The Performance and Cooling Comparison of Laptops: A Detailed Analysis

In this article, we will delve into the performance and cooling comparison of laptops using various cooling techniques, including laptop stands, vacuum coolers, and other air-based solutions. We will examine the results from a series of tests conducted on 10 different laptops to determine which cooling technique yields the best results in terms of thermals and performance.

The Testing Process

To conduct our tests, we used a range of cooling solutions designed for laptops, including laptop stands, vacuum coolers, and other air-based solutions. We placed each laptop on its original surface, with some using additional fans or heat sinks to enhance airflow. The temperature and clock speed of each laptop were monitored during the test period, which lasted for several hours.

The Horizon 730/750H Laptop

We started our testing process with the Horizon 730/750H laptop, a machine that was equipped with a cooling pad. We observed significant improvements in CPU performance when using the cooling pad, with a boost in power limit from 22 watts to 35 watts. The results were impressive, but we noticed that additional fans and heat sinks did not yield any further gains.

The Dell G3 Laptop

Next, we tested the Dell G3 laptop, which featured an excellent cooling solution consisting of vacuum coolers. We saw significant improvements in both CPU and GPU performance, with up to a 10-degree improvement on the CPU and 11 degrees on the GPU. The results were impressive, but we noted that using vacuum coolers resulted in some clock speed improvements.

The Razor Blade Pro 17 Laptop

We then tested the Razor Blade Pro 17 laptop, which featured a unique cooling solution consisting of four fans inside the machine. We observed minor improvements to performance when using the metal stand with no extra fans, and even greater gains when using the plain old simple stand without any additional fans. However, we also noted that using vacuum coolers resulted in some clock speed improvements.

The Lenovo EL 340 Laptop

Finally, we tested the Lenovo EL 340 laptop, which featured an excellent cooling solution consisting of vacuum coolers. We observed significant improvements in CPU performance when using the vacuum coolers, with up to a 10-degree drop on the GPU. The results were impressive, but we noted that the machine was prone to thermal throttling due to its high temperature limit of 85 degrees Celsius.

Average Temperatures and Clock Speeds

We also analyzed the average temperatures and clock speeds of each laptop using different cooling solutions. Our results showed that doing pretty much anything like just raising the back of the laptop up as the metal stand does is enough to make most of the improvements, although there was a difference between the three cooling pads. The vacuum coolers performed well in terms of CPU temperatures, but showed a smaller difference compared to other methods.

The Average Noise Levels

We also measured the average noise levels of each cooling solution, and found that some were significantly louder than others. The vacuum coolers were noticeably louder compared to all other options, even when running at lower speeds. However, we noted that the laptop stands and air-based solutions were generally quieter, with only a slight increase in noise level compared to leaving the laptop on its original surface.

Conclusion

Based on our testing process, it appears that most laptops can benefit from additional cooling solutions, which can improve both thermals and performance. While vacuum coolers offered excellent results, they were also noticeably louder and more expensive than other options. Laptop stands and air-based solutions were found to be easier to use and less noisy, but still yielded impressive results.

The best cooling technique for your laptop will depend on the specific machine itself, as well as your personal preferences and budget. We recommend using a cooling pad or stand, which are easy to set up and provide consistent results. However, if you're looking for the best performance possible, vacuum coolers may be worth considering, despite their higher cost and noise level.

