Cooling pad as a short term solution over laptop fan?

[bluefood2010]

I have a 7 year old laptop (an Averatec 3120V from 2003) that I plan on replacing in 6 months. The fan is completely fried, and the laptop overheats within 20-30 minutes usually. How effective are laptop cooling pads? I just need to keep the laptop at a somewhat safe temperature for a period of no more than 90 minutes, and I'm only going to be using it for 6 more months

(I've been using ice packs as a do-it-quick solution so far, which has been working but has the downside of making the laptop wobbly, and occasionally wet)

 

[tortnotes]

Six months is probably too long.

Consider this... pointing a fan at the insides of a desktop computer with all of the other fans turned off is a bad, bad idea. The fan in your laptop, just like the fan in a graphics card or the one on a desktop CPU, is designed to push air through a certain area to cool the system. Notebook coolers are generally pretty weak and only push air around underneath the laptop. Even if you sat the laptop on top of a box fan, I doubt it would be able to effectively channel air through the heatsinks inside.

You should try to figure out some way to push air through the laptop, or just take the laptop apart and replace the fan... shouldn't be too expensive. Or stop using it before everything gets fried.

 

[tortnotes]

Oh, hey... double post, but I found an article about replacing the fan on your laptop. http://www.gearhack.com/Forums/DisplayComments.php?file=Computer/Notebook/Replacing_the_Averatec_3120V_CPU_Fan

 

[bluefood2010]

Thanks for the replies, I'll check out that site. I'll try to find a new fan, hopefully there's a good replacement out there for a decent price.

 

[aim001]

Buy a new laptop fan. and then get a laptop pad, a laptop pad only cools the air that gets inside the the intigrated fan. so if u only have the pad and the intigrated fan is dead. It wont give u a good suprise, it will only decrease 1-3 c. Buy a new laptop now or buy a new fan.

 

[timrx1983]

Buy a new laptop fan and a cooling accessory... and you should do it now. Six months is too long for you to endure the warming issue of your laptop and your laptop will collapse by then. You might also want to check out this link http://www.ilapdesk.com/ergonomic-lapdesk-cool.html and consider this accessory for your laptop.