Are laptop stands worth it Pc#
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Gaming performance also saw improvements, but let’s be clear – there is no magical cooling pad that will make your laptop capable of playing games that it can’t play now. That’s the sort of improvement that you simply won’t notice in your day-to-day use. Processing performance, for example, improved by less than 2 percent. The problem is that the performance gains are extremely small. All of the pads we reviewed resulted in better performance on average in all of our benchmark tests. Second, you are likely to see a very slight performance improvement as a result of this cooling. The overall average was a 13 degree drop, but some laptop coolers were closer to a 1 or 2 degree change. Both internal and external temperatures were effectively lowered, with internal heat levels dropping by as much as 30 degrees Fahrenheit when added up across multiple tests and averaged across our three laptops. First, laptop cooling pads do offer varying degrees of effective cooling. Now you might think that these numbers would provide a clear picture of what benefits are offered by cooling pads, and which product offers the best mix of benefits, but that’s not quite the case. In the end, we boiled it down to five numbers: the change in external temperatures, the change in internal temperatures, the change in processor performance, and two sets of numbers for gaming performance. Each of the tests we ran can vary based on what sort of hardware it's running on, and while cooling has an impact, we weren’t entirely sure how well that would come across in test results. Each of our three laptops has its own unique factors that impact how effective external cooling can be. Evaluating Laptop CoolersĪll the tests we ran produce a good amount of data, but determining whether or not those test results tell us anything - and what - was another issue. Since we tested each cooling pad at the maximum fan speeds available, our noise testing also addresses the loudest noise level it can make in normal operation. For this test we used a MasTech MS6700 Digital Sound Level Meter, and measured the decibel level of the cooling fan while it ran during our testing. A blowing fan may have some benefits, but noise can be a real drawback.

Are laptop stands worth it Pc#

If you’ve ever had a PC shut down on you due to overheating, you know exactly how important it is to manage the temperature of your CPU.

The processor is the sweltering heart of the laptop, simultaneously the biggest heat producer and the component most impaired by overheating. MORE: The Best-Selling Laptop Cooling Pads, Ranked Best to WorstĮach step of the way, we monitored the internal temperatures of the laptops, specifically noting the processor-package temperature. For a more ambitious gaming test we used Rise of the Tomb Raider, a current-ish AAA title, and grabbed its average frame rate.

Dirt 3 provides a low-level graphics test that runs through a short segment of simulated gameplay, producing an average frame rate report at the end. Geekbench 4 is a processor-intensive benchmark test that produces a simple score where higher is better. We also tested performance, looking at both general processing and gaming. We wanted to get every bit of cooling capability out of every laptop cooler we tested. While some pads have adjustable fan speeds, we defaulted to the maximum everytime. We measured external and internal temperatures while running at room temperature on all three of our test laptops, and then we ran the same batch of tests while on an active cooling pad.

Are laptop stands worth it free#

Along the way we measured both the surface temperatures, using an IR temperature gun, and internal temperatures using CPUID’s HWMonitor, a free tool for monitoring system sensor data. To measure this we put it through a number of tests, including the same heat test we put all of our laptops through during reviews. Since cooling is the laptop cooler’s raison d'etre – cooler is right there in the name – we focused first and foremost on temperature control. Our testing was designed to look at three primary areas: cooling, performance and noise.