Cooling pad for T61

Hi, does anyone use any cooling pad for their T61? I ordered my T61 on Saturday and am very excited. Does the T61 stay cool enough already and not require a cooling pad? If you do use something to cool your T61/laptop any brands and models would be nice.

Thanks

 

Erm, I don't think that you need it.... quite frankly.

If you had a notebook with a powerful video card, then yes but just for T61... why?

 

It is always good to use a cooling pad. You never know when you get dust in there or are watching a video and the laptop starts to slow down because of the heat

 

Is that scientific or something?

 

definitely do NOT need a cooling pad for the thinkpad, save that money for some more ram.

 

Part of the reason you buy a Thinkpad is so you do not need crap like this.

 

Mine can get pretty warm during gaming, editing, etc.

I just waited for the Targus Chill Mat to go on sale at my local best buy (they go on sale like every other week). I got it for 19.99. Not bad for $20, and it WILL increase the life of your notebook.

I only use it when I'm at home at my desk, other than that, there's really no point in carrying around this big old thing.

 

How will this increase the life of my notebook? A CPU running at 50C or 40C or 30C or 60C will run the same amount of time. I usually run my T40 with the fan off, unless the CPU is at 65C or higher, where I turn the fan on very slightly. My T40 is now 4 years old and still works like the day I got it. I'm not sure heat actually does shorten your notebook's life... with that being said - I'm no expert I'd love to read up about this if you had more info.

 

I was a desktop PC enthusiasts for most of the last decade and went through and tried pretty much ever trend in overclocking and voltage tweaking. When testing CPUs for stability I would commonly block out air vents on the PC and run the CPU and RAM at 100% for 24 hours to create much harsher conditions than the system would normally encoutner. Most of the CPUs used in those PCs are still running along just fine in someone's garage or having a PC for their kids to bang on. This is going back to a P166, and in that time I managed to destroy exactly 0 CPUs from AMD and Intel. All told, PC technology is fairly reliable and able to handle some heat. Until the system is outright crashing from overheating, I never worry about it.

 

Terribly sorry. That should've read "it will increase the life of your notebook battery."

Batteries don't like heat. Neither do CPUs. You'll notice a slow down when at a higher temp, but it shouldn't impact the lifespan of the CPU. Batteries, on the other hand, can be impacted.


And what possessed you to run your notebook with the fans off?

 

Heh, _SLY_... it ran cool to the touch w/o the fans... and I had it running in a quiet room so I didn't want the noise. I still do it, FWIW. LOL. Battery lifetime is a much different beast, of which I don't have very much knowledge

 

I had mine running for a few hours on full power and didn't even notice. It runs pretty cool. Even the air coming out of the vents were barely above room temperature.

 

If you run it for 5+ hours, it does get pretty hot. That being said, I still don't think you need a cooling pad.

Also I don't think getting a colling pad will extend one's laptop life.

 

For using the notebook on your desk, no you don't need a cooling pad. I don't think the fans even draw air in from the bottom, it draws air from the side vents.

If you're going to be using you notebook on your lap or on the bed then it would probably be worth putting something on the bottom. The left corner, right under the vents can get fairly warm after using it for awhile.

I went down to one of those home stores and brought a wooden lap tray with padding on the bottom and it works fairly good. I'm gonna do some modding on it (shave off some of the sharp corners) and it does a good job at keeping the vents from getting blocked and the annoying warm corner.