Laptop Cooling Pad

My home network is really my pride and joy.  I have 8 machines total - 2 netbooks, 3 desktops, and 3 laptops.  There is a 9th machine in storage, but I don't use it for anything and it largely just sits in the closet.

At the heart of the network are two machines - My HP DC7600 and my Compaq laptop.  Unfortunately, Compaq (Hewlett Packard), through brilliance on their part, made rather poor design moves when building the Presario CQ62 series.  These are a budget line of machines that price between $250-$500.  And are comprised of Intel and AMD offerings.

My particular machine, Presario CQ62 220AU suffers from heating issues.  This is because Compaq uses the same chassis with most of their CQ62 - Intel and AMD, simply putting the different motherboard into the same case.  Unfortunately, this was a mistake on their part.  The Intel offerings were pared with Intel GFX, which, quite frankly, run very cool.  They are somewhat underpowered and most likely underclocked to improve battery life.



By placing the AMD board with its ATI Radeon into the same chassis, you introduce different cooling characteristics and requirements to keep the computer cool.  Laptops especially suffer from heating problems - all of the components are miniaturized and scaled down to fit within smaller profile.  Some components are limited and bottle-necked in design to reduce power consumption and limit heating.

Unfortunately, cooling a laptop system must usually come at the expense of aesthetics and space limitations.  Indeed, this is why the majority of my machines are business class and not the consumer version.  Business class machines focus on reliability and longevity sacrificing aesthetics, at times, to give you a no-nonsense machine fit for the road.

To put it bluntly, my CQ62 overheats during gaming.  The chassis, is limited to a single cooling fan at the bottom and a very small exhaust vent at the left back corner.  There is additional ventilation along the bottom access panels covering the hard drive and ram, but for the most part, they are severely lacking.

The system can become quite hot when playing games.  This is felt on the left side of the machine - keys and palmrest and can be somewhat uncomfortable.  Add to this the fact the harddrive is located in this corner and it can cause quite a bit of heat buildup.

Unfortunately, Compaq has not acknowledged this design flaw openly, but have redesigned the newer CQ series to have better cooling.  HP's similar DV series latop, while physically identical, resolves the issue by makming a larger vent port and adding a second cooling fan.

When speaking with a HP Tech via chat, his solution was laptop cooling as was my initial thought.  Unfortunately, the market for laptop coolers leaves much to be desired.

My home remedy was to elevate the back of the machine to 30-45 degrees, to give more ventilation room.  I then aligned my trusty Lasko fan along the desktop to blow directly underneath - problem solved, right?

This was my solution until I could purchase a cooling mat.  I looked at the various offerings choosing Targus.  Unfortunately, it does not do the job either.  I'm sure that some minimal tinkering - simpoly reversing the fans would do the trick, but I also have the concern they are crappy fans.

The other problem is the cooling mat ties up a USB port - my machine has 3.  This is not a solution, either.

My idea for a laptop cooler would be simple.  A simple bracket that runs along the back of the machine to elevate the system to 30-45degrees.  There would be not bracket or plate to trap heat under as with other designs.  At either end would be a high RPM Server grade cooling fan to pull air under the laptop and away from the machine and could be removed to orient the airflow for your configuration.  The fans would also have a dimmer switch to adjust the RPM and would be built into a powered USB hub.  This would allow you to power the system externally or via USB, whilst offering additional ports.

What's stopping me from building this monstrosity?  Nothing.