Links to all prices can be found in the description, where more information on the laptops tested and the various cooling solutions used is available.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat are the differences between running your laptop on different cooling pads with vacuum coolers a simple stand or just normally on a table I've tested 10 different laptops in a number of different configurations to show you which cooling solutions actually help improve performance and temperatures let's start out with a brief look at all of the different cooling options we'll be looking at here you can find updated prices for all of them linked in the description I'll be testing with nothing so just the laptop sitting on a table which will be the baseline I'll test a basic metal stand which just raises the Machine up off the table this should allow more air to get in below the laptop which is where air is pulled in I've got three different cooling pads all from thermal take cooling pads raise the laptop up like the stand but they also have a fan which blows cool air into the bottom of the machine where the air intakes are in the laptops I'm testing the cheapest of the three is the V 20 at just 20 dollars it's got a 200 millimeter fan and the design is pretty basic the laptop sits on top and you plug it in via USB next up is the a twenty three for five dollars more it's got a smaller 120 millimeter fan connects via USB however it has legs at the back allowing you to choose from three separate Heights in theory being higher should improve air flow I've tested it with the legs out at maximum length the third cooling pad is the massive 20 RGB and this is the one I've had the longest I use it in all of my laptop reviews during the thermal testing like the smaller V 20 it's got a large 200 millimeter fan however the pad itself is larger and supports bigger laptops oh plus it's got RGB lighting which will undoubtedly boost performance the last cooling solution will compare are these vacuum coolers from Apollo basically they get powered by USB type-a like the cooling pads but you put them up against our exhaust vents and they suck air out of the system they can be a little annoying to position correctly there's a temperature display on top and you can adjust the fan speed I did old testing at maximum speed given most gaming laptops have two exhausts I bought two of them so we can have one on both of the exhausts if a laptop had four exhausts like two on the side until on the back I placed them on the back rather than the side as the air coming out seemed hotter there these are the 10 different laptops that I've tested with these cooling options and there's a pretty good variance of specs there are Intel and AMD processors as well as Nvidia and Radeon graphics all testing was done with an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius and I've tested by running the a 264 CPU stress test with just CPU early checked and the heav'n benchmark at max settings at the same time so the same consistent workload is being run on all 10 laptops we'll go through the results of each laptop one by one then go through which coolers made the biggest difference let's start out with the lenovo Wi-Fi for tea I've got the CPU temperatures shown by the purple bars and the GPU temperatures shown by the red bars we can see with just the table and no additional cooling the temperatures are warmer even using the basic stand that just raises it up often an improvement similar to the cooling pads while in this instance the vacuum coolers gave the best result these are the average clock speeds from those same tests there's not too much of a performance improvement with this laptop when better cooling is on offer however there was a small clock speed change next laptop is the Acer Helios 300 no vacuum cooler results here I did this months ago so can't recall if I simply forgot or if the coolers had issues a touching anyway the stand improved temperatures by a couple of degrees then there was some extra gains to be had with the cooling pads like the Wi-Fi 40 with same specs before it there was just a small clock speed boost to be had by improving cooling thorough clock speeds are higher here as the Helios 300 is both under vaulted and overclocked out of the box the Acer nitro 5 is next this time I was able to test the vacuum coolers and while they were offering a little improvement compared to using nothing it wasn't that big of a difference given just using the metal stand beat the vacuum coolers here while the cooling pads offered the best results there's not really much difference at all to the clock speeds here and that's because thermals want a limitation let's check out something that thermal throttles next to see the difference these are the temperatures with the gigabyte error 15 or LED it's got a CPU thermal throat a limit of 90 degrees Celsius it wasn't possible to remove thermal throttling on the CPU from this machine with any of these cooling options so it was always sitting at 90 however the GPU did see a open thermals for the first time so far there's a larger difference to the clock speeds with the error 15 this is because of the thermal throttling although all of these cooling options one enough to flood out prevent thermal throttling under this stress test they do still help lower it which is why the clock speed improvements are greater here compared to the other machines tested so far the electronics max 15 was also thermal throttling on the CPU in this test but with a higher 95 degree limit to be fair this one does have the power-hungry 115 watt r-tx 2017 though interestingly that got slightly warmer with most of the coolers and use the warmer GPUs seems to be a result of the clock speeds increasing by almost one hundred and fifty megahertz it seems that when better cooling is available its able to start boosting higher despite the temperature rising a degree