Re: Heat a problem with laptops?

"Hula Baloo" <eepyeep@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
I have my first new laptop since the days of the 286 chip (early 90s),
and am curious about the potential for heat problems I've heard so much
about with laptops.

If you use it for a few hours, does the case stay cool? Is there a fan
moving some cooling air through it all the time? Are there ventilation
openings in several places around the case? If the answer to all of
these is yes, then I wouldn't worry about it as long as you don't block
the ventilation openings.

I have personal experience with a couple of laptops. An ancient
Powerbook generated so little heat that it had no colling fan at all.

A Dell Inspirion 3800 (mobile Pentium III 600) had a heat pipe from the
CPU to a small finned heat sink in a rear corner of the case, and a
tiny fan to draw air through that heat sink when the CPU got too hot.
There was no provision for fan cooling anything other than the CPU, and
the CPU fan seldom ran either unless you were doing something that kept
the CPU very busy. As a result, the whole laptop would get pretty warm
after a few hours of use. I can't imagine that was good for the hard
drive lifetime, but the lack of airflow through the case would keep dirt
out.

A Gateway (two years old now, can't remember model) with a dual Turion
CPU has a much larger fan that normally runs at low speed and is very
quiet. In periods of heavy CPU use, the fan will switch to high speed.
It draws air from at least 3 different sets of air intakes around the
case, and exhausts it through the CPU heatsink and out the side of the
case. Because of the constant low-level fan operation, this laptop
stays cool indefinitely. The case never gets more than slightly warm,
and I'll bet the internal components stay much cooler than the Dell -
despite the laptop dissipating more heat overall. On the other hand,
this one is going to need cleaning occasionally because dirt will get
sucked in by the constant airflow.

Dave
.

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