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Are there laptop coolers that actually produce a lot of air and make a real difference? (self.pcmasterrace)

submitted 1 year ago by Dick_Justice to c/pcmasterrace

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I am curious... I've a couple different ones, and they don't seem to actually do a whole lot... my poor laptop could use some help

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[–] CatZoomies 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

@[email protected] made a great point aboutcleaning and ensuring that there's enough airflow coming in from the bottom intake fans on the laptop. By design, laptops are designed with small spaces, so airflow is really difficult to accommodate for unless it's designed with a good heatspreader, and extremely fast fans that pump a lot of air to the critical components.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned though is undervolting.

I'd recommend looking into undervolting your GPU in order to have it work a little less hard while still getting the same performance. You can use tools like MSI Afterburner to undervolt your GPU so it consumes less power, and thus generates less heat. You might find that you'll still get the same performance, fps, etc., but perhaps your PC will reach 90c instead of 100.

Undervolting is perfectly safe, as when you use tools like MSI Afterburner, it's not designed to override the safety mechanisms built into the GPU. So if you have an unstable undervolt or unstable overclock, your computer will just crash - a simple reboot of the PC fixes that problem and then you can fine-tune the undervolt until it's stable and doesn't crash.

I undervolted my GPU for games like Overwatch, so I can play with maximum graphics settings and my GPU is on average 8 degrees cooler. Granted, I built my own desktop so I don't have real-world experience using a laptop for gaming.

Edit: Here's a good video to help introduce you into undervolting.

"How To Undervolt Your GPU (And Why You Should)" https://yewtu.be/watch?v=eaVp6vcVIts Duration: 9:49 minutes