[SOLVED] Best cooling for laptop

Solution
Yes, there is no need.

If you're mostly hovering around 80 to 85°C the bulk of the time during gaming, that temperature range is solidly within completely safe, normal limits for a modern processor and is of no concern.

The occasional brief spike up, while still topping out at less than the max normal designed operating temperature, is also completely normal. This spike can last from seconds to a few minutes when ultra-heavy load is present, but then should drop back down into the range above once that load has passed.

The idea that a gaming desktop, let alone a gaming laptop, is going to be coasting along at, say 60-ish °C under typical gaming load using only stock air cooling is just never gonna happen. And temperatures up to...

britechguy

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The question is, does it quickly spike to that temperature then fall back, or does it stay there?

If it's the former, that's perfectly natural. If one were to be using a realtime temperature monitor with logging, on any system, there are moments of very high load where a processor can go from "cold to hot" in under a second, stay there very briefly, and drop back. It happens all the time and because that's how it happens many have no idea it has.

The i7s have a Tmax (or TMaxJunction) of 100 degrees C and active thermal monitoring and control. Most modern processors do, and most modern processors are intentionally designed to allow much higher temperatures than were characteristic in the early days because they're designed to handle same with grace and do not either "burn themselves out" nor have shortened life of any significance.

If a modern processor is in distress you will know it and see a change in behavior secondary to throttling and, in a worst case scenario, instantaneous shutdown. I have actually never seen the latter occur (secondary to heat issues, anyway) with a modern processor and can't recall the last time I've seen throttling.

If you make sure your intake is clean and you occasionally clean out the exhaust side by doing the counterintuitive - using canned air to blow in to it - and your system's cooling is working as it should (and that will include working correctly when not spotlessly clean, as none stay that way no matter how well maintained) that's all you need.

The engineers who design this stuff know full well the normal use conditions a given design is expected to encounter. They're not fools and they do know how to make sure the whole system functions under the range of ambient temperature conditions and operating demands that are within normal limits. Unless you're gaming in the arctic or Sahara (or Death Valley or outside in the desert southwest in the summertime) you are most assuredly within expected design limits for ambient temperature.
 

TempsPi

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Actually it stays hot while im gaming even if it has some "cold spikes" that goes to ~65°c it mostly stays around 80/95°C (while gaming).

So according to you, there is no use for those external cooler ?
 

britechguy

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Jul 2, 2019
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Yes, there is no need.

If you're mostly hovering around 80 to 85°C the bulk of the time during gaming, that temperature range is solidly within completely safe, normal limits for a modern processor and is of no concern.

The occasional brief spike up, while still topping out at less than the max normal designed operating temperature, is also completely normal. This spike can last from seconds to a few minutes when ultra-heavy load is present, but then should drop back down into the range above once that load has passed.

The idea that a gaming desktop, let alone a gaming laptop, is going to be coasting along at, say 60-ish °C under typical gaming load using only stock air cooling is just never gonna happen. And temperatures up to and including 85°C in a modern processor are not "hot" in any meaningful sense of that word for a processor.

There was a recent article here on TH that the latest AMD GPU was designed such that temperatures up to 110°C are within spec and considered normal. Processor design has been such that increasing temperatures are tolerated and expected for a long time now, and as more processing power gets packed into less space that trend will only increase.

You can't use what was OK for a 1980s vintage processor as an accurate metric regarding what's OK for what's out there now, and in a very short time that statement will apply equally to "what's out there now" being obsolete as a comparison for normal temps in what's to come. You must look at the processor spec sheet (or device spec sheet) and see what the OEM states are normal operating temperature limits. You can also count on modern processors to fend for themselves as far as not allowing themselves to self-immolate.
 
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