How to keep an overheating laptop cool?

Just out of curiousity, how are yall keeping your laptops cool?

I have an Acer travelmate4400 and have an active laptop cooler with 2 fans, it does a decent job at idle but, just doesnt cut it when gaming. I have to run dawn of war at the lowest settings on just a normal game. It has an x700 in it but, I know of no way to see if its the card or the processor overheating cause it to downclock.

So far my best bet is, I have a slap of marble tile the same size as my laptop and I put 2 medical ice packs under it and that keeps it pretty cold but while gaming I constatly go from 40-50fps to 10-20 and lower.


oh and so far I have my x700 at 370:361 score of 3100 using the bench tool that comes with att.

 

lool the medical ice pack thing!! Sorry I had to comment on that.

I dont really know what else to say!
If you are managing to keep it cool and you know that it is running the game with the laptop being kept cold; then that can't be the problem.

Obviously it is something else
I hope I've helped?!

 

Clean it out. Reseat the CPU with AS5.

 

Have a look at this excellent guide here on NBR.

You could also invest in a notebook cooling pad (don't by a cheap one, read reviews first).

 

when i play games i let the left side of my laptop hang of the side of my desk. it gives the cooling fan all the fresh air it needs.

 

I thought about the AS5. I am going to have to open up the bottem of my laptop to see how to remove the heat sink and how hard it will be. I have cleaned it with air but and I already have the targus chillmat. It helps cool my HDD from 124 to 113 at idle and with my icepacks I can get it down to 99, but, that's only for an hour or 2 before they melt then I have to refreeze em.

 

Have you tried slightly modifiying your casing, If possible, carefully drill a series of small holes over the are that your HDD is located. If it's anything like my Dell was, it will be at on side of the machine. The holes allow more heat to escape, and with all of your other cooling methods should help!

Have you tried HDD tune?

 

Bit dangerous, don't you think?

A better solution would be to remove the cover under the notebook, that will definitely enhance cooling effectiveness. Especially if you put it on a cooling pad.

 

Modifying the casing can actually be detrimental to the laptop's cooling capability. The case was made for air to flow in a certain direction, and if you go in there and randomly drill holes, you can disrupt the air flow.