Icepack + Laptop?!?!?

[darkstar3]

Yup.

My year old laptop has been running HOT lately. Yeah, it's a 17.4" desktop replacement beast, but lately the trackpad has been so hot you can barely use it. So I opened it up to see if there was something wrong with the fan, and what I discovered is that it's the wireless card and RAM that are getting ridiculously hot, and there's really nothing I can add to my laptop internally to fix the problem.

So I went shopping last night for a laptop cooling pad, only to discover that the local tech shop really don't have one for a laptop like mine. So while debating between the least problematic options, my wife suggested something unorthodox:

Why not just put an icepack under the base where the RAM and the wireless card are installed?

Why didn't I think of this before??

[MrsBrady]

1. how do you do that

and not

block the vents or get condensation on it?


good idea, though.

maybe put a large ziplock bag flat and freeze it...
and then wrap in some kind of thin tea towel/flower sack material...

[darkstar3]

3. It's actually this thing called a "cryopak" and I'm using a paper towel.

Works great! I just put it near the front of the bottom, which on this beast is far away from the intake vents at the back of the bottom. See, the battery sticks out the bottom in the back on purpose to prop the back of the laptop off the surface to allow airflow underneath, but the fan in the back doesn't cool the components in the front.

[struggle4progress]

2. Most of the cooling pads I've seen just have fans that circulate air around the bottom

of the laptop case, so I can't see why those would be too model-specific: if you find one with a fan near your hotspot, it should work

Or maybe you can just crank up the fan speed when the machine gets hot: I do that on one of my machines

I think I solved my netbook overheating problem by accident with a really crappy purchase: I bought a hard plastic snap-on case protector. I was pissed at first because it didn't fit well: but actually it keeps the bottom of the case about 1/4 inch about the surface and allows some airflow under the case

Your wife's idea sounds fine to me. But note the other poster's warning about condensation: don't leave the machine sitting on the ice pack when you're not using it, or the interior electronics may get moist, with unhappy results

[darkstar3]

4. Most of them only really work if your laptop has a flat(ish) bottom.

Mine has a kickstand of a battery.