Tell me some of the dangers with using a cooling pad

Hi guys

I recently bought this cheap I.T works cooling pad.
sure enough it keeps the laptops temperatures pretty stable and the fan noise doesn't annoy me so much now.

but is it true these cooling pads do more damage than good, especially if they're cheap?

do you reccomend using a cooling pad?

 

How can they? I suppose pretty much anything is better than your laptop sitting on a flat bench or something, and that's what they are designed for.

The only thing I would possibly be worried about is the USB power draw frying the USB hub since you mention it's a cheapo electronic, although pretty unlikely.

I've never used a cooling pad and I don't believe I ever will. Laptops are designed to be used without them.

 

You have that the wrong way round.

Nothing much is better than putting the machine flat on a flat surface

 

*facedesk*

I meant it would be better to leave a machine on a flat surface with fans and ventilation rather than a flat surface with no fans and no ventilation.

Don't take what I said too literally.

 

Seconded.

If a laptop requires additional cooling devices for normal operation, I would stay away from that laptop. There is a clear problem in it.


--

 

A laptop, especially a modern one aimed at gaming, is designed so that it has a short-ish lifespan, and using any method of external cooling available - the most obvious being the cooling pad - will lengthen that.

 

What?

That's pretty much my stance as well. However, I also can't deny that the nature of any portable device could place it in an environment that subjects it to an operational range beyond it's designed capacity. In that instance, I'm inclined to agree that some form of additional supplemental cooling, couldn't hurt.

 

Say what again, I dare ya, I double-dare ya!

No, seriously though, why so surprised? Modern games push typical laptop CPU and GPU temperatures to high 80s, sometimes 90s (Celsius). And since most people below 30 years old here @ NBR do video gaming on their laptops, this is a repetitive recurrence that occurs on most laptops here. This sort of semi-extreme thermal fluctuation over time will define definitive lifespans for the laptop components, especially the GPU.

 

I can't see how it would hurt you unless you're in a very dusty room and it's blowing it into your case. But it should be just fine.

 

I have a cooling pad, and it keeps my laptop nice and cool. One of my other, really really cheap Compaqs died while playing video and sitting on a flat surface. It overheated, and needs a cooling pad to live (do not buy Compaq!).

Otherwise I've heard directly from Intel engineers that processors can live at 100C without any damage, and it only gets dangerous at like 120.

I still don't like having my laptop get hot.

 

That's an extremely bold (and potentially harmful) statement which should be not be mentioned without bona fide link to substantiate it.

 

Here's my solution. Place one under each corner of your laptop. It always keeps my laptop running cooler since their is air underneath the machine.

 

How can a cooling pad damage a notebook besides user error? And if you damage your notebook due to a cooling pad, you honestly deserve the Darwin award.

They are designed to raise a notebook up so it can intake cool air for the fans as many notebook designs still place the fan intake on the bottom. They also feed cool air into the cooling system.

Cooling systems are meant to prolong the life of your laptop, as heat is the enemy of computers. If a 50 dollar investment makes my laptop last another year or more, then I will invest in it because you can't really upgrade the cooling system in your laptop without taking extreme steps.

As for laptops made to last only a certain time, there is some truth to it. Manufacturers are in the business to make money, not sell you a computer. If EVERY manufacturer built computers that lasted forever, they would be all out of business. Certain manufacturers build better quality notebooks than others but still the fact is notebooks have X lifespan, they are not built to last forever.

 

BINGO!!!

And it doesn't even have to be $50. My Notepal U2 cost $25 and often goes on sale for under $20.

Earlier this week, I was assigning icons to my individual folders that contain my movies. Each folder is now the movie cover. I had my lappy on my lap with the cooler underneath, but the fans were not plugged in. My temps were running around 55c. I then plugged the fans in and my temps dropped to my standard 49-50c.

 

there are no dangers lol.. only issue its bulky and hard to carry.. solution as i learned: Get a laptop with proper cooling is what i did.

