Notebook Cooling Super Roundup!

A Bunch of notebook coolers, useful or just a bunch of hokem?

On my desk is 10 notebook coolers ranging from the best, to the worst, so what else is there to do but put them under a heat producing power laptop and see if they actually have any benefit.

Now before we start I should mention the laptop I am using this for is an Intel Core i7 2720QM which features dual intakes on the underside of the laptop, so it is an ideal unit for testing laptop coolers with. So, let’s actually take a look at what models we have lined up:

Thermaltake Massive23 LX
Thermaltake Massive23 GT
Cooler Master Notepal Colour Infinite
Cooler Master Notepal U3
Cooler Master Notepal U2 (Fan Edition)
Cooler Master Notepal E1
Cooler Master Notepal ErgoStand
Cooler Master Notepal X-Lite
Deep Cool N2000
Deep Cool Wind Shaper

That’s a fairly big line up there and it seems Cooler Master has this market dominated with quite a large range of products. I’m not going to go into each product because let’s face it, you don’t want to read pages of words about notebook coolers, you just want to see how it performs. The coloumn on the right shows us the difference in temperature achieved from the average idle temp of 55 degrees.

Model	Cooler Difference (In Degrees Celcius)
Thermaltake Massive23 LX	-7 degrees
Thermaltake Massive23 GT	-11 degrees
Cooler Master Notepal Colour Infinite	-4 degrees
Cooler Master Notepal U3	-8 degrees
Cooler Master Notepal U2 (Fan Edition)	-7 degrees
Cooler Master Notepal E1	-2 degrees
Cooler Master Notepal ErgoStand	-3 degrees
Cooler Master Notepal X-Lite	-3 degrees
Deep Cool N2000	-4 degrees
Deep Cool Wind Shaper	-5 degrees

 In our tests, the Thermaltake GT seemed to be the most effective followed by the Cooler Master U3. The Thermaltake’s huge 23cm fan and Cooler Master’s clever use of modular fans allowing you to plug them in wherever your intake is, proves to be a winning combination. Some of the other Cooler Master’s just did not have enough fan power to create any benefit of having a cooler there in the first place. Which leads to one of my biggest riffs with these coolers; there just isn’t enough airflow coming out of these fans. A massive 23cm fan should produce well over 100cfm but these barely feel like they are putting out anything.  I’d like to see manufacturers put thicker and more powerful fans on their coolers to create something a bit more powerful.

By Sahin Selvi
sahin.s@centrecom.com.au

The benchmark results may differ from user to user depending on what background software you are running and versions of benchmark software. These results aren’t portrayed to be seen as exact performance figures but merely as a rough estimate on the performance of the machine. These results are in no way bias to any company or person and are here to provide the end user in depth details and to provide extra assistance of potential purchases. All information on this page is subject to copyright. Please do not copy any parts of this article. This includes and is not limited to Photos and Data Graphs. The photos and data graphs shown on this blog are subject to copyright to Centre Com. Any unauthorized copying, modifying or using for other purposes are forbidden. Centre Com reserves the right to take legal action against those found breaking these terms.