Same. High power short ops. Low power long ops. Max run was 4 hours. No complaints about thermals.
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It all depends on what your ambient room temperature is compared to the one the Glowforge is designed for.
The room I will put my Glowforge in has no heating, no windows and no ventilation. It can vary from about 10C in the winter to about 30C in the summer if I have lots of other machines running.
I think 30C is above the maximum for a laser tube so I definitely need the Peltier chiller in the pro. Presumably the basic can only be operated in a room that is somewhat below the max operating temperature of the tube, which I think is about 27C. You can’t cool below ambient without a heat pump or an evaporative cooler.
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Hmm - since all of you pre-release types are reporting no heat issues, even with moderately long operations, maybe there is no need for a Peltier cooler in the Pro unless you live in a hot house.
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Can you say if a Peltier unit has been selected and tested yet?
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The Pro is higher wattage so I’d guess they are going for no issues from either.
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I expected the Pelletier to be near the air intake. Not the exhaust. You don’t want all of the smoke and soot to accumulate on the radiator/heat sink.
Is the heat sink a flat aluminum block instead of spread fins? Have you noticed any buildup on the heat exchanger with your no-clean machines?
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The pre-releases are all in the US in winter so far, so it is probably too soon to think there is no need for peltier cooling, unless you have air conditioning.
It needs to be near the fan where the airflow is the fastest for efficiency but I agree exhaust fumes might condense onto it.
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But the heat is ultimately transferred to air that is at indoor ambient temperature, isn’t it? It’s probably true that many keep their indoor temperature a tad cooler now than they do in in summer, though.
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In my case, my unit is in the interior room in the house. As in, it’s not near a window. It has a 20+ foot run between the outlet to the exterior of the house. I keep the office at around 73F. When I first got the unit I measured the tube via a IR Thermometer (Fluke 62 MAX) And the start temp and the end temps were about 1~2F from ambient.
Now I realize that this is not an accurate test and the best way is to measure the actual fluid temp on the inlet and outlet of the tube. But that’s pretty much impossible for obvious reasons.
Also, the day the unit arrived the outside temp was 38F. And 22 mins later I was cutting something. So no issues with thermal shock.
As you guys have heard from the ‘How loud is it’ thread. The main exhaust has some serious CFM. And the fans on the radiator also have some serious CFM. So far- I have yet to get the, ‘I need to pause and cool down’ alert/notification.’
So with all that said. I think they have thermals under control. For the reasoning on why a tube with 5W more power needs active cooling? No idea. Only @dan and engineers will know that answer. Will we ever know exactly why? Probably not.
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I live in Southern California and have almost no insulation in my house. (It’s my grandparents’ house built 60 years ago, before the building code required insulation.) So this time of year we keep it heated to 68°F and in the summer we cool the house to about 86°F on hot days. (The poor A/C can barely keep it that cool when it’s 105°F outside.) I ordered a Pro largely out of concern for the cooling system.
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I don’t think the extra 5W will make a big difference. The issue is the range of ambient temperature the machine will work in at close to 100% duty cycle.
When you cool something by blowing air over it the coldest it will ever get is the ambient air temperature and the rate at which the air extracts heat is proportional to the temperature difference between it and the heatsink.
If the maximum temperature of the water has to be kept below ~27C which is 80F then the room needs to absolutely be colder than that and by enough margin to make the heat extraction efficient enough to dissipate the power of the tube, probable around 200W. If it isn’t then the temperature of the water will slowly rise and GF will have to pause to protect the tube.
To be able to do that all year round in the UK you would need air conditioning and most households don’t have AC here because it rarely gets hot enough to need it in domestic buildings. In the winter and most of the summer the temperature is what the heating is set to, but not on very hot days.
I don’t think GF have specified the ambient temperature the machine will work in but It will be higher for the pro with a heat pump. For the basic we have one data point that 23C seems to be cool enough for high duty usage.
Note 27C and 200W are just plucked from the web. GF might have a special high temp tube for all I know.
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If the Peltier has no material benefit, there is one less reason not to downgrade from Pro to Basic and that’s why I’m being so aggressive on the topic. As you say, it’s unlikely that GF will ever answer the question you posed.
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You have my sympathies 
86° would be close to unbearable to me here in Chicago due to the typical humidity we have here in the Chicago area. I hope that you are in a low humidity area.
My GF will be located in the basement, which is always the coolest part of the house in warm weather so it looks like the cooler won’t do much for me. It’s probably a “must have” for you.
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personally my suspicion is that the peltier is simply to enable the longer rated running times (i think it’s reasonable to assume that a pro model owner using the pass-through slot will probably do longer-running jobs more often).
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The Pro is meant for longer runtime (at the higher power output) which potentially means higher temperature with the Pro.
Preventative additional cooling means a second cooler.
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No doubt you and @jrnelson are correct, but the pragmatist in me would like to see supporting data, or at least some info on the Peltier specs so my own calculations can be run. Either outcome seems unlikely at this point so waiting for Pro release seems like the only option.
It would be reassuring to know that the Peltier has been selected and tested to at least a preliminary extent even if no details can be disclosed. There has been no hard evidence of a Pro unit at all so one might wonder if its key features (like the Peltier) are finalized yet or not. If finalized, it would also be nice to know that testing has been started in some form or fashion. I’m starting to wonder if release of the Pro might be delayed well beyond release of the Basic - as in months. I believe that @dan has said that the Pro should be shipping shortly after the Basic. If that was (and is still) true then all of the Pro-specific hardware features should be locked down by now. Are they?
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I keep my gf down there too, where my wife won’t find her.
Sorry, couldn’t resist! 
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Humidity in California happens during the rainy season (Dec-Mar) not during the summer. And we generally don’t have basements. 
The coldest I’ve ever been in my life was immediately after stepping out of a swimming pool in Yuma Arizona, 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Humidity was so low that water felt like rubbing alcohol instantly evaporating. As long as you are hydrated 86F is pretty darn nice.
Lived most of my life where humidity and evolution has given people gills and webbed feet. But yes, for the past 50 years no one in the high humidity areas would think about forgoing A/C if they had a choice. Unfortunately the GF only cares about real temperature and not feels like temps.
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I think this applies whether referring to “GlowForge” or “GirlFriend” 
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