There's nothing 'wrong' with the cooling pads, but be aware they are generally of less use on Macbooks from a cooling standpoint - there are no intake vents on the bottom like there are on most other laptops. You will get some amount of residual minor cooling effect by cooling the case, but it's likely to be no more than a couple of *C maximum. People reporting large cooling effect, I'd love to know their exact testing method. If it were something like:
1. start at ambient temperature X, after system was powered down overnight (or some reasonable period of time).
2. launch CPUTest with indefinite loops, and proper number of threads to max out every core
3. Run for 30 minutes on stopwatch
4. Using a sane and specific temp measuring tool, report temps of CPU, GPU, etc.
5. Stop CPUTest
6. Power down and wait for complete cooldown, before moving on to repeat 1-5 with a cooling pad.
Unfortunately, most people who just bought something *want* to see a 'result,' and also tend to not use reproducible/sane tests to measure any 'differences.'
A stand of any kind *will* have benefits:
1. keeps your legs or other parts from burning.
2. ensures your macbook doesn't have it's intake or exhaust blocked, and maintains some air circulation across the bottom of the case. What if anything this one is worth vs sitting on a flat desk with unobstructed intake and exhaust isn't likely to be much. There are obvious benefits vs throwing it on top of a blanket, though.
3. Possibly a more convenient orientation for screen/keyboard.
Add a fan into the mixture that is very unlikely to be improving air movements/circulation throughout a macbook/air/pro, and maybe you'll see 1-2*C improvement tops.
Having said that, I do have a stand, sans fan. It keeps the screen positioned properly next to my LCD, ensures I don't block off the intake on my usually messy desk, and that there is at least some air circulation for the aforementioned minor cooling effect. Until someone provides reproducible sane testing vs - oh, when I run some game (in manual, not benchmark or reproducible fashion, on a game that can widely vary load from frame to frame, or scene to scene), or do a 'benchmark' for 30-60 seconds with no mention of whatever else is or is not running on the system, etc..I just wouldn't expect more than another degree or so from adding a fan.
I'd love to be wrong here, but without an actual air inlet on the bottom, or actual direct thermal interfacing to the AL chassis, the best that I believe we can really do is cool down the casing, which will remove some
small amount of heat soak from the internals, not block the intake flow from the rear, and make ourselves comfortable.