Panther214

 

The only risk I can see from cooling pads are extremely steep angle coolers where the laptop is literally on a 45 degree angle or closer to vertical then horizontal.
The risk there comes from the platters being out of balance, the risk depends on the angle, the steeper the angle, the higher the risk.

Ole man
You better be able to back that up, from my talks with Intel reps they stated very clearly that the posted T Function on some processor's pages@ Intel's page were the absolute maximum temperatures.

For the i7 1366 platform the max temperatures were 100c, and throttling should begin at that point.

 

I don't think tilt angle will have an effect on platters while they're in motion. They spin at speeds that are very gyroscopic (better term?). I've got an external 2TB 7200rpm and I can feel the resistance when I try to reorient it.

 

Heh well I bought the Antec 200mm cooler 90 retail, 55 employee discount price. You can try undervolting as it's free, but new Core i series processors and ULV processors cannot use RMclock.

 

Tilt angle does have an affect on platters due to the off axis pressure on the platter. No they definitely are not gyroscopic because the platters are set on one axis on the hard drive. As you can see here:

There is no room for play, if the hard drive is set diagonally at an angle the platters will be diagonal as well. The high speeds of which they travel cause even bigger concerns when on a heavily tilted area. Remember the force acting on the outer platter will be higher then the forces acting on the inner platters. The more the platter has to go "upward" the more the gravitational forces will act on the platter. Similarly to a carnival ride:
YouTube - Turbo

While yes hard drives may come with a leveling function, that is only meant for minor angles like 10, 15, maybe even 20 degrees.

 

The fact that everything has a lifespans does not justify a built-in obsolescence. And the fact that you try to rationalize it, alarms me. In stead, a good business builds the best product they can within a specified price range. Not one that will fail so that they can maintain a steady profit.

 

But things DO fail. It's kind of a conflict of interest in my point of view;

If every manufacturer made notebooks that lasted FOREVER, average users would never buy another computer. Sure business and high end consumers would upgrade, but a big chunk of many manufacturers of not all come from consumer computer sales. And people still use laptops that are 3-10 years old, some even 15 years old. They see no reason to purchase another one.

Now I'm not bad mouthing manufacturers at all and you have a good point you get a certain level of quality on the price point, but say your notebook is 2-3 years old, and the motherboard dies. Would you go an repair it? Most people see the prices are astonished and go purchase another notebook.

 

You're maintain support for an unethical business practice. Recall that GM was once the most successful business in the world. Then they got greedy and started designing their cars to fail after 4 years. It's tactics like those that gave rise to successful manufacturers like Toyota, and Honda. Those cars are built to last, and they don't seem to suffer from your stagnant revenue model.

 

If I recall correctly the reason why GM was so successful was that USA politics made importation of foreign cards very difficult which meant it was difficult for foreign companies to do good business in the USA.
GM's quality has always been crap and at best average it is just once foreign companies starting pushing their way into USA when the crap they were was revealed..

Krane you need to stop pushing your ideals on others, specially when you don't know what you are talking about. You can't expect laptops to go up in quality while the value of currency goes down, and actually I haven't seen anything in comparison from before to today in terms of equal pricing. There is nothing unethical with what manufacturers are doing at the moment in terms of quality and pricing. IF anything they have been bettering the quality of computers.

You are the type of customer we reject, flat out.
You want to pay only so much, but expect to get far more in return. That my friends is unethical, but not on the company but on you as the consumer to demand so much.

Since when have laptops decreased in quality? Did you ever own a computer from 2003 or older? They failed, and failed far more exceedingly then today. The difference is that now a days there are far more computers then there were in 2003, thus the amount of times you hear laptops fail increases.
Also you want to compare an old laptop vs a new one? Fine. Let's compare a budget Gateway NV53 series laptop ($440~) to a similar laptop from 2003... Oh wait there are none that fit the price budget. Back before in 2003, even the cheapest laptops were still in the $800+ segment. Even at the $800 segment, the cheapest of the bunch back before 2003 were no better then a cheap Gateway NV53 in terms of quality.

