what are the differences between running
your laptop on different cooling pads
with vacuum coolers a simple stand or
just normally on a table I've tested 10
different laptops in a number of
different configurations to show you
which cooling solutions actually help
improve performance and temperatures
let's start out with a brief look at all
of the different cooling options we'll
be looking at here you can find updated
prices for all of them linked in the
description I'll be testing with nothing
so just the laptop sitting on a table
which will be the baseline I'll test a
basic metal stand which just raises the
Machine up off the table this should
allow more air to get in below the
laptop which is where air is pulled in
I've got three different cooling pads
all from thermal take cooling pads raise
the laptop up like the stand but they
also have a fan which blows cool air
into the bottom of the machine where the
air intakes are in the laptops I'm
testing the cheapest of the three is the
V 20 at just 20 dollars it's got a 200
millimeter fan and the design is pretty
basic the laptop sits on top and you
plug it in via USB next up is the a
twenty three for five dollars more it's
got a smaller 120 millimeter fan
connects via USB however it has legs at
the back allowing you to choose from
three separate Heights in theory being
higher should improve air flow I've
tested it with the legs out at maximum
length the third cooling pad is the
massive 20 RGB and this is the one I've
had the longest I use it in all of my
laptop reviews during the thermal
testing like the smaller V 20 it's got a
large 200 millimeter fan however the pad
itself is larger and supports bigger
laptops oh plus it's got RGB lighting
which will undoubtedly boost performance
the last cooling solution will compare
are these vacuum coolers from Apollo
basically they get powered by USB type-a
like the cooling pads but you put them
up against our exhaust vents and they
suck air out of the system they can be a
little annoying to position correctly
there's a temperature display on top and
you can adjust the fan speed I did old
testing at maximum speed given most
gaming laptops have two exhausts I
bought two of them so we can have one on
both of the exhausts if a laptop had
four exhausts like two on the side until
on the back I placed them on the back
rather than the side
as the air coming out seemed hotter
there these are the 10 different laptops
that I've tested with these cooling
options and there's a pretty good
variance of specs there are Intel and
AMD processors as well as Nvidia and
Radeon graphics all testing was done
with an ambient room temperature of 21
degrees Celsius and I've tested by
running the a 264 CPU stress test with
just CPU early checked and the heav'n
benchmark at max settings at the same
time so the same consistent workload is
being run on all 10 laptops we'll go
through the results of each laptop one
by one then go through which coolers
made the biggest difference let's start
out with the lenovo Wi-Fi for tea I've
got the CPU temperatures shown by the
purple bars and the GPU temperatures
shown by the red bars we can see with
just the table and no additional cooling
the temperatures are warmer even using
the basic stand that just raises it up
often an improvement similar to the
cooling pads while in this instance the
vacuum coolers gave the best result
these are the average clock speeds from
those same tests there's not too much of
a performance improvement with this
laptop when better cooling is on offer
however there was a small clock speed
change next laptop is the Acer Helios
300 no vacuum cooler results here I did
this months ago so can't recall if I
simply forgot or if the coolers had
issues a touching anyway the stand
improved temperatures by a couple of
degrees then there was some extra gains
to be had with the cooling pads like the
Wi-Fi 40 with same specs before it there
was just a small clock speed boost to be
had by improving cooling thorough clock
speeds are higher here as the Helios 300
is both under vaulted and overclocked
out of the box the Acer nitro 5 is next
this time I was able to test the vacuum
coolers and while they were offering a
little improvement compared to using
nothing it wasn't that big of a
difference given just using the metal
stand beat the vacuum coolers here while
the cooling pads offered the best
results there's not really much
difference at all to the clock speeds
here and that's because thermals want a
limitation let's check out something
that thermal throttles next to see the
difference these are the temperatures
with the gigabyte error 15 or LED it's
got a CPU thermal throat a limit of 90
degrees Celsius it wasn't possible to
remove thermal throttling on the CPU
from this machine with any of these
cooling options so it was always sitting
at 90 however the GPU did see a
open thermals for the first time so far
there's a larger difference to the clock
speeds with the error 15 this is because
of the thermal throttling although all
of these cooling options one enough to
flood out prevent thermal throttling
under this stress test they do still
help lower it which is why the clock
speed improvements are greater here
compared to the other machines tested so
far the electronics max 15 was also
thermal throttling on the CPU in this
test but with a higher 95 degree limit
to be fair this one does have the
power-hungry 115 watt r-tx 2017 though
interestingly that got slightly warmer
with most of the coolers and use the
warmer GPUs seems to be a result of the
clock speeds increasing by almost one
hundred and fifty megahertz it seems
that when better cooling is available
its able to start boosting higher
despite the temperature rising a degree
otherwise the CPU clocks didn't change
as much as we saw with the error which
is interesting given both laptops with
