I have once again crossed over to the dark side and started playing World of Warcraft. This time, I’m doing it on my beloved MacBook Pro - my first time ever using this thing for gaming.
It gets HOT. HOT HOT HOT HOT.
Not only that, but the heat degrades performance. If I’m sitting with this thing on my lap, I can watch my framerate gradually decline from 75 fps down to 12-15 fps over the course of a few hours. If I adjust how I sit so that the underside of the laptop is in midair, then it can cool off and my performance returns.
This is uncomfortable, though, so I want to get a cooling pad. I didn’t even know these existed until today so I’ve never shopped for one before. Something like this:
looks cool because it’s not a fan that’s going to blow crap into my computer and it won’t be another thing to plug in and make noise. But the reviews seem to say that it’s not great for long-term use:
So, do you guys know of any good cooling pads for my Mac? Need answer fast - 12 fps sucks and I’m pretty sure I’m sterilizing myself.
(Also, I played in Vanilla WoW since before BGs came out and quit right when the original Naxx came out. I picked it up again briefly when BC came out but left soon thereafter. Holy crap, a ton of stuff has changed!)
Laptop cooling pads are pretty much all terrible. Your best bet is to blast out as much dust out of it as you can with a can of compressed air and then use it on a tabletop in the future. If you must use it on your lap, try using a cutting board with a handle-hole that lines up with the macbook’s fan port. That’ll be about as effective as a cooling pad, plus cost 1/10th as much, and you can use it as a cutting board.
When I use our laptop for extended sessions of WoW, I put it on a kitchen cooling rack (like you cool cookies on). It raises it about 3/4" off the table and allows for some air flow.
What I prefer to use is something that was sold, not as a cooling pad, but as a rising base for monitors (yeah, it’s that old: I bought it in 2003 and you will pry it from my dead fingers). It’s all aluminium, no need for fans. When I can’t use that one, I use another one which was already sold as a cooling pad and which, again, is metal: no fans. I’ve also used metal baking trays with good results.
The notion of using something that’s plastic (i.e., not good at conducting heat) and which has fans (i.e., additional motors generating additional heat, d’uh) which are going to have their airflow basically blocked by the table and the laptop itself seems contrary to the laws of Thermodynamics…
IMO, that reviewer is bonkers. I have a ThermaPak and while it does cool less effectively (by a little bit) when it’s gone to gel, it certainly doesn’t increase heat. In fact, I’d say that there’s a significant and noticeable increase in heat after a short while if my laptop’s been running for a bit on the pak and then (for some reason) I have to move it/take it off/whatever.
I’ve had it for years, and especially for extended gaming sessions, it pretty much rocks. Although I would add that I also run it on top of a fan that sits at an angle, so there’s some convection going on under the pak while the actual vents and such under the laptop don’t risk getting dust and grit blown into them by the fan.
I have a Zalman laptop cooling pad with fans built into it, which I make sure to use any time I’m using my laptop for anything processor or graphics intensive. I know by using SpeedFan that this makes a noticeable difference in the temperature at which the computer runs. The cooler I use does have feet which hold it up at an angle so that air can flow from underneath and blow across the bottom of the laptop. It is still quite possible to accidentally block the flow of air, so I do have to be careful with what I seat the laptop on or next to.
Before I had the cooling pad, I used to use a 11 pound slab of scrap aluminum (left over from another project years ago) as a base for my previous laptop. This also seemed to help it run cooler, although I wasn’t using SpeedFan at the time so I don’t know for sure. Even a passive block of metal will help your laptop run cooler - the metal will act like a heat sink and increase the area out of which heat can radiate. Fans make it work even better though.
I don’t know how effective the gel pad cooler in the OP is.
Back when I played WoW on my old laptop, my ghetto solution was to sit it on top of a Ziploc freezer bag filled with ice. The ice usually took well over an hour to melt, and it kept the underside nice and chilly. Just be sure your freezer bag is water-tight … .
(The low humidity in L.A. also helped. Minimal external condensation and all that … .)
I have this, and I use it on a laptop stand. It seems to do a pretty good job on multi-hour WoW sessions, but I doubt my laptop had quite the problem with overheating that the Macs seem to.
Do you play tennis? I actually use my old oversized tennis racket as my laptop pad for when I use it on the bed, and it works great. Lots of air flow and only slightly uncomfortable…
I have a MBP and use a metal stand (made by Rain? I think) that doesn’t provide any active cooling, but I can jam an ice pack under it that works tolerably well when I need to cool it off. I’ve actually considered trying to make something like the thermapak by getting some Glauber’s salts (sodium sulfate decahydrate), which is essentially all that that is. I’m trying to come up with something that would be have decent heat transfer and attach to the underside of the stand.
of course laptop cooling pads are a good idea, It takes no time at all for a laptop to start filling up with various particles, with a laptop cooling pad, even though its blowing dust ect. up into your laptop… what its aslo doing is working with your interior fan to create a current of air which will pushes the particles back out, and to cooler your laptop stays, the longer life expectancy it has (heat hinder your laptop more than dust) so go buy a laptop cooling pad, their dirt cheap these days
Shiny metal (which your block of aluminum probably was) is terrible at radiating heat. But you would get significant benefits from it as a reservoir. If it starts off at room temperature, it’s going to take a long time to get much above room temperature (11 pounds is a lot). This won’t change the maximum temperature the computer will eventually reach, but it will make it take a longer time to reach that maximum, probably longer than you usually use it at a sitting.