Here's a Toshiba Satellite 1805 typical of 2003.
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Satellite-1805-S203-800-MHz-Celeron/dp/B00005NP16

The reason why most people think old laptops were built well is because they buy a Thinkpad T20 back from 2003, or an old Sony VAIO or some old Dell inspiron back from the PIII/PIV for cheap. You can often find these laptops for $10-$20~* working, the build quality is typically very, very good. So they say, oh old laptops were built WELL, and now a days they are not.
This is incorrect thinking, the reason why they are built well is because some poor shmuck in 2003 paid $2,000-$3600 for that business laptop.
The T20 well to full equiped ran $3,600.

For the same price you can get yourself something like this:
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m6500/pd
Or this
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/
Or this:
http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_info&model_name=NP7280

It is these old old business class, high priced laptops that lasted the years of wear/tear. The cheaper $800 laptops from 2003 are found in the garbage.

 

Well designed to fail vs designed with not so good parts are 2 different things. Again I am not accusing manufacturers of designing failing computers.

Some of the Sony VGN-NW series notebooks have known motherboard issues, and yet Sony can't source motherboards for a good portion of them anymore. Would there be a class action lawsuit for it?

Edit: I still have plenty of older laptops/desktops that work perfectly thing, they were replaced because we need something faster.

I have an old Toshiba with a Pentium 2 Mobile that still works, a 386 machine, a Pentium 3 IBM Aptiva (yeah piece of crap but still works), a multiple Dells from 2003-2005, desktops/laptops.

 

Really? My ideas? In fact, EVERYTHING that I've espoused here comes directly form the halls of academia. If you think otherwise, then you must have been out sick the days those lectures were given.

Designed obsolescence is very unethical.

On the contrary, I "expect" to get my money's worth. Nothing more, nothing less.

Computers are inherently unreliable products. However, that does not excuse the added attempt by the manufacture to dupe the consumer. Nor does that make it ok for him to hold back an expectation of quality.

I'm not sure where you got that idea?

 

I won't argue with the GM demise. Pathetic management is pathetic.
Halls of academia? Isn't that a bit broad? Which classes, which university was this, and what are the names of the professors, or academics who gave these lectures?

I agree purposefully designing laptops to die is unethical unless of course the consumer is warned and understands the product he is purchasing will not live past whatever amount of time. But...
Where then are manufacturers designing "obsolescence"? There's defects, then there's designing laptops to die. I have seen plenty of defective models, but I have not seen a purposeful designing of laptops to die as of yet.
Perhaps you have some inside knowledge we don't know?
Remember when a brand like HP, Sony, Dell, etc makes a product, they have to rely that their sources will be good. Then they have to mass produce the laptops in quantities of hundreds of thousands. So when a constant major defect is found, most if not all laptops for that exact model are affected.

No you most certainly expect to get more then what you are paying for. The thing is you don't realize your own behavior. I've read you're previous posts from previous threads I am most certain about this statement and it's accuracy.

Sorry I involved some topics from a previous thread.

 

Returning to the OP's question; No a cooling pad will not damage your notebook. I use one (Cryo LX) and don't even plug the fans in. It still passivly cools the laptop as the aluminium chassis absorbs the heat from the laptop. Basically they are not absolutely necessary but they will help extend the life of your laptop, give a nice comfortable tilt for the keyboard to make touch typing easier and give a solid platform to use it in bed, without blocking vents.

 

Maybe unethical, but that is how most things are designed that way.
Example: Family friend is a contractor, he or his friend, something along that, had to have their water heater worked on. Plumber straight up told him that companies have actually put money into researching on how to design a product that will break past the predetermined warranty.
Happens with just about everything. A lot of kitchen appliances do this too.

