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So, a few years back now I bought my wife a gaming laptop. It's a decent rig; 17", 360GB HDD, DVD player, nVidia GeForce 240M 1GB graphics card, built in wireless, etc. The only problem is that, since it's a laptop, it has a tendency to run a bit hot. Not shutdown mid-gaming hot, but the fan is definitely working overtime to keep up and I'd really rather not have to spring for a new laptop any time soon. So far we've used two separate cooling systems, both 3-fan plastic jobbies that plug into the laptop via USB for their power source.

The first one worked great for about a year and a half before the glue/soldering that held the internal USB cabling into the USB port gave out and the wire slipped into the body of the unit so far that we couldn't retrieve it or reliably plug it in anymore. The second one, which we just picked up 2 weeks ago at Fry's doesn't seem to do shit. Her laptop fan is still spinning away like crazy and the fans on the unit itself are already rattling on their bearings - which, yeah, plastic so what can you really expect.

Does anyone know of a decent, reliable cooling unit that can be picked up online, say at newegg, for a decent price? They have two Rosewill cooling pads that have some decent reviews, but they also both have some pretty crappy reviews regarding the construction and flimsiness.

Possible, but ungainly...

Have you tried just elevating the laptop a little? Put two small blocks, 0.5 to 1.5 inch or so, in the back corners of the laptop to slant the whole machine. It will significantly increase convection cooling, and make the internal fans more efficient so they should be able to run more slowly. If you have to use a large thing, make sure only the corner is under the laptop - remember, you want to expose as much of the bottom of the laptop to air as possible. The slant gives the air a natural convection current even when the fans aren't running, and there's a lot of heat sink on the bottom, so this is useful even if you don't have vents there.

Adding 1/4 inch blocks at the front helps as well.

Also, if you run a dell there are fan utilities that may allow more fine-grained control over the fan settings. Some dell laptops can control their fans to a great degree, but don't, and so it seems like you either get on full blast, or off, when a steady slow would be better for the fans and the laptop. You might be able to find something similar for other laptop manufacturers as well. You can adjust the temperature the fans come on at, and each temperature they go to the next speed level. They also monitor the graphics card temperature, and a few other bits that can help you decide when the fans actually need to run.

If you find that elevating the laptop works (and I've found very few laptops that didn't respond well to it) then you can get this Ikea laptop stand very inexpensively and cut large holes in the bottom to allow airflow to the vents and back of the laptop: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60150176/

You might be able to modify/hack/cut your current stands up to try this out as well.

And of course, in the meantime you can take a small desk fan and point it at the laptop.

Oh, also you can probably take the currently broken stand apart, or just hack away at the port, until you expose the connector, then hot glue or superglue it in a spot where it won't move again. It's already broken, why not see if you can fix it with a little force?

I may take a whack at fixing the busted one, but honestly if 1/2" to 1 1/2" blocks at the corners takes care of it; I probably won't bother. Thanks stienman.

The harder the surface that you set the laptop on the better. ..No paper or cloth beneath it... If you are handy with a screwdriver, you may want to pop the laptop open and spray out the fans and get out any dust off the MOBO.

Just be very, very careful when blowing out fans - if they spin too fast (and it's trivial to get them up too fast with an air duster can) then you can damage them.

Huh. Never considered damaging fans by spinning them too fast with air dusters. Wonder if that's the problem I've had with a couple of my tower fans over the years.

After trying various cooling units, I've actually used a wooden cutting board for years with great success.

With the laptop powered off, you might consider vacuuming the keyboard and intake ports as well (NOT THE EXHAUST PORTS!). It helps surprisingly often.

--Patrick