All of you playing games on your laptops - do you prop your laptop up off the desk?
I never thought about this before, because I'd also never used my laptop for anything but simple word processing and blog reading before. But now that I'm playing TS3 on it - a very demanding bitch, let me tell you - I noticed that as I was playing, as my game ran slower and slower, I could hear the fan just dying to cool the poor thing. I felt underneath and found that it was blazing hot - like, burn your hand hot!
Laptops are meant to be held on laps, I suppose, where they get much more space to ventilate on the bottom. But when you run a laptop on a desk, the bottom has no room to breathe.
So, simple problem, simple solution - I tucked a couple stacks of post-its under the corners of my laptop so it would have a half-inch of space to breathe better, and still get to use the laptop at a desk. The machine cooled down almost instantly, and my game ran much, much better!
(People will say it doesn't directly make the laptop perform better, but by freeing up resources that the cooling system was hogging, it kind of does.)
There are trays you can buy that serve this same purpose. Or, if you're lazy and/or cheap, you could just grab a couple stacks of post-its, lol!
ETA: or 10 more ways you can make your own laptop stand! Thanks to Blackcat for the link! :)
I've been doing something similar to this since I got my laptop! I've decided to bit the bullet and buy a cooling desk next week though, I'm hoping it might improve performance.
ReplyDeleteLaptops are actually worse for heating on laps - they're on something warm, and soft, that moulds to their shape and therefore presses into the vents even more than a rigid, cold desk.
ReplyDeleteBe careful, excessive heating can actually kill your laptop. I'm really paranoid about overheating - my previous one died of it and, while I won't exactly say that TS2 killed it, it probably made a hefty contribution to its early demise.
I made sure the replacement has air vents in the sides as well as the bottom, two internal fans (processor and graphics card), and advanced cooling features specifically for games and graphics-intensive stuff. I also worked out a cheap substitute for a tray - one of those wire mesh trays made for cooling baking.
It might pay to get one of those desktop widgets that report the temperature of your laptop's insides - you can google information on how hot is too hot, and manage it accordingly.
Like Blackcat said, laps are much worse for laptops than a desktop is. Also couches! Everything I've read says you can kill your laptop faster by letting it sit on the couch while on...and also you risk setting fire to your couch. :\
ReplyDeleteMy former coworker, a guy who is seriously devoted to computers, always set up a small desk fan to blow toward the bottom of his laptop when it started to get too hot. You could try that if you happen to have a fan already.
Thanks for the tips guys! Oooh, I hadn't thought about couches! I do that all the time too! :o
ReplyDeleteThe couch thing is a scary thought... A woman I had once worked with died in a house fire last year, that started because of leaving a laptop charging overnight with the vent obstructed. Another reason for my overheating paranoia.
ReplyDelete