Choosing a Cooler That Suits Your Laptop

The honest range of results is wide, and the starting point explains most of it. A laptop that has been running on a duvet, a couch cushion or a padded desk mat has been suffocating, and lifting it onto anything with clear air underneath produces the biggest single change. The same pad under a machine already standing on its rubber feet on a hard desk does far less.

Design matters more than fan count. Open trays scatter air at the whole underside and much of it escapes around the edges, while gasketed designs press a foam ring against the chassis so the air has nowhere to go except through the intake grilles. The second approach needs the grilles to sit inside the ring rather than out at the chassis edge, which is worth checking against your own machine.