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Cooling Pad - Not cooling


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So, my laptop gets very hot during gaming. I have a Lenovo Y500 with SLI GT 750m's. The GPU's reach 97+ deg C easy, after about 10 minutes of gaming, so I just bought a Cooler Master Notepal U3 Cooler, and bought 2 140mm Vortex HDB fan's to mod the cooler with. I made sure the fans were positioned right where the vents are. Whether idling, or gaming, the temps don't budge a single degree with the fans on or off.

Seems like a huge waste of money. $62 spent after $10 off coupon (Newegg).

Is there something I'm missing, or can anyone provide any suggestions?

Thanks. Here are a couple of pics of the cooler setup. The 140mm fans are running at 12V.

SBNkuy7.jpg

UAs8AQo.jpg

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Wow, that's a lot of fans! I have a theory why it's not helping with the cooling, even though you've aligned the fans with the vents. (First off you've got them pushing the air at the bottom of the laptop, rather than pulling it away right!?) Just asking (said as more of a joke!), but I don't think it's that.

My theory is that if you have 'high speed' turbulent air being directly aimed into the laptops intake fan, then I believe that will decrease the efficiency of the laptop intake fan, because the air will be too turbulent for the laptop fan to manipulate & 'use'. Very slightly analogous to trying to breathe if you stick your head out of the car window. I think you could benefit by a more indirect flow of air which is more linear (less turbulent) and is more just like a gentle positive air pressure to the bottom of the laptop. I use the Zalman NC2000 for my laptop, and it drops idle temperatures on the GPU by just short of 15degC. I definitely think the analogy of more is better is not working with your laptop cooler, the air is just too turbulent for the laptop intake fans to efficiently redirect through it's cooling fins. That's just my wild theory though.

I'm not sure how you would test that theory though if you've only got that one type of laptop cooler there. You could try turning down the fan speeds to the absolute lowest perhaps, but still might be too turbulent. All just ideas! :-)

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You know, I was thinking the same thing. But I did test it with High Fans, Low Fans, and No Fans... the temps remained the same... within a couple of degrees of each other, but any temp change corresponded pretty regularly with voltage change... so, if one result was 2 deg hotter, you'd see that the voltage was also slightly higher at that time. So, now that the "cooler" is bust, I don't know what to do with the thing. Restocking fee is 15% + shipping cost. Seems pointless to keep though, it doesn't cool my laptop, and the thing just keeps sliding off the U3.

The reason I went with this setup in the first place was because I read a few success stories of 10+ deg drops with adding larger / better fans.

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You know, I was thinking the same thing. But I did test it with High Fans, Low Fans, and No Fans... the temps remained the same... within a couple of degrees of each other, but any temp change corresponded pretty regularly with voltage change... so, if one result was 2 deg hotter, you'd see that the voltage was also slightly higher at that time. So, now that the "cooler" is bust, I don't know what to do with the thing. Restocking fee is 15% + shipping cost. Seems pointless to keep though, it doesn't cool my laptop, and the thing just keeps sliding off the U3.

The reason I went with this setup in the first place was because I read a few success stories of 10+ deg drops with adding larger / better fans.

Praps the system is just right on the limit from a thermal perspective, and it's using the voltage (occasionally lowering it) to keep the temperatures under some kind of control, in which case the cooling pad & cooling system wouldn't be the determining factor for temperature - the voltage fluctuations would be the determining factor, which is what you mentioned. I know the 750M's put loads of voltage through the GPU's to get the high clocks, up to and above 1.1V I've seen in some cases. It does seem like any cooling pad is not going to help the situation greatly. Are the GPU's pasted up properly, did you try to re-paste them? Did you blow the dust out of the heat sinks & fans using a can of compressed air? Both of those things could help greatly.

- - - Updated - - -

Hmm I have the Thermaltake Massive 23L and it seems to help keeping my Alienware M15x at a nice stable temperature of 73 degrees when playing Diablo 3 or Battlefield 3 and a very low 30-40 degrees when on idle.

I did find this on the internet when googling your cooling pad:

massive23resu.PNG

http://lanoc.org/review/hardware/laptop/4443-thermaltake-massive-23-lx

But it's still way better than not using any pad for sure! I think the OP should check for dust & GPU pasting as the culprit if he hasn't done already, I think that's the cause.

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I feel that it's just a really poor design in terms of cooling. The temps are the same from when it first arrived a couple of months ago... and pretty much on par with what others have reported from their dual graphics Y500's. I'm considering re-pasting with quality paste, but not sure that would do much. What I did try that helped was positioning a fan to exhaust the hot air coming from the side vent. The Y500 draws air from the bottom for both GPU / CPU and vents it out on the side. So sticking a fan right in front of that vent helps a bit, but it's not very ideal. I even tried removing the bottom cover, so the grate / dust filter aren't blocking air flow. Didn't do much of anything.

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I feel that it's just a really poor design in terms of cooling. The temps are the same from when it first arrived a couple of months ago... and pretty much on par with what others have reported from their dual graphics Y500's. I'm considering re-pasting with quality paste, but not sure that would do much. What I did try that helped was positioning a fan to exhaust the hot air coming from the side vent. The Y500 draws air from the bottom for both GPU / CPU and vents it out on the side. So sticking a fan right in front of that vent helps a bit, but it's not very ideal. I even tried removing the bottom cover, so the grate / dust filter aren't blocking air flow. Didn't do much of anything.

