Laptop Cooling

[robert k]

I know many of us use laptops in place of desktops and the more powerful they are, the hotter they can run and I know of more than one person who have fried a laptop in the Philippines. I intend this thread to be tips for keeping the laptop beast alive in hotter climes.

Cleaning the dust bunnies out should go without saying.

Not placing the laptop on a soft surface and cutting airflow to the vents /raising a stationary laptop to improve airflow because the feet on the underside of a laptop are generally the absolute minimum necessary to allow air into the unit because manufacturers like to tell how thin their product is. 4 bottle caps would probably work.

If you think your Intel based laptop is running too hot, you may want to Undervolt your processor. No two processors of the same make and model are exactly the same in power requirements so manufactures set the power that feeds the processor high enough so that even the worst, most power hungry of that type processor will be stable. Excess voltage  becomes waste heat! Most Intel based laptops are not overclockable because the bios is locked or the chip is locked, so there is nothing to be gained by feeding the CPU more power than it needs to run stable.

For Intel based computers there is a program called the Intel extreme tuning utility or simply XTU. The name sounds daunting but unless you have some fantastic hardware, it won't be extreme at all! But it will give you a few more controls that you may not have had before including CPU voltage,

Turbo boost short power max voltage (I set this at the rated power of my CPU "i7 7700hq" and it has no effect on performance but it runs cooler,

Turbo boost time/ voltage, the length of time turbo boost boosts the voltage (I find one second is plenty because it will stay boosted as long as it's needed (by boosting over and over) but may stay boosted longer than needed if the default was set at 28 seconds like my new computer was). Minimizing overvoltage, limiting short term turbo boost in time and max voltage can lead to cooler temperatures, longer battery run time and a longer lasting laptop.

Depending on your laptop you may already have these controls in the Bios. The XTU is still a useful program because it gives you easy access to the settings without having to reboot your computer to get into the Bios each time you make a tweak and this will make undervolting much easier. The XTU also has a stress test to test your CPU at 100% usage, so you can test exactly how much you can undervolt your CPU and still be 100% stable. I have my core voltage offset at a healthy -0.130V and it is stable as a rock and generally runs 14C-20C cooler.

Now for the fun part! Just about any CPU will be stable at -0.050V offset than it's being fed by default. Set the negative offset and stress test the CPU. You are trial and error searching for the minimum stable voltage and if you go too far, the computer will blue screen and restart and you need to go back to the last stable undervoltage setting and stress test it about 5 times and if it doesn't fail, you're done. Each time the computer fails it will restart at default power setting but once you have it dialed in, it will retain your optimized settings.

Cooling pads with a fan in them. From research I have done, they don't work as intended, unless you are just using them to keep the hot laptop off your lap...not that I don't think they couldn't work. The problem is they are just blowing air on the outside bottom of the laptop and not actually cooling the working parts. If there were some foam rubber corresponding to the outer edges of the laptop (without occluding any air intake grills) so air could be forced into the vent grills? I believe that a cooling pad could be of some benefit. You could also filter the air that passes through the cooling pad fan. I wouldn't want to place a filter directly on the laptop grill because the laptop fans are working hard enough already.

Speaking of the fans having to work hard? Looking at my old and my new laptops, their air admittance grills look barely adequate. My old laptop has a grill that is 22mm X 37mm and that has 7 (not counting two bars across) bars across it slightly over 1mm in width. I think I could probably improve airflow by 1/3 by taking out a couple of the bars (with hot wire or soldering iron) and still leave a strong, serviceable grill to keep things from getting in. Laptop fans really have to struggle. People have invented vacuums you attach to the outlet and the poorly executed cooling pads to force air in trying to make the laptop cooling fan's lot in life easier, not choking it to begin with would seem like a good idea. The new laptop is better for air inlet vents and dual fans but unlike the other laptop it has a discrete graphics card so has more work to do.

I hope this helps someone else and I would certainly like to hear what has worked for anyone else, besides just air conditioning the room to 20C.

[AlwaysRt]

1 hour ago, robert k said:

Not placing the laptop on a soft surface and cutting airflow to the vents /raising a stationary laptop to improve airflow because the feet on the underside of a laptop are generally the absolute minimum necessary to allow air into the unit because manufacturers like to tell how thin their product is. 4 bottle caps would probably work.

This is my biggest effort. Several years ago now, I bought 4 - 1" furniture leg/floor protectors. Plastic ones made to slip over the chair/table legs so they do not scratch the floor. The version I have are felt bottom instead of metal disc/wheel etc. All I do is slid them under my laptop on whatever hard surface it is sitting on and poof, 1" air circulation under the laptop.

[Old55]

Wow good stuff to consider what with the heat over there. Thanks for that gonna share with my family 

[Jollygoodfellow]

I use a laptop as the computer with a separate monitor and keyboard so the actual laptop sits down on the table supports which in this case are 2 metal bars so lots of air under and perhaps 6 inches off the floor. If i was using it as a laptop as such the first thing I would do as it's been suggested is to raise it from the desk or what it is sitting on. Good advice from Robert. 

[Jake]

Great advice Robert!  Besides periodic vacuum job on the fan grill, I also reduce the brightness and contrast of the screen.  I also would recommend having a voltage regulator to power up your critical electronics.  Heat, humidity and voltage spikes are killers of these devices.

[Dave Hounddriver]

3 hours ago, Jake said:

Besides periodic vacuum job on the fan grill

Is that better than just blowing it because I don't have a vacuum hear so I just blow the dust off. 

[AlwaysRt]

1 hour ago, Dave Hounddriver said:

Is that better than just blowing it because I don't have a vacuum hear so I just blow the dust off. 

I........ will resist what I was going to post.....

[Tukaram (Tim)]

As long as I use the cooling pad with my laptop it is ok.  But I cannot play graphically intense games like Guild Wars 2...  bummer.

My desktop pc is still hanging around. I had it 2 or 3 years in the US and over 4 years here... I am really surprised it still running.  The only way I can play Guild Wars or render a video is if I leave the side panel off and put a small 6" desk fan nearby. The 3 internal fans are not enough here. 

[robert k]

I had someone else remind me to take the battery out of the laptop if it's removable, and the laptop is stationary. My new laptop it's built in so I can't remove the battery (easily) but my old one has removable battery and I looked and there is a large gap around the power pins and I can actually see the motherboard. This would certainly admit more air.

[Reboot]

The dust is a big deal too. My GF runs an internet cafe, no aircon, and she is always having to dust out the internals on the computers. Heat and dust..the two big enemies of computers. She's a killer troubleshooter though. Very good at fixing PCs.