Overheating Laptop Solution

My son spends most of his waking hours attached to one of his many gaming devices. A favorite is to sit on his bed covered in blankets (it is winter here) playing gmod or Left 4 Dead on his laptop.

He quickly found that the blankets were covering the fan vents, causing it to overheat so significantly that his laptop would completely shutdown. In the middle of conflict! This couldn't stand, so I sat down with Google and Amazon and we had a nice talk, ultimately leading me to this impressive example of technology solving a real-world problem:

Basically, this is a mini-vacuum that you attach to the side of your laptop around the fan vent and plug into USB for power. Just go to Amazon and search laptop fan cooler and you'll find a bunch of options.

This thing literally sucks the heat out of your case. I was a bit skeptical so I was excited to see how well this worked and I am more than surprised.

Fortunately, it included several sizes to conform to various form factors:

Now, my son (who is 10) has attended a Montessori school since pre-K so he is steeped in autonomy and he manages his own financial decisions. As such, he went for an affordable version which works but definitely has a cheap feel, with the rubber attachment slightly loose. I can tell some of those in the $20 - $30 range definitely look to be a little better quality so I'd probably go up in quality slightly.

When I've got 17 browser windows with 142 tabs open, along with 22 other program and an entire virtualized server running, my fan will definitely hum even sitting at a flat and clear desk. I stuck this thing on the side and turned it on and in 30 seconds it drew off so much heat the CPU fan stopped running. In 30 seconds.

If you've had troubles with overheating, definitely check these laptop fan coolers out !