Looking for low heat laptops

[Aro2220]

Hi guys,

I'm in the market for a new laptop. I'd like one that is quiet and cool so that when I'm studying in the library I don't bother other people and, when its on my lap I don't burn myself.

Does anyone know which companies are the best at heat dissapation? Is a bulkier case the way to go? I only need portability. An ultra thin form is not important to me since it would be a laptop and not a tablet pc.

I'm thinking of an Acer. There are some models with good specs for reasonable prices at some nearby computer stores. How are they?

I had an Asus and it was fine for a while but it started to get really hot. Then the hard drive melted. It was on 24/7 for a year though.

The main problem is noise (from the fan freaking out) and it being uncomfortable on my lap.

Thanks for all of your help!

 

[Jorsoft]

I hated Acer as a brand. It's mainly just low quality builds for cheap price. Terrible support as well and they don't hold up well, either. I've had to reapir way too many of these and deal with too many weird problems, crappy support, and crazy drivers to recommend their laptops (desktops too for that matter) to anyone. They're just cheap crap, plain and simple. If you want a real quality build for reasonable prices I would look at Toshiba, or for a little more MSI and Asus (which are great for gaming machines).

Leaving laptops on 24/7 is terrible for them as they all build up heat. If you're going to do that at least buy a cheap cooling pad for them so they don't die from the heat stress.

So before I really want to recommend specific models let me ask you some questions. What kind of screen size did you have in mind? What kind of games, if any, were you hoping to play? How important is size/weight to you? I'm assuming you'll be carrying this laptop around to classes and library quite a bit so you'll probably benefit by having something smaller and lighter, which generally run cooler.

 

[KurrentEweser]

Laptops will get hot and burn up when their heatsinks get clogged up with dust. Heat builds up real fast when the fan(s) fail or have no place to blow out the hot air. It sounds your ASUS' hard drive became an expensive heatsink.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

I haven't really seen any laptops that are ultra cool. My old IBM heats up under stress and it's only a Pentium 3. My HP dv9700t gets really hot when folding or gaming, my friend's Inspiron 1420 gets hot when gaming and blows out a lot of hot air...Laptops aren't designed with the greatest cooling, but as long as you're not running them at 100% or gaming or video editing or folding or anything really intense, they don't get that hot.

 

[Jorsoft]

Having a dedicate gpu will make them get especially hot, so if you opt for integrated graphics it will help it stay cool and keep that fan on a lot less. My MSI gaming notebook can get incredibly hot under load sometimes, with the fan blaring. It's not terribly loud but it makes lap use impossible.

 

[KSoD]

Asus F8Sg-4P001C - InfoByte Forums

Check out that review posted by wetlegs6. He just got a Acer and loves it. Give full details on it.

 

[Aro2220]

I have a Toshiba now...I got it cheap. It's an A200. Nothing fancy, I think its a T5250. It runs pretty cool even though I leave it on all the time. I dislike the keyboard. It's a 15" display. That's about what I'd look for with a laptop...15 or 17. Actually this might be a 17" display...but anyway...probably 15" wide screen. It can run most old games...I think it even ran fallout 3. Of course, it wasn't running that great...it just...ran.

I think the reason my old ASUS Z9000 died is because the fans got clogged and the computer began to have to use the fans 100% of the time and things just wore down, over heated, etc.

How does one clean laptop fans anyway? I mean, aren't some of them really hard to get to? I think the one over the processor is easy enough but my other laptop didn't have a CPU failure (cpu still works fine). It had a power supply failure...the place where you plug the cord in was overheating and so was the battery.

I think at the end I had a 30-40 minute charge from what I had 3+ hours from originally. WHEN i could charge it, that is. The plug thing was pretty finicy after melting.

p.s. have you guys heard about the new ipod touch? It has an extra wire going to the headphone jack...which is used for recording. In other words, you can plug a mic/headset into the ipod touch. The long and the short of this is...if you get the NEW iPod touch (2g) you can use it on skype for VoIP.

And it's not a cell phone. So, its cheaper..no monthly contracts..and if you use up your battery playing music, surfing the net, and w/e, your cell phone still has juice since its seperate ;P

I'm thinking about getting one. Anyone want to buy a 16gb used 1st generation ipod touch?

 

[Alvin.C]

Hello,

The Thinkpad T400 (successor to the popular Thinkpad T61 notebook) is a very cool and quiet notebook. I currently own one (see my model's specific configuration in sig.).

The fan is the quietest I've ever encountered in all the notebooks I've ever owned (even quieter than an Asus Eee PC 1000H at idle); so quiet that the spinning of the 5400RPM hard drive is audible over the fan. If it were configured with the Solid State Drive instead, you'd probably question whether the thing was on or not. Even when watching videos, the fan is surprisingly quiet. Battery life is respectable too, providing 4 to 5 hours of runtime (brightness up and browsing the Internet via Wi-Fi) with the 6-cell battery, and it's 14.1" size and weight of 2.4kg make it acceptably portable.

Another thing I like about the T400 is that the fan vents are not located on the underside (one of my laptop pet peeves), so using it on your lap or on top of the covers when you're in bed is not a problem.