Jon Morr
Tech Blogger at - Gadgets ReviewTech Blogger
These days, the personal computer market is insisting on making everything as light as possible, but still putting stress on power and increased utility for laptops. You will find that manufacturers are making very performing laptops with a very relatively small size and lightweight. This means that they will try and compact all the great features for a performing laptop in a tiny shell to impress the consumers and possibly beat the competition.
All of that is great but it comes with one major problem. As different powerful processors are compacted next to each other, the laptop will inevitably overheat when it is under serious performance. To counter this problem, you will need to put in place an extra cooling system. One of the ways most PC users go about is by buying a laptop cooling pad. Most people think that it’s one of those accessories that are for show, so the question is; do laptop cooling pads work? Let’s dive into details in this article to find out the answer.
The way cooling pads help with cooling a laptop
There are many benefits of running your laptop at a cooler temperature. Cooling systems will fight against the throttling of your laptop and this will result in the durability of your laptop. The CPU and GPU will also profit from longevity if they are not always under hot temperatures. This is why it is essential to put in place a supporting cooling system for your laptop if you use applications that are demanding on the hardware.
In the case of a cooling pad, they will help to cool the internal of a laptop by taking in cool air from under the pad and directing it into your laptop. In addition, the cooling pad serves as a lift-off from the supporting surface, so there is relatively less heat trapped under the laptop. And, since most cooling pad surfaces are porous, there will be airflow allowing an exchange of heat hence less overheating. The other factor which will determine the strength of a cooling pad is the number of fans and the way they are placed in relation to the fan grilles of your laptop. The more effective cooling pads will ensure that almost every surface of your PC pores is covered to receive maximum cool airflow.
Putting a laptop cooling pad to the test
Some tests were performed to find out if a decent quality cooling pad actually does the cooling. The tests were done in two setups, one to see the effects of a cooling pad on the CPU and another on the GPU. The reference test we are going to review tested a laptop with a GTX 860M graphics card and an Intel Core i7-4710HQ CPU. During the test, the GPU was first put under heavy load by running a hashing algorithm, with no cooling pad the temperature readings were 88 degrees Celsius, with the CPU at 86.75 degrees Celsius.
After putting a cooling pad for 10 minutes at maximum performance, the temperature dropped from 88 to 82 degrees Celsius. When the test was done by putting the CPU under heavy load and it got stuck at a clock speed of 1.8 GHz, after adding the cooling the temperature was still at the same maximum but the CPU clock speed increased by 0.7 GHz making it 2.5 GHz. The tests were done differently since the CPU and GPU are put in separate places in a laptop.
Analysis of the test results
As the test clearly suggested, there is an impact of using a cooling pad on a laptop that is under maximum usage pressure. During the GPU test, the temperature decreased by 6 degrees Celsius on the GPU, and the CPU temperature dropped by 3 degrees Celsius. Lower temperature resulted in better performance and less throttling. Hence the conclusion that the cooling pads are a cheap and reliable way to help cope with laptop overheating and increase performance.
As a final word, there are several ways to lower the temperature of a laptop. The use of a cooling pad is for sure the easiest and it involves fewer risks as you just have to place your laptop on the pad to cool it. And also, you will have a performance increase for your laptop if you use a cooling pad.
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