Tips For Cooling Your Gaming Laptop
The heat that inevitably arises in a gaming laptop is due to the heavy utilization of the graphics card (or GPU) during gaming. In fact, the GPU tends to generate more heat than the central processor itself and has a higher threshold for heat by and large. It is not uncommon for a GPU to reach temperatures in the neighborhood of 80 to 90 degrees C, especially when you are overclocking it.
This, of course, puts the gaming machine in a whole other segment than your average mail-downloading machine without a dedicated graphics card. Constant overheating will not damage the computer right away, but it may have a negative impact on the life span of your PC and is also more than a little uncomfortable.
In addition to bringing down the temperature to manageable levels, an exterior laptop cooler can also provide some additional features to your overall gaming experience such as speakers or more USB ports. At any rate, having a decent laptop cooler is effectively just looking out for your most likely expensive gaming machine. The average cooling unit is a relatively small investment.
When you head out to locate a good cooler pad or stand, there are a number of aspects that ought to affect your decision, the most important one being efficient cooling of course, but also that it fits the dimensions of your laptop. You don’t want to order a cheap one online only to open the package to find a tiny netbook cooler. On the flip side of the coin you don’t want an unnecessarily bulky stand. There is a large amount of coolers available that are designed to suit essentially any unit, but it’s important to check the dimensions so that it suits your laptop.
As a rule of thumb, do not go with a random product based on price or even average rating–find one that is designed to work with your machine.
A couple of other things to consider are the number of fans, capacity and noise level. You can usually get the gist of these matters from the specifications and user reviews. What also needs to be taken into account is the positioning of the most heat-generating surfaces on the laptop. This is generally the space where the GPU and the CPU resides, respectively.
Additionally, you may also want to have a look at the possibility to add some new features to complement your computer. For instance, you have the option to enhance the gaming machine with a new set of speakers or a few more USB ports. A few more expensive models also come with built-in thermostats that adjusts the air flow according to how much heat is produced, which is good news for the average level of noise. The top cooling unit is one that retains the noise level to a bare minimum while also decreasing heat effectively.
To keep the noise to a minimum, there are also passive cooling pads that absorb heat though salts that are frozen at room temperature and will not be using fans at all, but these ones will only last for so long before they need to refreeze. Another option is to choose a cooler with a single huge fan that spins relatively slowly, thus reducing noise output.