 

a cooling pad is good help in the laptop. it helps cooling the internal parts, yes there's already a pre installed fan, but cooling pads are additional and perhaps a necessary accessory with laptops who games too much in high settings.

 

Trust me, drives are designed with moving in mind (especially notebook drives). Provided you don't quickly change their orientation then they are fine.

Quick test: *puts laptop at 45 degrees* Surprise surprise, my computer is still alive and kicking so that I can finish off this message.

I don't want to get into the technicalities of how drives work because that would be both time consuming and boring but provided yo don't throw your drive across the room then it will be fine.

 

I see literally no reason why a drive would be effected by angle... how would the drive be able to tell? That's not how gravity works =p

Acceleration is another thing (ironically I suppose)

 

Who said it would die immediately? I said the risks of your hard drive failure increase. Obviously you know a whole lot about hard drives to not know that ...
No they are not, both desktop/mobile hard drives carry the same features, except desktop mechanical hard drives can be more durable.. Hard drives have a few safety features for drops/etc however in the end they are still very fragile. Mechanical hard drives will continue to suffer from these issues, it is a flaw inherent in their design
Mechanical hard drives are known to die for things such as bumps, falls, shifts in axis, temperature fluctuation, among other reasons.

Do you know how hard drives work? It's a platter spinning around at high speeds, 5400-7200 rpm depending on the drive. It's literally relying on mechanical actions (spindle motor) to spin the platters, and a magnet-controlled head auctator to read/write data, and of course the PCB to communicate to the computer+cache+etc.

Take a bicycle wheel, put it vertically or horizontally and spin it. You will notice the amount of force needed to move the wheel is less then if you spin it while it is diagonal. Simple physics. The drive can't tell anything, all it can tell is that it needs to rotate at a certain speed, and write at certain places.

 

I've used several laptops for ~4 years with 7200RPM drives at angles equal to or greater than 45 degrees and I've yet to have any of them fail or even give me any hint of trouble. Sure it's anecdotal, but it certainly makes me skeptical that such drives are not meant to operate at any given angle.

 

I disagree with this only in that notebook drives are typically designed with greater acceleration tolerances than desktop drives. An easy example is if you look at the spec sheets for WD desktop drives versus their notebook drives; the rated maximum G-Force higher on their notebook drives as compared to their desktop drives. I looked up the numbers a while back for a different post about an external drive being rated for being dropped, let me see if I can find that post again.

Oh, and as for the OP; the only damage I could see coming from a cooling pad would be if it's designed improperly for USB specs, and tries to draw too much power from your USB port or has some sort of feedback through it that would destroy your USB bus. Other than that, I wouldn't anticipate any problems. Oh, and if maybe the fans spin in an opposite direction from the airflow required by your notebook (your notebook intakes air from the bottom, but the cooler takes in air from the top and blows it out the bottom, robbing your notebook of the air it needs to intake).

Edit - Here and here are the posts I made. You can see that the notebook drives are rated for 275-350 Gs operating, and 900-1000 Gs non-operating, while desktop drives are only rated for 30-65 Gs operating, and 250-350 Gs non-operating. That's a huge difference.

 

WHAT‽

Dude, are you high? The only way a rotating object would behave differently depending on angle between its rotation axis and G-force would be if it's not balanced, in which case you have a lot bigger problem than angle.
The only things which the angle could affect would be 1)the heads, which is why feedback servo and axis-balanced head arms were invented, and 2) the spindle motor - with this (and everything else, actually), I refer you to a datasheet for any recent drive, which states something to the effect of "You can mount your drive any way you want, as long as it's securely attached to the case". As long as the spindle motor can operate in any direction, it's OK. Sh*t, my decade-old desktop drive could do this, it's not rocket science. Don't believe me, believe the manufacturers. For all their faults, I don't think they would state something that could damage the drive easily, so explicitly, in no uncertain terms.

