Why do gaming laptop malfunction faster than gaming pc?

[thomaslink]

My questions are:

1) Why do gaming laptops or laptops in general break/get damaged/stop working earlier than PC?
2) Whats life expectancy for an average gaming laptop?
3) How do you keep a gaming laptop under good circumstances and make sure it doesnt get damaged?

 

[Rogue Leader]

My questions are:

1) Why do gaming laptops or laptops in general break/get damaged/stop working earlier than PC?
2) Whats life expectancy for an average gaming laptop?
3) How do you keep a gaming laptop under good circumstances and make sure it doesnt get damaged?

The major issue with laptops is heat. They get hot and run hot often. On top of that the fans can draw in dust which can clog up the system. So additional heat turns into reduced performance, and if you let it go long enough can lead to component failure. On top of that Laptops are generally lower powered components, so you are never going to get bleeding edge performance out of most.

There is no life expectancy, with proper maintenance they can last "forever" excluding the battery which usually starts to fail at about 2-3 years, but thats easy enough to replace.

Your best bet is to keep it cool, always run it on a desk of some sort, clean out the cooler yearly (or more often if you're somewhere dusty), and maybe after 5 years re-do the thermal paste on the cooler. It will at least perform as well as it was designed.

 

[WildCard999]

1. Dust buildup, heat, drops & spills.
2. Depends, if you take care of it and perform regular maintenance it will last awhile. Had a Gateway FX (Pentium Duo-core 2.4ghz & GTX 9800M) I bought in 2003, always kept it dust free & virus/malware free then replaced CPU thermal paste & sold it in 2012 for 1/4 of the original price which is pretty good IMO.
3. Maintenance & no physical damage, temps for laptops can be quite a bit higher then a desktop system but I would still try to keep it as cool as possible and keep it clean (dust & software).

 

[Jester Maroc]

OK,

1) Because they are mobile and can be bumped, dropped etc. Also, all that hardware is squeezed into a small space, and keeping it all cool is not easy.

2) That depends. It can be 1 month or it can be 4 years. How you treat your stuff generally determines how long they last. If you are rough with your laptop it can break. Also, if you game a lot and your laptop gets hot its lifespan can be decreased.

3) The most important thing is to not drop or generally manhandle your laptop. Secondly, try to get an SSD as HDDs in laptops normally fail before anything else. Invest in a good bag/backpack in order to keep your laptop protected. Also, when gaming monitor your temps to make sure you do not over-stress your components. Lastly, keep you laptop clean. It is a good idea to open your laptop every 4-6 months to clean the fans if you live in an area with lots of dust.

 

[Rogue Leader]

MERGED QUESTION
Question from thomaslink : "Gaming 6 hours long on a gaming laptop?"

I was wondering whether I could game 6 hours long on a HP 15ak030nd gaming laptop, or is this top far fetched?

Yes you can, just make sure you are not blocking the air flow of it.
If you wanna be double sure, instal HW Monitor to check in real time the temps of your CPU/GPU etc.

If it gets too hot, let it rest for a bit.

Aside from that, go for it!

 

[Rogue Leader]

MERGED QUESTION
Question from thomaslink : "Ways to keep a laptoo cool as ice?"

Hello I have a gaming laptop which gets hot too quick, I have an external Cooler Master notepal XL and it doesnt even work that well. The ventilator within the laptop isnt too good too and there is only ONE pipe out of the HP laptop.


So I was wondering.. any creative ways to keep a laptop cool?

All of the ways I can think of beyond adding a larger fan below it are some combination of expensive, messy and potentially dangerous.

If you literally want your laptop ice-cold, put it in a tub of mineral oil (don't do that if it has a CD/DVD/BD drive or mechanical HDD) and circulate it through a chiller unit. Expensive, messy but it will work. Putting the laptop on a slab of dry ice and a foam block would work too, but enough dry ice to run the laptop for extended periods quickly gets expensive, is a frostbite hazard and is also an asphyxiation hazard.

 

[jaguarskx]

#1 - Laptop are portable devices unlike desktops so they are more likely to jolted around when carried around. So in general they are more prone to being damaged. Laptops have limited cooling capabilities compared to desktops especially thin and light laptops with dedicated GPUs. Excessive heat is bad for electronics.

#2 - No clear cut answer for a question that is too general. Do you mean how long before the laptop fails or how long it will be able to play games for as more demanding games are released?

#3 - Move it around as little as possible. Purchase a cooling pad for it. Clean the vents from time to time. If the CPU is running too hot then disable Turbo Boost which prevents the Core i5 / i7 from automatically overclocking itself. If the GPU is running too hot, then you need to go into the AMD / nVidia control panel to see if there is an option to lower the clockspeed. Do that until you get a chance to replace the thermal paste which may have gone bad. If changing the thermal paste does nothing, then the problem is the laptop's design such as being designed to be too thin and light to effectively deal with heat. Light laptops may have small heatsinks and maybe only one fan. Good heatsinks are generally made of copper which is heavier than aluminum and having more than one fan also add weight.


Disable Turbo Boost:
http://www.tautvidas.com/blog/2011/04/disabling-intel-turbo-boost/