My point in bringing up thermal throttling wasn't to say that it couldn't be addressed in any form, rather that it was going to be a problem at some point if you're trying to run Dolphin. As I said, a fan or heat sink + fan is enough to keep the Pi3 under 80C at full load, but that's keeping stock clocks in mind.
The thermal situation of the Pi4 means that even with proper cooling, you're still limited in terms of overclocking. Is there more head room with a fan or heat sink? Definitely, but how far you can push that remains to be seen. And as I see it, overclocking is probably going to be required for even middling performance in Dolphin where the GPU's OpenGL ES support doesn't need to be great (e.g. some of the titles Helios mentioned).
So again, to act as if thermal limitations aren't going to even be a factor seems a bit disingenuous, especially if we're considering how to maximize Dolphin on the available hardware.
The thermal situation of the Pi4 means that even with proper cooling, you're still limited in terms of overclocking. Is there more head room with a fan or heat sink? Definitely, but how far you can push that remains to be seen. And as I see it, overclocking is probably going to be required for even middling performance in Dolphin where the GPU's OpenGL ES support doesn't need to be great (e.g. some of the titles Helios mentioned).
So again, to act as if thermal limitations aren't going to even be a factor seems a bit disingenuous, especially if we're considering how to maximize Dolphin on the available hardware.