Edit: Upon searching, it seems the product manuals for today's HDDs were heavily trimmed-down or eliminated altogether and no longer contain the statement. Still, splinter of SPCR seems to have gone through the task of getting statements from the manufacturers and got the expected results. /edit

anseio was right on the money - it's the gyroscopic effect when one re-orientates the drive that stresses the bearing and to some extent the platters. One would do well to avoid re-orienting the laptop while it's running, or doing it as slowly as reasonably possible.

As for the OP - the worst you could to would be to re-orient the laptop by putting it on/into the cooling stand while the HDD is spinning. There may also be negative impact (ironically) on heatpipe-based cooling (the wick inside reduces the impact of the angle on cooling but does not eliminate it) but any decent laptop design should take these into account.

 

You have to remember this is a disk, not the hand of a clock.

While there is a part of the disc being decelerated by gravity, so long as the disc is balanced (usually something VERY important anyway) then the oposite side is being accelerated by an equal amount.

 

Actually the manufacturers agree with me, except seagate/maxtor. And many people at SPCR have argued that post.

1. Hitachi, Samsung, Fujitsu all agree that it should be left vertically, or horizontally. Only Seagate/Maxtor say it's okay to go diagonal, but I don't get how the OP got that information from just a quote. Here are their quotes:

Vertically or Horizontally, not diagonally.
So the above quote is false.

Orientation refers to sides, not angles. Once again nothing.
Definition:

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Except how would it level itself out. The platters only have so much play, that's why Fujitsu said +- 5 degrees. Typically the most you should angle your hard drive apart from vertical or horizontal mounting is 5-10 degrees. Maybe 20.

@Gforces argument.

Just about any drop will far surpass any g forces specifications. Also the reason why the g forces are different, are because of weight.

 

Once again I see no theory of how a drive can remain at a steep angle, and not be affected by uneven pressures on the platter, spindle motor, and head actuator.

 

On the contrary, you fail to present single effect which the drive is subject to under angle, which:
1) actually occurs, ie. is valid
2) is not exacerbated by putting the drive in either extreme position (horizontal or vertical), which we know are acceptable

What play? Any play is from technological limitations and NOT desired. Why do you find it unbelievable that a disk on an axle can rotate no only at 0 and 90, but also at any angle? Please explain your understanding of "leveling".

Which am I more likely to believe - installation guide written by professionals with access to engineers and lots of time to put it together, or a random minimum-wage tech support worker giving the safe answer on the spot to cover their a**?
If you believe angling the drive subjects it to more stress than any of the extreme positions subject it to and wish to restrict yourself to positions parallel or orthogonal to gravity than be my guest. But stop spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt by false assumptions, wild guesses and exaggerations. This is starting to feel like a run-of-the-mill audiophile thread.

 

Firstly.
Vertical/horizontal mounting is the recommended method of mounting. Please read all posts.

1. I did. Uneven pressure on the platter resulting in higher risks of head actuator, or spindle motor failure.
2. Incorrect because there is a variable when dealing with angles and the affect of gravity/ then the force acting upon the outer platters when rotating. With horizontal or vertical mounting the pressure is even through out the platter, thus can be precisely predicted, thus can accurately spin a platter at high speeds, while keeping the head actuator within it's insanely small specification, and the spindle motor on normal stress environments.

Second. Extremes are subjectively judge. For example trying to stand a thin object on a vertical angle is extreme. Horizontally not really. You say vertical/horizontal angles are extreme, when they are not considering hard drives were engineered to be used horizontally, and consequently vertically.

I am afraid I've never heard a hard drive engineer say it's okay to put hard drives at a steep angle like 45 degrees as of yet. there are quotes at SPCR, but the quotes were misused by the OP.

 

With the coming dominance of SSD's in the not too distant future this debate won't matter anyhow.

 

The point of my post was specifically to counter your "desktop mechanical hard drives can be more durable." I probably should have bolded that part when I quoted you originally. I was just pointing out that by the manufacturer's spec sheets, desktop drives are usually less durable (or at least rated as such in terms of shock tolerance) compared to notebook drives.