otherwise the CPU clocks didn't change as much as we saw with the error which is interesting given both laptops with thermal throttling there so less of an improvement to CPU performance comparatively and now for something completely different the msi alpha 15 uses both AMD processor and graphics it wasn't thermal throttling however the cooling options were able to give us a nice improvement 5 to 6 degrees lower on the CPU and 4 to 5 lower on the GPU as there was no thermal throttling it's not much surprised that the clock speed differences were fairly minimal on this laptop the asou Sepphoris GA 502 is another resin based laptop however this time it's paired with nvidia graphics rather than Radeon all of the cooling options helped however CPU temperatures only lowered one to three degrees but the GPU saw a bigger 3 to 5 degree drop off the clock speed differences were quite strange here basically zero change to the GPU however with any cooling added there was a significant improvement observed to the CPU performance the power limit of the horizon 730 750 H was sitting at around 22 watts with the table but with all callers it was able to boost to 35 watts so it seems that the power limit dynamically adjusts if adequate cooling is provided next is the Dell g3 and there were excellent improvements here with up to a 10 degree improvement on the CPU and 11 on the GPU with the biggest cooling pattern use although the vacuum coolers weren't quite as good as the cooling pads they still did better than the stand again like many other laptops tested here there were some clock speed improvements as cooling improved but they were small as it wasn't thermal throttling taking place the razor blade Pro 17 was the only 17 inch laptop featured in this roundup I'm just now realizing there were some minor improvements to be had with the cooling pads but interestingly the best results came from just using the metal stemmed with no extra fans the blade Pro 17 has four fans inside it already so it's a bit unique with cooling pads there's some debate with regards to blowing extra air into the laptop depending on the machine there's the potential for it to result in the internal laptop fans performing worse and this seems to be the case here as a result the clock speeds with just using the plain old simple stand with the highest granted the differences were small either way I wasn't able to use the vacuum coolers with this laptop due to there being no external exhaust vents to latch onto next up is the lenovo el 340 again our vacuum results unfortunately as there are no air exhaust vents to connect them to the CPU has a throttle limit of 85 degrees Celsius here which was consistently being hit regardless of cooling solution however there were some pretty big improvements to the GPU with up to a 10 degree drop with the biggest cooling pad there were some pretty huge games to be had from improved calling in terms of clock speeds as that lower 85 degree throttle limit is always being hit improving the cooling will increase performance by lowering the amount of throttling present now let's look at the average temperatures for all 10 laptops with the exception being the opole of vacuum coolers which had seven data points because I couldn't test three of the machines the key takeaway seems to be that doing pretty much anything like just raising the back of the laptop up as the metal stand does is enough to make most of the improvements although there was a difference between the three cooling pads it's super small which seems to confirm my suspicion that all cooling pads are more or less equal in terms of performance which makes sense given they all perform the same basic task of blowing some air the vacuum coolers did quite well in terms of CPU temperatures however there was a smaller difference to the GPU compared to other methods these are the average clock speeds for these same tests given the clock speeds vary a fair bit by machine it's hard to compare the vacuum cooler here due to having less data points but with the machines we were able to use it on the clock speeds weren't great comparatively better results was seen in terms of performance just by using the stand while again the cooling pads made the largest difference next let's have a listen to how loud all of these different cooling methods get given most of them blow additional air some extra noise is going to be expected interestingly the stand in the first two cooling pads were a little quieter compared to just leaving the laptop rain flat on the table it would seem that being closer to the surface raises the noise level realistically there wasn't too much difference except for the vacuum coolers which were noticeably louder in comparison to all other options I was running the vacuum coolers at max speed but lower would make them even less viable than they already are so with all of that in mind which cooling technique should you use the best cooler for your specific laptop will depend on the laptop itself I think for most people a cooling pad or stand afar easy to use then vacuums they're not only easier to set up for more consistent results but the vacuum coolers were also noticeably louder compared to the other options additionally on average over the 10 machines tested the cooling pads gave the best results in terms of thermals and performance and they don't cost that much either again links to all prices can be found in the description there was definitely a bigger improvement of thermals compared to performance but that might just be because I had a smaller number of laptops hitting thermal throttle limits if your laptop is actually thermal throttling then performance will improve more either way additional cooling is still beneficial reducing the operating temperatures would be good for promoting longevity let me know which cooling solution you'll be using for your laptop if heading down in the comments