Are laptop stand fans/coolers worth it, and if so, what's the best one to get? I've seen loads, most have horrible RGB lighting on them and by the looks of the fans on them, would probably be noisy! It's for a 13" MBP.
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Laptop coolers
- Thread starter dazzer21-2
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The USB-powered ones don't put out enough air to be useful. I have a dual-fan setup with AC power and fan speed control that puts out 150 CFM and it will drop temperatures from very high levels but there are limitations to effectiveness.
I've read that MBPs can get hot when running an external display. They run hot anyway, by all accounts, but it would be desktop mounted, most likely in clamshell mode. Just looking at options to keep it cooler and thought that one of these mats would be the answer. In terms of use as a laptop, I'm not worried about scalding my legs! ?
I use one of these. Max airflow is 166 CFM. This is comparable to a pair of desktop fans. It's a lot better than any USB-powered laptop cooler that I've tried. I have my 2014 MacBook Pro in an the laptop stand below. The fan is next to the laptop and blowing air onto the bottom of the laptop. There's a one-pound dumbbell that supports the fan or it would fall back because of the push of the airflow. The CPU temperature is 39 degrees while running my main trading program on a 4k external display. The temperature will rise by ten degrees when the trading day starts but 50 degrees is acceptable.
I also have a 15 inch 2015 MacBook Pro in the same stand and it is powering a QHD display and currently running at 45 degrees doing just web browsing, email, notes, calendar - office stuff. It doesn't need a cooler though I am considering replacing the QHD monitor with a 4k display.
The quad-fan device below is sold as a Modem/Router cooler - I think that older models could get really hot. The subject line says 182 CFM but the description says 4x66 CFM for 244 CFM which would be moving a lot of air at a laptop. I have a bunch of parts arriving this weekend for a new PC build and will be running my trading programs on a new Windows desktop. The desktop uses low-power components (pretty easy when compared to five and six year old parts) and the case comes with two case fans and I can put in a total of eight case fans. The Mac Pro has three 130 CFM case fans but I could put in 8 66 CFM case fans in the desktop.