 

Not anytime soon. SSD are still over $1.70+/GB (120gb or larger) while mechanical hard drives are around 11 cents/GB for 3.5 and 17 cents/GB for 2.5".

That's a difference of tenfold.

 

Where is this uneven pressure coming from? In fact, what pressure? Rotation at any angle does not cause pressure. It causes centrifugal force, which again is independent of the angle. About the only pressure on the platter is applied by the head's spring itself +/- the weight of the head which, again, is dealt with by supporting both extremes.

I'm still having trouble understanding what you mean here by "pressure". Do you mean the sum of forces (centrifugal and gravity)?

Newsflash: Hard drive spindles are rigidly secured and allow only for rotation in desired manner. Your balancing example does not apply. Does your {wife|girlfriend|mom} also use the hairdryer only in level/upright positions and turn it off when switching between them?

Only you and people agreeing with you seem to think that "any orientation" doesn't imply this.
Also, I've never heard DELL recommend anything but Windows $LATEST_VERSION. Does that mean using xp is going to affect the computer negatively? The engineers are not recommending against it, they simply haven't made a statement. Probably because they didn't expect [strikeout]the Spanish Inquisition[/strikeout] a question the answer to which is blatantly obvious from previous statements.


Edit: Dammit, why do I always fall for these discussions...

 

Jesus can we get back to OP's original posting.

Just buy a decently priced cooling pad, a small investment will prolong the life of your laptop down the line.

 

@Myxal

The pressure comes from an effect of gravity and centrifugal forces. -gasp/shock-

When the hard drive is at a steep angle, like 45 degrees one side is falling at a lower level then the other. When the drive spins, gravity will facilitate the platters movements on the lower portion of the drive, and put resistance on the top portion.
This in turn causes uneven pressure.

When placed horizontally, pressure from gravity is distributed along the whole platter. Thus the centrifugal force on any side of the platter will be equal (or at least it should be theoretically).

 

While $/GB is still showing a huge difference, the actual dollar difference is not. I can get a 120GB @ around 160-180 vs say a 500GB HDD @ 60-80. That is about 100 dollar difference. Sure, it still cannot be a standard item but a price many people would pay. The extra space need can be supplemented by external.

 

$160-$180 for a 120gb? Where without counting on mail in rebates? 500gb for $60 or $80? Dude I can get a 1tb Samsung Spinpoint F3 from newegg for $69.99 shipped:

These are every day prices, and you can find them cheaper at times with coupons. I know the 1TB Spinpoint F3 was on sale at newegg for a bit for $59.99.
1TB HDD, $69.99 shipped, Newegg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185&Tpk=1tb f3

500GB HDD/ $54.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152181&Tpk=500gb f3

Deals:
2TB HDD, $99.99@ Fry's (Don't worry Fry's is incredibly good at keeping the weekly deals the same on most if not all locations.
http://shopping.dallasnews.com/ROP/ads.aspx?advid=2519&adid=10342323&subid=32434007&type=

 

You said it man.

Good call. I invite Crimsoned (and OP, if he's interested) to read the SPCR thread to the end. I'm done, unless the OP asks about more specifics.

*click*

 

I give up.

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Anyway, back on subject of cooling pads, there's pretty much nothing that can go wrong with them. Afaik USB hubs have control circuitry in them which limits them to 500mA so I don't think it should be an issue (don't quote me on this though) computer unless there's something wrong with your USB. The only hazard I've experienced so far (pretty tiny at that), is that my laptop seems to be a little more unstable when it's on the stand. It's only a problem when you use it on your lap and you shift your weight, when I'm in bed with it I don't move much and it can't do much hard by falling on the bed. Anyway, it's more unstavle when you have it on your lap because on my laptop the feet are mounted about 1" from the back, given that the cooler only contacts the feet whereas my legs would otherwise go all the way to the back on the battery, it makes it a little less stable.