Laptop Cooling Pads

bluelass

poppellerant wrote: »

I usually get my compressed air from Poundland. To a degree it does blow it about a little, but the main purpose of blowing against it is to dislodge it and hopefully push it out the laptop. This isn't guaranteed, but it's the best thing that I'd recommend without invalidating your warranty. For a pound, it's worth a try!

Isnt that damaging?

poppellerant

bluelass wrote: »

Isnt that damaging?

I don't see how, perhaps you could expand on how it might be damaging?

Stoke

vikingaero wrote: »

Depends. Heat is the killer of motherboards and CPU's. If you are generally surfing and watching YouTube then is doesn't matter too much. If you are gaming on a laptop then anything that elevates and airs the underside of a laptop will help. Also most laptop stands elevate the keyboard to a more comfortable position.

I have one of these: http://www.ebuyer.com/140685-belkin-laptop-cooling-stand-white-f5l001er

The fan does get noisy as it ages as the bearings start to age/wear. If I were to replace is I would probably get this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/175534-targus-lap-chill-mat-awe55eu

Hmmm. The components are actually stress tested in heat. Heat does add to premature wear, however a big killer for components in general is switching on and off, as in, repeated heating up and cooling down. This causes the components to expand and contract which causes fractures and eventually failure.

It's certainly important to keep some air underneath a laptop. My girlfriend killed a 1GB stick of RAM by leaving her laptop on the bed for a few hours. She's lucky she only killed that, but the RAM basically burnt out. A stick of RAM later and it was back in action.

In fact, her laptop seems to refuse to die. It's survived a burnt out RAM and just recently, I was able to save it after the fan stopped running and the laptop overheated.

Ben84

50 degrees doesn't sound alarming to me for a laptop CPU/GPU. They're designed to withstand heat pretty well and tend to run hotter than desktops.

However, there there are ways to avoid cooling issues. They should not be blocked up with dust. My old Toshiba was very easy to clean out, while my Lenovo is fairly easy. Also, blocking the vents isn't a good idea. I sometimes want to place mine on my lap or a soft surface, so I put it on a clipboard which is almost the exact size of the laptop, and that gives it a convenient flat surface with an air gap below. A clean laptop being used on a flat surface shouldn't get overheated, but I know some are badly designed.

A further possible problem I've encountered is broken down thermal paste on the chips. Sometimes it wasn't applied so well in the first place anyway, but often it can get kind of dried out with age. Replacing it takes some careful work, but I've done it with good results when the chips kept running unusually hot and nothing else seemed to be the cause.

strangeotron

I brought one of those Belkin things. It was reasonably cheap. I doubt buying anything more expensive (PC World had a couple of models for £24) would be any different. Given the components are inside a casing for them to be effective the airflow would have to be tremendous and noticably cold.

Is it really damaging to turn things on and off? Bloody hell everything seems to be damaging! How damaging? Should I leave my machine on all day?

This is the problem with all this; what's the truth? Surely these machines aren't this brittle they can stand being turn on and off every couple of hours?

strangeotron

Is 60 degrees C too hot for a mobo?

Nada666

Does your laptop conk out in summer (or when the heating is on)? Or when you try to stream video. If not, there is not a problem. If it does overheat then cleaning/repairing/replacing the internal fan is what is needed. If that does not help then your video chip may not be adequate to cope with modern more compressed and higher resolution content (or more shoddily coded stuff.)

strangeotron

Nada666 wrote: »

Does your laptop conk out in summer (or when the heating is on)? Or when you try to stream video. If not, there is not a problem. If it does overheat then cleaning/repairing/replacing the internal fan is what is needed. If that does not help then your video chip may not be adequate to cope with modern more compressed and higher resolution content (or more shoddily coded stuff.)

I have only just brought this laptop so it hasn't seen summer yet (in my possession). I have had no problems, i'm just concerned about temperature tolerances. I don't know how hot a mobo can get safely. 60 degrees seems high to me, but I'm not a motherboard.

Strider590

I use a cooling pad, just a basic 2 fan jobby made by Coolermaster (about £20).

The ONLY reason I have it, is because the laptop is used as CCTV and kept in an old wardrobe upstairs, the missus has a pile of scarves on the top shelf and these have been known to drop down and smother the laptop.

I've fitted a thermal control unit to the fans, so they only come on when the air around the laptop exceeds 26 degrees.

As mentioned previously, if it's overheating in normal use, then your doing something wrong.

The problem with cooling pads is they can fool cheap laptops into thinking they're cooler than they really are, which may result in the CPU or GPU overheating even more.

Stoke

strangeotron wrote: »

I brought one of those Belkin things. It was reasonably cheap. I doubt buying anything more expensive (PC World had a couple of models for £24) would be any different. Given the components are inside a casing for them to be effective the airflow would have to be tremendous and noticably cold.

Is it really damaging to turn things on and off? Bloody hell everything seems to be damaging! How damaging? Should I leave my machine on all day?

This is the problem with all this; what's the truth? Surely these machines aren't this brittle they can stand being turn on and off every couple of hours?

It depends how hot it gets, but yes. Electrical items that get hot are significantly affected when switched on and off, or more to the point, allowed to heat up and cool down. Solder goes brittle, components fracture, and this is what excessive wear causes, somewhat like a bulb. A good example of this type of failure is the Xbox 360 which had lots of problems with solder fracture.

I'm not saying you shouldn't switch off your laptop. I'm saying you can avoid excessive wear if you are aware of physics and it's effects on electrical components. Don't forget, your iPhone, your Samsung, Android whatever, will get very hot when you use it and it's rare that they suffer from burnt out components. It can be done.