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Easy, Cheap, Effective Laptop Cooling?
cloudofstrife asks: "I happen to own a laptop that happens to have overheating problems. Frequently during games, the processor will overheat, and the frame rate will drop from over 30 frames per second to under 2 frames per second. Is there a cheap and easy way to prevent my CPU from overheating?"
And blow the dust out of it.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Four of those little pink erasers (the ones shaped like a parallelogram) under the four courners of the laptop does a suprisinglly great job. It cut my cpu fan usage down by a good 80-90% for day to day usage.
If erasers are unavailable or you want less traction, mini-post it note pads work great as well. They may be preferred if you want to be able to slide the laptop out of the way when you're not using it.
Friend of mine ordered a Dell with a comprehensive on site service warranty. The laptop arrived, he installed a game, started playing, frame rate dropped, machine shutdown. He did this about 3 times then said screw it and called Dell. They sent out a technician the same day, the guy replaced the video card, it never happened again.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You could always build one
You need:
Take your syringe and cut it in half. My memory is a bit patchy about this bit, I did it a long time ago. 2 to 2.5 cm should be long enough (from the tip). Lubricate the inside of the tube. Again, I can't remember what I lubricated it with, but saliva works well, particularly when it comes to smoothing down imperfections in the glue while it is still hot. Fill the 2 cm of tube. Allow it to cool and pull out the glue plug. Repeat four or 5 times. Cut these cylinders down to size, 1 or 1.5 cm should do it. If for some reason they are not all the same height, instead of hacking away until there's nothing left, take a vice and place them all in it, and tighten slightly. Apply a hairdryer to the whole thing until the glue has adopted it's new shape. Allow to cool and remove the glue feet.
You're done. You now have small, rubbery, cheap feet for your laptop. They will even stick ever so slightly to case if it's warm, convenient if you want to pick it up briefly.
I carry these little feet in my laptop bag, and they help reduce the procesor temp. You don't have to use all four, you can just prop up the back and it will help.
Hope someone finds this useful.
Paul
My motorbike travels in Chile.
Hey, Retard (and no, I'm not insulting you, I'm just using the name YOU chose upon YOURSELF)...ever heard of common sense?
Throwing money at a problem is almost never the right solution.
If you're going to use Google, at least look for some answer to your question than some unrelated store. You're lucky that he said it was an overheating problem, or you'd've given us a nice page on buying new laptops and felt smart for it.
Actually, I have a way you could be useful. Why don't YOU pay for whatever stupid device you want him to get?
And why just 10 seconds of Googling instead of looking for something worthwhile? Is your attention span only 11 seconds?
(Yes, I'm getting abusive and trollish. I know. But honestly, does a guy named "Hey, Retard..." deserve any better?)
Honestly, there's no point to more than 2Ghz on a laptop..especially with a P4 or latest AMD chips. Way too hot, and way too much power usage.
Perhaps in your use-model there is no point, but not in mine. For example, I spent over 50% of my time with customers. When I'm in the office, it wouldn't make sense for me to use a different computer. So if I need to run a simulation, offline (from our equipment) protocol decoder, or copy a file (XP jab *grin*) I want my 2GHz. I don't mind only having full power available when I'm on AC.
So just because you don't see a need for something, doesn't mean there isn't one.
Your laptop is clearly defective. Why aren't you returning it?
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Dry Ice.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
I take the "Ask Slashdot" stories to be like starting a discussion. Yes, you can probably find the answer in a few seconds yourself, but someone else who's only somewhat bothered by it might become interested and use one of the suggestions.
In this example, perhaps some other reader is getting a little annoyed by his laptop overheating, not but only a little. He doesn't feel like spending any real money on the solution as it's not a major problem. He reads the threads out of boredom and finds some simple or cheap solutions and decides to use them.
There are other examples of a person asking something I'd never even thought of. Reading the story and a few minutes later I'm considering doing something like that myself.
Remember, we're a slashdot community :-) Sometimes asking a question isn't just for personal gain but for group info.
Temporary remove the battery if it's not in need of charging. The brand we use at my company runs the fan regularly, we started removing the battery from our laptops when an adapter was near and the fan only ran once or twice per day instead of every 10 minutes.