Laptop "cooling pads" ineffective, snake-oil?

[VirtualLarry]

Just curious. There were two posts in a n i7-6700HQ laptop CPU thread that spoke negatively about laptop cooling pads.

I was wondering the same thing myself, as I recently spoke with a neighbor that had gotten rid of their desktop, and switched to a laptop (a Toshiba i3) some time last year, and he said that it froze on him recently. I asked him if it was overheating, he dismissed that comment, saying that he had a laptop cooling pad so it "couldn't be overheating". I did not have a chance to actually run any software on it to check temps.

It's not a "gaming" laptop, just an entry-level browser / cruiser rig with an i3, maybe a Haswell or possibly even Ivy Bridge, if he bought NOS.

Edit: Maybe it's the HDD, if the laptop has been tossed around a bunch? He keeps asking me whenever he sees me about putting in an SSD, a Samsung. But he never brings me a wad of money to order one for him.

 

[mikeymikec]

I assume the "cooling pads" you're referring to have fans built-in? If so, I wonder if they could exacerbate the effect of having a very small HSF and a fan blowing air through it does, ie. dust gets in and clogs the HSF. The faster the fan spins, the quicker the HSF clogs up. Inserting more fans into the equation just makes it worse. </theory>

I cleaned out a Sandy Bridge i3 laptop recently (new fan as well) in a household where the laptop is almost always in the kitchen and there are cats and dogs around. If the family had some smokers in, the fan would probably have needed replacing a year ago

A cooling pad would only make sense if the laptop was largely passively cooled, ie. the entire underside is built like a heatsink, then the cooling pad could cool it quicker with fans, or if there was a way to easily detach the underside casing of the laptop so the cooling pad's fans could thoroughly ventilate it, IMO.

 

[MustISO]

Had a friend that had a laptop that couldn't run for long periods without one so yes they do work. When he gave it to me to work on I used a cooling pad I had sitting around unused and it worked perfectly. I believe it was one of the Zalman units.

 

[Raduque]

I think they're worthless at best and a hindrance to proper airflow at worse.

My sister swears by hers, though.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I think they're more about keeping the hot metal off your balls, not getting the laptop cpu itself to run cooler.

That's an honorable pursuit if ever there was one.

Also, 180F degree metal will probably damage the finish, if you have your laptop lying flat on a wooden desk. A cooling pad will help there. But I am less concerned with that than I am the effects on my tender bits.

 

[Fardringle]

They do help somewhat, sometimes, for some laptops that actually have intake vents that line up with the fans on the cooling pad. But they definitely don't fix everything.

 

[Ichinisan]

Having a flat surface can definitely make it easier for the vents to operate. They call them "notebooks" now instead of "laptop" because they tend to overheat when used in laps.

I considered buying the "Opolar LC06 Laptop Fan Cooler w/ Temperature Display" when I saw it appear on Slickdeals.net recently, but there's probably no way it would fit my an Alienware M11X.

 

[SirCanealot]

My girlfriend has an MSI laptop with a 760m. When we used it for gaming a lot (runs slightly older stuff at 900p/medium settings 60fps nicely!), we used one of these: http://www.coolermaster.com/mobile/notepal-series/notepal-u2-plus/

Worked fairly well as the fans are movable. So I placed both fans directly under the main intakes and it did cut around 5 degrees off both of the GPU and CPU temp and generally cool down the chassis a little. Stock and out of the box the CPU would throttle slightly, but with an XTU undervolt (-75mv) and the cooling pad it would sit at max boost clocks +2 (XTU allows you to overclock most mobile CPUs a couple of bins) at around 80 degrees on a hot day

I really wouldn't recommend a cooling pad with a generic fan in the middle as all it will really do is cool down the bottom of the laptop (which still isn't a bad thing if you're gaming on it, guess), but these cooler master ones with movable fans work pretty well, in my opinion. Also has some bits on it for you to wrap cables around which would be quite handy if it's on a desk.