Importance of a cool laptop?

When I first got my laptop, I was obsessed with modding it and overclocking. I also had it engrained in my head from the desktop that cooler is better. But does it really matter?

Lately I've wanted my fans to stay off most of the time and started playing with the temperature controls again in i9kfangui. Most of the time my video card is not OC'd cause I'm not playing games but my CPU is permanently pin-modded.

Is it really so bad if CPU and GPU stay around the mid 50C range?

My low speed fans used to come on at 48 for CPU and 47 for GPU when stock by Dell is 58 and 57. Now I wanna set them at 55 and 53. What do you guys think?

Also, the cooler the vid card is the more stable the overclock right (or the higher I can push it)

P.S. I'm not holding it in my lap

 

Lower temps will make your gear last longer... but running the fans more to keep things cooler will make the fans die sooner. Anything under 60C seems pretty safe to me. Up to 80 under load, though of course cooler is better. As to OC, well, the more heat you can take a way, the higher you can push it, as usually overheating is what ultimately determines how high you can OC your hardware.

 

Other than affecting the life of your system components/fans etc, the heat shouldn't have any effect on performance.

What are you guys using to monitor temperatures?

 

I'm using I9kfangui. Monitors and controls fans exactly how you want it with multiple profiles. So you guys think low 50s are ok eh...cause that means just running windows even without powerplay on (can't turn it on with the secondary display, see my other thread), the GPU fan won't come on or rarely will.

 

a cool laptop is so cool ;-)

 

Any idea what "enable fan usage balancing" means in the i9kfangui options?

 

You can also use HWMonitor.

Sigh......really jealous of you Dell guys....I think you guys have basically the only tool out there for changing fan settings and its Dell only (other than speedfan, of course, but I don't think that it works with laptops).....

 

This is true, but typically it is cheaper to replace a fan than some of the components it was cooling

 

Exactly, as everyone else basically stated, keep the heat within limits. The components have operating temperature limits for a reason. If you keep it within those, chances are you won't kill your components any time that you own the laptop, unless you keep it 10 years.

 

Meh...I decided on my old settings. These will keep the fans on constant if it's on max performance (cpu @ highest multiplier and vid card NOT in powerplay). Otherwise, the fans come on more rarely, but are on and off and temps are up and down a lot. This way everything's more constant. And when I'm on dynamic switching with powerplay on, the fans just don't come on because at some point the heatsink is enough to keep the temp below 50 without a fan.

I was trying to achieve this even in max performance but that's impossible, the temps steadily grow into the mid 50s...

I should buy some replacement fans to have on hand though seeing as this is my main comp, it's 3.5 years old and a failure in the fan(s) would mean I can't use it.

 

When I'm browsing or watching a video I keep my fan speed on 2 or 3 using tpfancontrol for my thinkpad. When I'm playing a game I'll keep it at 7

 

Everywhere I've read points to it being a bad idea to use I8kfanGUI or I9kfanGUI with a Dell XPS M1730 and SLI Dual GPU cards. (I also have the physics card).

They say it'll cause one of your CPU fans to shut down and won't recognize both GPU fans.

Is that still the case?