Is a cooling pad necessary to save notebook from crash?

I want to know that whether we should use a cooler or not to save the notebook from crash.

 

If your notebook is crashing from thermal shutdown a cooling pad won't do much good. You should repaste it to bring the temperature down first of all, then consider a cooling pad if the temps are still high.

 

Do more recent laptops still suffer from this kind of thermal problem? I know my old laptop from 10 years ago would and I had to get a cooling pad to keep it up while gaming, but the new cpus and gpus have become so much more efficient and designs improved that the thermals over most laptops aren't so bad right? or am I completely wrong?

 

Depends on the laptop. Some have poorly designed heat sinks (Macbook Pro for example) and overheat out of the box. Better designed laptops will run at more reasonable temps without throttling. Most laptops now will not thermal shutdown but will just throttle back the CPU speed as newer chips can take more heat apparently (though my old 5870s can take a huge amount without throttling).

It is true that CPUs and GPUs now are more efficient and will generate less heat. However the high end CPUs still run hot as they are given higher TDPs and higher voltages to let them run at higher clock speeds. Generally heat sink design is better, but many manufacturers keep making the same mistakes: poor contact between the chip and heat sink, poor air flow and not enough thermal capacity to carry heat from the chip. Poor contact is usually pretty easy to fix with a copper shim and a repaste, poor airflow is a bit harder to fix: if the laptop has no intake vents then you can drill some into the chassis - if it does then its the fan that sucks and can sometimes be replaced with a better one. Not enough thermal capacity is the hardest to fix, especially in thin laptops which don't leave much room. If you have enough room you can stick copper RAM heatsinks onto the heat sink to increase the amount of heat it can hold. The laptop will still reach the same temps, but it will take a lot longer to get there.

New MSI laptops generally have good heat sink design, Clevo are hit or miss: the P870 has a desktop CPU which is difficult to keep cool especially overclocked. Partly Intel's fault for their ****ty TIM, but mainly Clevo's fault for not giving it good enough contact or capacity.

 

I'm convinced my laptop cooling fan/pad's only purpose it to audibly remind me that I left the laptop on. My room could be 55 degrees, AC on, oscillating fans going, and the laptop cooler at full blast, and after a couple minutes of 3D or video rendering, this thing gets hot. And this is a system built for punishment (Origin EON17-X).

With the newer systems' extra sinks and fans, I think there are more ways for dust/debris to get in so I try to regularly hit it with the compressed air and keep the vents and fans clean.

I've also seen laptops and laptop pads that seem to work against each other due to conflicting directions of air flow, which I imagine would be worse than not having a laptop cooler at all.

 

The OP should also undervolt the CPU.

 

No.

What would fare better than a cooling pad is to elevate the notebook via an ergonomic stand. That way, no ventilation is blocked.

Either way, if you're already overheating, a cooling pad won't do you much good.

 

If it's thermal crashing without a pad, you've got a different problem that a cooling pad will only delay. Try cleaning your vents/fins and repasting, you should not be relying on a pad as the difference between crashing and not crashing.

 

As others have reiterated already OP, find the underlying problem first and attempt to address it without the need for an external solution, as thats not what a laptop is for!

I would suggest firstly undervolting the CPU if at all possible. If that solves the problem then great, if not (or you just want to go further) then I'd suggest doing a full teardown and clean of the heatsink. I.E remove the heatsink, clean off thermal past, clean out dust, and apply new thermal paste.

In regards to new laptops and thermals; its a bit of a mixed bag. You should do you're own research based on the specific model you're interested in to determine your own personal thresholds; what is acceptable to one person might not be to another. Many manufacturers etc are heading down the thin and hot/loud avenue in terms of design. Consequently, you're going to find a lot of mixed results, but there will undoubtedly be a lot of "hot" laptops. Thermal throttling is a different story though, most will be designed to avoid this, and under gaming loads, typically none will throttle due to thermals unless there is an underlying issue. Some manufacturers do find what I feel is a sweetspot between thiness and temps/noise. For me personally, its the Gigabyte P3X series and the Clevo/Sager P6XXHX series. Each has their own issues though; Gigabyte, complaints of quality, and Clevo/Sager had throttling in their previous model under specific conditions.

 

Sounds like your in need of some maintenance.

Repaste + clean fin array (vents) = golden (generally)

 

Under the right circumstances, a properly modded U3 cooler can bring some measurable temperature relief. In the case of most (or all) stock notebook coolers, the difference will generally be too small to be meaningful. Even the world's best modded U3 won't be effective enough to make an overheating laptop stop overheating.

Is it a safe guess that your laptop is running abnormally crazy hot? If so, I would forget about a cooler--at least for the time being--and focus on figuring out the real reason it is overheating and correct that first. Once the root cause is resolved, any benefit from using the laptop on a cooler would be icing on the cake, rather than a dirty band-aid solution.

 

I wonder if i can use the existing fan speed controller (a simple PWM dial knob thing) and just swap out the fans with desktop pc fans?

 

If you try it post results.