Ah I see, if all other users of the Y500 are having the same problem with the cooling, then you might just be limited by the poor design of the cooling as you say. Repasting is only going to give you a maximum of 5degC lower temperatures over a standard factory paste (if factory paste is applied properly), so it does seem that your options might be limited unfortunately.

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I have the same laptop cooler coupled with my P150sm. I've aimed the fans directly under the the vents beneath my laptop. It has done nothing to cool the gpu under gaming conditions. without the cooler. 93 degrees celcius. with the cooler 93 degrees celcius. Even with my envy 17, I never managed to gain any additional overclocking head room with the cooler.... sadly =(

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I have the same laptop cooler coupled with my P150sm. I've aimed the fans directly under the the vents beneath my laptop. It has done nothing to cool the gpu under gaming conditions. without the cooler. 93 degrees celcius. with the cooler 93 degrees celcius. Even with my envy 17, I never managed to gain any additional overclocking head room with the cooler.... sadly =(

Maybe there's some credence to the turbulence theory I mentioned then! Does it lower the temperatures while at idle? My notebook cooler lowers the idle temperatures significantly, but I've never bothered comparing the difference during gaming.

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I find my solution of pointing fans at 45 degrees to the gpu exhaust definitely keeps it a few degrees cooler. Without these fans the case gets hot and hot air just blows out the back without any force to remove it.

With fans on the case stays cool and the hot air is blown away from the exhaust. Also might be some incidental cooling of the heatsink grille as it feels much cooler.

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Well, I've tried having the fans pull air away from the bottom, push air into the bottom, have one push air in, while the other pulls... nothing. So, it's a bust. What a shame too, this thing has such great reviews. At the very least it props my laptop up, so that's it's slightly more eye level, but I do feel burned paying so much for 2 fans that I don't need. Positioning a fan at each side vent does help, but I'd need to find the best way to prop them, not to mention what a hassle it will be to deal with... but at 97deg on average, it's better than nothing.

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try to remove all the parts down from notebook then use that or you can make one cooler in home, i have one and my temperature stay in 70º to play world of tanks maximum grafics. i have asus G75VW 2.4GHZ/3.4GHZ 16gb 1600MHZ geforce gtx 670m 3gb

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This may seem stupid, but it worked for me in a similar situation:

Try putting some distance between your laptop and the cooling pad. I had some of those things you use keep furniture from scratching your floor. (Like these: Amazon.com: Norge Felt Pads Assortment 37-Pack: Home Improvement )

I stacked a few together and put them underneath my laptop, creating a two-inch gap.

Now the air moved and the cooling was better.

Downside is that the laptop may feel wobbly until the pads "settle down" as it were. For me it took about a day until it felt solid.

Give it a try, anyway, it's a $5 investment to try and save all the money you spend on the pad.

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try to remove all the parts down from notebook then use that or you can make one cooler in home, i have one and my temperature stay in 70º to play world of tanks maximum grafics. i have asus G75VW 2.4GHZ/3.4GHZ 16gb 1600MHZ geforce gtx 670m 3gb

Hi, you've got the same GPU as me, have you seen this thread already, to get more performance out of your card:

http://forum.techinferno.com/general-notebook-discussions/1847-nvidia-kepler-vbios-mods-overclocking-editions-modified-clocks-voltage-tweaks.html

This GPU just overclocks so well!

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This may seem stupid, but it worked for me in a similar situation:

Try putting some distance between your laptop and the cooling pad. I had some of those things you use keep furniture from scratching your floor. (Like these: Amazon.com: Norge Felt Pads Assortment 37-Pack: Home Improvement )

I stacked a few together and put them underneath my laptop, creating a two-inch gap.

Now the air moved and the cooling was better.

Downside is that the laptop may feel wobbly until the pads "settle down" as it were. For me it took about a day until it felt solid.

Give it a try, anyway, it's a $5 investment to try and save all the money you spend on the pad.

Thanks for the tip, I'll give that a try.

@djsharkpt: Not sure what you mean by "remove all the parts down from the notebook then use that." Use what?

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I had a similar problem with an laptop a few years ago that used to run fine. I found two problems: one of the fans had a blade that was broken off, and I had no clue. Second, there was a ton of dust in it. After taking care of both of those issues, it cooled down and I no longer needed the cooling pad I had purchased (I had a cheap wal-mart one, though, so didn't spend as much as you did).

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I had a similar problem with an laptop a few years ago that used to run fine. I found two problems: one of the fans had a blade that was broken off, and I had no clue. Second, there was a ton of dust in it. After taking care of both of those issues, it cooled down and I no longer needed the cooling pad I had purchased (I had a cheap wal-mart one, though, so didn't spend as much as you did).

Yep, the first port of call for cooling problems on a laptop that's been used for a few months is: check for dust blockages = use cans of compressed air to blow out dust bunnies!

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I repasted earlier today.... laptop was super clean. Repasting lowered temps a bit, probably as good as it's going to get with this machines design. The cooling pad is still a failure though. I'll continue to use it because it props my laptop up near eye level when gaming, however.

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Be sure that you're doing your repasting correctly. Usually, putting too much paste won't help the temps to go lower.

With a right repasting, I managed to get -10° on my 7970m.

Check this video :

, it should help.
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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

My thought is that the heat sink needs to be cleaned. If you are willing to disassemble your laptop. Sometimes its right underneath a panel, and sometimes you have to take apart the laptop almost all the way. Also while you clean the heatsink you can put new heat sink compound on it. I use arctic silver 5 and it does a really good job at keeping temps down.

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