - The i7 I was referring to was an Asus about 12 months old. It was clean, dust free and otherwise worked well. I had it upstairs near my DVD collection and would rip a DVD (using Handbrake), then copy the mkv file to my home server, if the rip took less than 40 mins, then all ok, but if I happened to be around and ripped a 2nd DVD within a few minutes, then BEFORE it finished the rip, it would shut down. After looking at logs etc, I worked out it was overheating. A USB fan~table did help but I would give it 30 mins to cool off before I ripped again.
Strangely, a crappy Compaq C60 would rip without problems, but it took soo long that it wasn't worth the wait. In the end, I was ripping on a Dual core tower and the i7 laptop without too many problems.