What is the best and safest cooling pad/fan/whatever for the XPS16?

I am waiting for my XPS to come and I want to know what is the best cooling device I can get on it. The reason I mentioned "safest" is because one person I know said sometimes it can be harmful to the laptop(I have no idea how true that is). So any suggestions?

 

The heat really won't damage the laptop unless it is unreasonably high. That means an extreme temperature, which could melt the motherboard. Only defective units get that hot. The SXPS 16 gets warm, but not nearly that hot.

A laptop cooler will mostly serve just to keep the chassis and the base of the laptop cool, but it wont help the internal hardware that much. One thing that can happen is the laptop chassis gets too warm, and if you close the lid the heat can damage LCD screens (like the SXPS 16 has). So if you don't have a cooler and the palmrests are hot, let the laptop cool off for a few minutes before closing it. Or, use a laptop cooler and don't sweat it.

I ordered a Zalman NC2000 laptop cooler a couple days ago. It was about 50 bucks on Ebay, but you can probably find some used/refurbished ones cheaper if you really look around. I found this one recommended elsewhere, but honestly I'm not sure you'll see a huge difference from a 20 dollar one from a retail store. I'll let you know how the Zalman works out for me.

 

See this informative thread on laptop coolers made by X2P:
Notebook Coolers : A Buyers Guide
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=304671

Cin

 

Sweet, so you finally ordered the laptop, congrats. So what did you end up getting?

 

Why thank you Fernandez.

Thanks a lot again Cin. I will be reading that now.


Thanks for the post also Texas. But let me ask you something; up until now, you had now cooler. When it gets "hot", does it really get hot or just warm?

 

It gets hot underneath, but whenever I use it on my lap I always use a lap-board. The palmrests get warm, but it doesn't bother me. In the winter I will probably think they keep my wrists toasty

Most of the cooling for this laptop depends on the bottom, where a couple of vents are. If the bottom is flat, it cant breathe, and it gets warm. Raising it up just an inch or so (a larger battery) makes a huge difference. The Zalman will be blowing cool air underneath, which will help especially for this machine (others which have no bottom vents wouldn't really be helped I don't think).

The cooler will be good for hot days on the desk and such. Also, I get nervous closing my pretty screen on a warm palmrest. It shouldn't do any damage, but the cooler the better, just to be safe.

 

I use the Zalman 2000.

Without it: 55 - 69C on CPU/VGA
With it: 39 - 46/49C on CPU/VGA.

Dropped the temps by a good 20 - 30%.

 

i got a zalman nc-2000 aswell for my Studio XPS 16 its perfect.

 

I'm using AKASA. I experienced GPU failure when playing GTA IV without fan turned on (cooling pad fan). The FAILure occured after 5 minutes of playing. I had to reboot. GPU was making pixels on my screen fairly large 100x100 pixels was transformed into picture that looked like 100x100 divided into 20x20 parts. Very strange. But back to the point wit cooling pad I can play GTA 4 for hours