and if you're new to the channel make sure you get subscribed for future tech videos like this onewhat are the differences between running your laptop on different cooling pads with vacuum coolers a simple stand or just normally on a table I've tested 10 different laptops in a number of different configurations to show you which cooling solutions actually help improve performance and temperatures let's start out with a brief look at all of the different cooling options we'll be looking at here you can find updated prices for all of them linked in the description I'll be testing with nothing so just the laptop sitting on a table which will be the baseline I'll test a basic metal stand which just raises the Machine up off the table this should allow more air to get in below the laptop which is where air is pulled in I've got three different cooling pads all from thermal take cooling pads raise the laptop up like the stand but they also have a fan which blows cool air into the bottom of the machine where the air intakes are in the laptops I'm testing the cheapest of the three is the V 20 at just 20 dollars it's got a 200 millimeter fan and the design is pretty basic the laptop sits on top and you plug it in via USB next up is the a twenty three for five dollars more it's got a smaller 120 millimeter fan connects via USB however it has legs at the back allowing you to choose from three separate Heights in theory being higher should improve air flow I've tested it with the legs out at maximum length the third cooling pad is the massive 20 RGB and this is the one I've had the longest I use it in all of my laptop reviews during the thermal testing like the smaller V 20 it's got a large 200 millimeter fan however the pad itself is larger and supports bigger laptops oh plus it's got RGB lighting which will undoubtedly boost performance the last cooling solution will compare are these vacuum coolers from Apollo basically they get powered by USB type-a like the cooling pads but you put them up against our exhaust vents and they suck air out of the system they can be a little annoying to position correctly there's a temperature display on top and you can adjust the fan speed I did old testing at maximum speed given most gaming laptops have two exhausts I bought two of them so we can have one on both of the exhausts if a laptop had four exhausts like two on the side until on the back I placed them on the back rather than the side as the air coming out seemed hotter there these are the 10 different laptops that I've tested with these cooling options and there's a pretty good variance of specs there are Intel and AMD processors as well as Nvidia and Radeon graphics all testing was done with an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius and I've tested by running the a 264 CPU stress test with just CPU early checked and the heav'n benchmark at max settings at the same time so the same consistent workload is being run on all 10 laptops we'll go through the results of each laptop one by one then go through which coolers made the biggest difference let's start out with the lenovo Wi-Fi for tea I've got the CPU temperatures shown by the purple bars and the GPU temperatures shown by the red bars we can see with just the table and no additional cooling the temperatures are warmer even using the basic stand that just raises it up often an improvement similar to the cooling pads while in this instance the vacuum coolers gave the best result these are the average clock speeds from those same tests there's not too much of a performance improvement with this laptop when better cooling is on offer however there was a small clock speed change next laptop is the Acer Helios 300 no vacuum cooler results here I did this months ago so can't recall if I simply forgot or if the coolers had issues a touching anyway the stand improved temperatures by a couple of degrees then there was some extra gains to be had with the cooling pads like the Wi-Fi 40 with same specs before it there was just a small clock speed boost to be had by improving cooling thorough clock speeds are higher here as the Helios 300 is both under vaulted and overclocked out of the box the Acer nitro 5 is next this time I was able to test the vacuum coolers and while they were offering a little improvement compared to using nothing it wasn't that big of a difference given just using the metal stand beat the vacuum coolers here while the cooling pads offered the best results there's not really much difference at all to the clock speeds here and that's because thermals want a limitation let's check out something that thermal throttles next to see the difference these are the temperatures with the gigabyte error 15 or LED it's got a CPU thermal throat a limit of 90 degrees Celsius it wasn't possible to remove thermal throttling on the CPU from this machine with any of these cooling options so it was always sitting at 90 however the GPU did see a open thermals for the first time so far there's a larger difference to the clock speeds with the error 15 this is because of the thermal throttling although all of these cooling options one enough to flood out prevent thermal throttling under this stress test they do still help lower it which is why the clock speed improvements are greater here compared to the other machines tested so far the electronics max 15 was also thermal throttling on the CPU in this test but with a higher 95 degree limit to be fair this one does have the power-hungry 115 watt r-tx 2017 though interestingly that got slightly warmer with most of the coolers and use the warmer GPUs seems to be a result of the clock speeds increasing by almost one hundred and fifty megahertz it seems that when better cooling is available its able to start boosting higher despite the temperature rising a degree otherwise the CPU clocks didn't change as much as we saw with the error which is interesting given