Laptop Cooling Pad Recommendation?

I got my daughter a new laptop for Christmas, and am planning on using her old laptop for Folding and SETI.

The old laptop is an Dell Studio 1747...notorious for overheating.

She was having overheating problems, and limited the max processor usage to 75% (about 1.1 GHZ)...smart kid...takes after her dad!

At this reduced power level, the processor was maxing out at 95 C. I took the laptop apart, and the heat sink fins where coated with gook and gunk. I cleaned them, put it back together. With the 1.1 GHz max clock, the temps where now under 70 C...nice.

I jacked up the process to 100% (peaks at 1.8 GHz) and now the laptop runs at 91/92 C under max load after 30 hours of running.


As I plan on leaving this on 24/7, I wanted to use one of the laptop cooling pads to get it better air...does anybody have a recommendation here?

Literally any from a known brand that have fans lining up with the intake on the laptop will work

Going to give this a shot:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...rue&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_1&smid=ACIAU6YNB8H7B

Connects to the exhaust on the laptop and pulls the air out. I'll let you know how it works!

NOT TARGUS

JrClocker said:

Going to give this a shot:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...rue&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_1&smid=ACIAU6YNB8H7B

Connects to the exhaust on the laptop and pulls the air out. I'll let you know how it works!

Click to expand...

So long as you have adequate room for the intake (typically on the bottom of the laptop), it should help out. But if not, then it won't help as much as it can.

Skynight said:

NOT TARGUS

Click to expand...

Huh?

OK, this OPOLAR is the strangest looking think you will ever see hanging off of a laptop...marketing picture:




But it actually really works! Take a look at these before and after temperature graphs...





It basically adds a pull fan in addition to the push fan internal to the laptop to get air through the heat sink fins. The new "pull" fan is temperature controlled and will increase its speed as the exhaust temperate increase.

You guys should do a review on this one!

I cannot relate how awesome this cooler solution is. The 8 to 10 C drop in laptop temperatures continue...even as I increase the processor load from 65% to 100% on a continual basis.

The temps have stayed reduced for 36+ hours so far. I left this laptop run all day, and they still stayed at this level.

The temperatures yesterday in my part of Florida peaked at 88 F yesterday (got to love it!). My house A/C is on "automatic"...it raises the internal temperature of the house to 86 F during the day when nobody is at home. My office (where this laptop is) got to 88 F yesterday...and the laptop stayed as cool as when my A/C is running.

The only downside is that it is a bit noisy.

A strange looking product, but it works.

EarthDog:

Had a Targus laptop cooler, it made a lot of noise couldn't even hear myself think and it wouldn't power off when the laptop did had to manually remove the USB connector. Contacted Targus and they said it was like this by design ( who the fk would do this by design ?? ).
Changed to some other cooler ( forgot the name right now ) problem solved.

The OPOLAR is a pretty sweet device.

I have it in manual mode, and reduced the fan speed. It's about as loud as the laptop fan now.

And it keeps the laptop cool.

Even though it looks dorky, it will be my #1 goto if I have this problem in the future.

I was waiting to see what your experience with that device was. Thanks for reporting back