Question For better thermals on a laptop, do I get a cooling or better thermal paste?

[SmallLettuceMan]

My laptop CPU get in high 80s when gaming for a while, due to the surface it’s on. My glass desk doesn’t allow it to get air very well, if I put it on it’s back and let it get more air from my room, my temps decrease by around 10°C. I will try and get both thermal paste and a cooling pad but for now, which one is better?

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

no real need for the paste.

A cooling pad is hit or miss, usually it just elevates the laptop while forcefully blowing more air into the intakes on the bottom (assuming the laptop has it's intakes on the bottom which it seems it does by what you've said about elevating it) and having all that air forcefully shoved through the system causes the fans to spin more than they should and wears them down, on top of the fact that typically these coolers doing such a thing also cause your laptop to get full of dust a lot quicker than it normally would which then decreases the performance of the cooling.

My suggestion is to just use something to elevate it slightly allowing for more air flow.

Something like these feet that will give it more elevation are worth it for the cheap price you'll pay.

Amazon.com: Practical Laptop Cooling pad Rubber Skidproof feet Heat Reduction Stand for Notebook/iPad/Laptop(pack of 4): Computers & Accessories

Amazon.com: Practical Laptop Cooling pad Rubber Skidproof feet Heat Reduction Stand for Notebook/iPad/Laptop(pack of 4): Computers & Accessories

www.amazon.com

however, if you also plan on opening up the laptop and doing thermal paste, might as well also take that opportunity to clean out any dust buildup in the cooling system using compressed air that way, the new paste combined with cleaning the dust out and elevating it should hopefully yield a slight further decrease in temps than the 10c you get just by elevating it.

But also keep in mind that laptops generally run hotter than desktops because of the cooling being more limited and because of this they are designed to run hotter without issues but running 70c under load when elevated is actually really nice already so just simply elevating the PC using something like the feet I linked would do wonders.

You don't don't have to get those feet though and shop around for something you might like better than those.

 

[SmallLettuceMan]

no real need for the paste.

A cooling pad is hit or miss, usually it just elevates the laptop while forcefully blowing more air into the intakes on the bottom (assuming the laptop has it's intakes on the bottom which it seems it does by what you've said about elevating it) and having all that air forcefully shoved through the system causes the fans to spin more than they should and wears them down, on top of the fact that typically these coolers doing such a thing also cause your laptop to get full of dust a lot quicker than it normally would which then decreases the performance of the cooling.

My suggestion is to just use something to elevate it slightly allowing for more air flow.

Something like these feet that will give it more elevation are worth it for the cheap price you'll pay.

Amazon.com: Practical Laptop Cooling pad Rubber Skidproof feet Heat Reduction Stand for Notebook/iPad/Laptop(pack of 4): Computers & Accessories

Amazon.com: Practical Laptop Cooling pad Rubber Skidproof feet Heat Reduction Stand for Notebook/iPad/Laptop(pack of 4): Computers & Accessories

www.amazon.com

however, if you also plan on opening up the laptop and doing thermal paste, might as well also take that opportunity to clean out any dust buildup in the cooling system using compressed air that way, the new paste combined with cleaning the dust out and elevating it should hopefully yield a slight further decrease in temps than the 10c you get just by elevating it.

But also keep in mind that laptops generally run hotter than desktops because of the cooling being more limited and because of this they are designed to run hotter without issues but running 70c under load when elevated is actually really nice already so just simply elevating the PC using something like the feet I linked would do wonders.

You don't don't have to get those feet though and shop around for something you might like better than those.

Thanks for the suggestion! I put a small bin on the back part of my laptop to elevate it, it isn’t as fancy but it gets the job done.

 

[tennis2]

High 80s is totally normal (even good) for a laptop. Heck, these days, if you're not thermal throttling under sustained load, consider yourself lucky.
You can only sidestep the laws of thermodynamics so far with small heatsinks inside laptops. Elevating the back of the laptop with feet (a dollar worth of quarters taped together, or a stack of those tiny post-it notes under each back corner works well). Failing that, re-applying thermal paste can often improve temps, but is more involved.