both laptops with thermal throttling there so less of an improvement to CPU performance comparatively and now for something completely different the msi alpha 15 uses both AMD processor and graphics it wasn't thermal throttling however the cooling options were able to give us a nice improvement 5 to 6 degrees lower on the CPU and 4 to 5 lower on the GPU as there was no thermal throttling it's not much surprised that the clock speed differences were fairly minimal on this laptop the asou Sepphoris GA 502 is another resin based laptop however this time it's paired with nvidia graphics rather than Radeon all of the cooling options helped however CPU temperatures only lowered one to three degrees but the GPU saw a bigger 3 to 5 degree drop off the clock speed differences were quite strange here basically zero change to the GPU however with any cooling added there was a significant improvement observed to the CPU performance the power limit of the horizon 730 750 H was sitting at around 22 watts with the table but with all callers it was able to boost to 35 watts so it seems that the power limit dynamically adjusts if adequate cooling is provided next is the Dell g3 and there were excellent improvements here with up to a 10 degree improvement on the CPU and 11 on the GPU with the biggest cooling pattern use although the vacuum coolers weren't quite as good as the cooling pads they still did better than the stand again like many other laptops tested here there were some clock speed improvements as cooling improved but they were small as it wasn't thermal throttling taking place the razor blade Pro 17 was the only 17 inch laptop featured in this roundup I'm just now realizing there were some minor improvements to be had with the cooling pads but interestingly the best results came from just using the metal stemmed with no extra fans the blade Pro 17 has four fans inside it already so it's a bit unique with cooling pads there's some debate with regards to blowing extra air into the laptop depending on the machine there's the potential for it to result in the internal laptop fans performing worse and this seems to be the case here as a result the clock speeds with just using the plain old simple stand with the highest granted the differences were small either way I wasn't able to use the vacuum coolers with this laptop due to there being no external exhaust vents to latch onto next up is the lenovo el 340 again our vacuum results unfortunately as there are no air exhaust vents to connect them to the CPU has a throttle limit of 85 degrees Celsius here which was consistently being hit regardless of cooling solution however there were some pretty big improvements to the GPU with up to a 10 degree drop with the biggest cooling pad there were some pretty huge games to be had from improved calling in terms of clock speeds as that lower 85 degree throttle limit is always being hit improving the cooling will increase performance by lowering the amount of throttling present now let's look at the average temperatures for all 10 laptops with the exception being the opole of vacuum coolers which had seven data points because I couldn't test three of the machines the key takeaway seems to be that doing pretty much anything like just raising the back of the laptop up as the metal stand does is enough to make most of the improvements although there was a difference between the three cooling pads it's super small which seems to confirm my suspicion that all cooling pads are more or less equal in terms of performance which makes sense given they all perform the same basic task of blowing some air the vacuum coolers did quite well in terms of CPU temperatures however there was a smaller difference to the GPU compared to other methods these are the average clock speeds for these same tests given the clock speeds vary a fair bit by machine it's hard to compare the vacuum cooler here due to having less data points but with the machines we were able to use it on the clock speeds weren't great comparatively better results was seen in terms of performance just by using the stand while again the cooling pads made the largest difference next let's have a listen to how loud all of these different cooling methods get given most of them blow additional air some extra noise is going to be expected interestingly the stand in the first two cooling pads were a little quieter compared to just leaving the laptop rain flat on the table it would seem that being closer to the surface raises the noise level realistically there wasn't too much difference except for the vacuum coolers which were noticeably louder in comparison to all other options I was running the vacuum coolers at max speed but lower would make them even less viable than they already are so with all of that in mind which cooling technique should you use the best cooler for your specific laptop will depend on the laptop itself I think for most people a cooling pad or stand afar easy to use then vacuums they're not only easier to set up for more consistent results but the vacuum coolers were also noticeably louder compared to the other options additionally on average over the 10 machines tested the cooling pads gave the best results in terms of thermals and performance and they don't cost that much either again links to all prices can be found in the description there was definitely a bigger improvement of thermals compared to performance but that might just be because I had a smaller number of laptops hitting thermal throttle limits if your laptop is actually thermal throttling then performance will improve more either way additional cooling is still beneficial reducing the operating temperatures would be good for promoting longevity let me know which cooling solution you'll be using for your laptop if heading down in the comments and if you're new to the channel make sure you get subscribed for future tech videos like this one\n"