thermal throttling there so less of an
improvement to CPU performance
comparatively and now for something
completely different the msi alpha 15
uses both AMD processor and graphics
it wasn't thermal throttling however the
cooling options were able to give us a
nice improvement 5 to 6 degrees lower on
the CPU and 4 to 5 lower on the GPU as
there was no thermal throttling it's not
much surprised that the clock speed
differences were fairly minimal on this
laptop
the asou Sepphoris GA 502 is another
resin based laptop however this time
it's paired with nvidia graphics rather
than Radeon all of the cooling options
helped however CPU temperatures only
lowered one to three degrees but the GPU
saw a bigger 3 to 5 degree drop off the
clock speed differences were quite
strange here basically zero change to
the GPU
however with any cooling added there was
a significant improvement observed to
the CPU performance the power limit of
the horizon 730 750 H was sitting at
around 22 watts with the table but with
all callers it was able to boost to 35
watts so it seems that the power limit
dynamically adjusts if adequate cooling
is provided next is the Dell g3 and
there were excellent improvements here
with up to a 10 degree improvement on
the CPU and 11 on the GPU with the
biggest cooling pattern use although the
vacuum coolers weren't quite as good as
the cooling pads
they still did better than the stand
again like many other laptops tested
here
there were some clock speed improvements
as cooling improved but they were small
as it wasn't thermal throttling taking
place the razor blade Pro 17 was the
only 17 inch laptop featured in this
roundup I'm just now realizing there
were some minor improvements to be had
with the cooling pads but interestingly
the best results came from just using
the metal stemmed with no extra fans the
blade Pro 17 has four fans inside it
already so it's a bit unique with
cooling pads there's some debate with
regards to blowing extra air into the
laptop depending on the machine there's
the potential for it to result in the
internal laptop fans performing worse
and this seems to be the case here as a
result the clock speeds with just using
the plain old simple stand with the
highest granted the differences were
small either way I wasn't able to use
the vacuum coolers with this laptop due
to there being no external exhaust vents
to latch onto next up is the lenovo el
340 again our vacuum results
unfortunately as there are no air
exhaust vents to connect them to the CPU
has a throttle limit of 85 degrees
Celsius here which was consistently
being hit regardless of cooling solution
however there were some pretty big
improvements to the GPU with up to a 10
degree drop with the biggest cooling pad
there were some pretty huge games to be
had from improved calling in terms of
clock speeds as that lower 85 degree
throttle limit is always being hit
improving the cooling will increase
performance by lowering the amount of
throttling present now let's look at the
average temperatures for all 10 laptops
with the exception being the opole of
vacuum coolers which had seven data
points because I couldn't test three of
the machines the key takeaway seems to
be that doing pretty much anything like
just raising the back of the laptop up
as the metal stand does is enough to
make most of the improvements although
there was a difference between the three
cooling pads it's super small which
seems to confirm my suspicion that all
cooling pads are more or less equal in
terms of performance which makes sense
given they all perform the same basic
task of blowing some air the vacuum
coolers did quite well in terms of CPU
temperatures however there was a smaller
difference to the GPU compared to other
methods these are the average clock
speeds for these same tests given the
clock speeds vary a fair bit by machine
it's hard to compare the vacuum cooler
here due to having less data points but
with the machines we were able to use it
on the clock
speeds weren't great comparatively
better results was seen in terms of
performance just by using the stand
while again the cooling pads made the
largest difference next let's have a
listen to how loud all of these
different cooling methods get given most
of them blow additional air some extra
noise is going to be expected
interestingly the stand in the first two
cooling pads were a little quieter
compared to just leaving the laptop rain
flat on the table it would seem that
being closer to the surface raises the
noise level realistically there wasn't
too much difference except for the
vacuum coolers which were noticeably
louder in comparison to all other
options I was running the vacuum coolers
at max speed but lower would make them
even less viable than they already are
so with all of that in mind which
cooling technique should you use the
best cooler for your specific laptop
will depend on the laptop itself I think
for most people a cooling pad or stand
afar easy to use then vacuums they're
not only easier to set up for more
consistent results but the vacuum
coolers were also noticeably louder
compared to the other options
additionally on average over the 10
machines tested the cooling pads gave
the best results in terms of thermals
and performance and they don't cost that
much either again links to all prices
can be found in the description
there was definitely a bigger
improvement of thermals compared to
performance but that might just be
because I had a smaller number of
laptops hitting thermal throttle limits
if your laptop is actually thermal
throttling then performance will improve
more
either way additional cooling is still
beneficial reducing the operating
temperatures would be good for promoting
longevity let me know which cooling
solution you'll be using for your laptop
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