Can a laptop case fry your laptop?

Hi,

It's possibly a stupid question but I've always wondered if its true and now having a rMBP, I'm more curious to find out.

So say I have a laptop which has one of those clip-on protectors to the top and bottom of it and the case is made of what most of them are, polycarbonate. Under heavy usage, won't the heat which would usually go out of the laptop's plastic and in the air be stuck on the polycarbonate which would in turn heat the laptop's plastic back again and send the heat back in to the components?

I guess here we're talking about heat dissipation properties between polycarbonate and air and I think air is the better performer here.

What do you guys think?

Thanks.

 

The polycarbonate adds another resistance layer to heat transfer, so heat transfer directly to the air is better, but it has nothing to do with the material's properties in this case. Anyways, the heat gets out via the fan and heatsink, not through the chassis for the most part so the answer to your question is no.

Also, heat travels in only one direction, from the highest temperature to the lowest one, the higher the resistance to heat transfer, the higher the difference between the hot and cold part, but the heat won't go back to the components, they'll just run hotter. I highly doubt you'll see an increase of more than 1C or 2C.

 

those panels are placed to protect the hardware inside your laptop. Its basicly for safety but it does influence the cooling, But a laptop would be rather inconvinient without backpanel and the components just put in thouch with the harsh world out side the case.

Some people drill holes in the backpanel to improve air circulation.You can run about 5° C cooler with the back panel off. The best benchmarks i have done were without back panel so yes it has an influence. If you are conserned about cooling (which really makes sense with the rMBP) try to aply thermal paste on the CPU and GPU. You can run around 5° C cooler with some decent thermal paste

 

I thought this thread was going to be about the ventilation of laptop sleeves and leaving your laptop in standby and whether or not it has to turn on to go from standby to hibernate...

I have a few laptops like that. Harsh world, hah! they are plenty harsh themselves on your legs.

 

Heh, that's what I thought too. Once my wife initiated shutdown of her notebook and put it in the sleeve. An hour later she picks it up and it was burning hot! Turned out it locked on shutdown and was still running. The LCD got a big discolored blob right in the middle that luckily eventually dissipated, but otherwise no damage done.

 

you aren't the only one who thought that.