TECKNET Laptop Cooling Pad, 12"-16" Laptop Cooler with 2 Quiet Fans, Ergonomic Comfort Gaming Laptop Cooling Stand, Speed Adjustable Cooling Pad

TeckNet® Laptop and Notebook Cooling Pad 2 Fans Laptop Cooler fits 9"-16"I ordered this little cooling pad around 3 weeks ago because my 5 year old laptop was on its last legs and had started to overheat continuously. It was overheating to the point where the laptop would shut itself down regularly during usage in order to prevent damage to the internals such as the CPU etc.I purchased this cooling pad with the 2 fans as I wanted a small form factor - something that wouldn't clutter my work desk unnecessarily and look big and ugly. I also bought this one as I figured that a cooling pad with more fans might run noisier. I'm very impressed with this one though. It's performed exactly as I wanted it to.The design is relatively minimalist and it doesn't elevate the laptop to an uncomfortable typing position compared to other cooling pads which I have seen. It also looks less ugly. Ideally, I wouldn't want one at all, but hey, my laptop is overheating so I've got a need for it.As regards the noise, you do hear an audible hum when the cooler is switched on in a quiet room but it's definitely not anything intolerable and I don't find it too distracting while I'm working on papers etc.Most importantly though, the cooling pad works. It improves air flow under and around the laptop and therefore reduces both internal and surface temperatures. Using this has helped significantly with my laptop's overheating problems. In fact, since using this, I haven't had any system crashes due to overheating so it's proved very effective for me.Out of curiosity, I actually decided to test how much this cooler actually reduces the temperatures of my laptop to see how effective it is. I did this by installing a neat piece of software which measures the temperatures of all of the laptops internal components including both cores of my dual core CPU and that of my GPU.As shown by the little graph which I've included, I found that the cooler helped drop the temperatures of both CPU cores by as much as 10-12°C when I powered it on for around 5 minutes or so. I also found that the temperatures got lower; the longer the cooler was powered on. So after being switched on for around 15 minutes, the cooler helped to reduce the CPU temperatures from an uncomfortably high 96-98°C to a much safer 80-82°C.5 Stars from me. It's minimalist and sleek as far as cooling pads go, it's not too loud and it does a good job of reducing system temperatures and preventing those dreaded systems crashes. My laptop now performs a lot more smoothly. Plus it's cheap too - What more could you want!

Elephant in the room first - coolers that just blow air at the base of your laptop don't work very well. To see why, flip your laptop over to look at the base. About 10% of the surface area of your laptop's base will be vents, meaning 90% of any air blown at it will just hit a wall and go around the outside of the laptop.And that is what happened initially with this cooling pad with my Acer gaming laptop (Predator Helios 300 model number PH315-55, RTX3080, i7-12700H) - no noticeable temperature reduction over and above just lifting the laptop off the table by the same amount as this cooler. Bah!A bit of Googling revealed that most laptop coolers don't work because of this reason. Any temp drop actually comes from the cooler creating more clearance at the base.The few coolers that work seal the base of the laptop onto the cooler (via a foam seal) so that airflow cannot escape. This creates a slight high pressure around the base of the laptop, making it easier for your laptop's fans to draw in air. This in turn creates better airflow... and cooler temps.Worth a try.I had some PVC door draught excluder lying about (search for it on Amazon via its ASIN - B0BXP1MDGZ). I stuck this around the edges of the cooler's grille so it would be airtight against the Acer's base and waddaya know, it worked!The thing about recent CPUs is that they all run hot and will easily reach their throttle temp (for my i7, that is 92C - easily reached during gaming). With the TEkNet cooler plus my pressure chamber mod, the laptop never reaches 92C, instead topping out at about 88C.A 4 degree change is not much, but it is enough for the laptop to maintain 100% performance without throttling, so that has to be a win.The other thing is if you put this cooler on a flat surface, you block about half the airflow because no air comes in from the underside (airflow is now from the sides only). Raise the back by about 2cm and it works better. My RTX3080 laptop used to hit the mid 80s on the GPU, but with the draught excluder and the 2cm gap, I can leave it rendering for hours (Flux and stable diffusion AI) and it never gets past the high 60s, which is desktop level airflow. Even better that I don't have to raise the laptop fan speed from default to do it, raising the life of the laptop, and lowering the laptop fan noise (small laptop fans make more noise than the larger fans in this cooler).So, full marks if you are prepared to make a change or two (and less than half the price of the pressure chamber coolers - such as the KLIM Everest - if you follow my tip!). As useless as every other cooler if you are not prepared to do this.Oh, and throttlestop is also your friend (and it is free). For laptop Intel 12 series and above, the CPU package TDP is rated for about 45W, but the chip is typically allowed to peak much higher - 130W(!), causing cores to often hit their throttle limits This is fine for most applications, but not games - as any CPU that hits its throttle limit is probably getting hot doing a lot of work managing an important game process, and throttling it momentarily causes a micro-stutter. Set the power limit to 45-55W via throttlestop to avoid these throttle-bounces.