Welcome to my blog post for cooling my laptop on a hot day! So this post will have a few ideas in it, starting from something as simple as little 3D printed risers to my latest idea I’ve bodged together to help my laptop run a bit cooler when gaming on a hot day.
So you’d think the heatsink and fans inside of my Razer Blade 14 would be adequate, wouldn’t you? – To be fair, the vapour chamber and fans actually do a pretty good job on their own. But my worry was with hotter days. Imagine it’s in the high 20s (high for the UK), or even like today, it’s 34°C in the UK. Those little fans are going to work a lot harder than they should.
So with some of the little ideas I’ve tested below, you can help drop your laptop temperatures by a degree or two, up to as much as 10°C cooler.
Cooling Can Be Done!
So first off, I had a laptop riser with some fans built into it. Now, this is a fantastic cooling unit, it has some funky RGB lights on it, as well as a little pad to control the fan speed and the lighting. You can buy the KLIM Halo on Amazon UK right now for £34.97. It works really well and supports laptops with screen sizes up to 17″, but my main issue with the KLIM Halo is that it’s loud. But as mentioned it does work really well, I see an average of 5°C colder whilst gaming.
Perfect to use in the office during my lunch breaks for a little game of something, but not so great to use in the house at night when you’re trying to be quiet!
Take Two
So my next idea was something a little more subtle, in fact, a lot more subtle. I know someone with a 3D printer, so I got them to print me some of these Razer Blade laptop lifts/stands that Luizof shared with the Thingiverse community. If you don’t know anybody with a 3D printer, you can order 3D printed models on websites such as 3dPrintDirect or MakeItQuick.
These actually work very well and only raise the back end of your laptop by a few degrees to help the fans get more air going through them. They’ve been designed to perfectly fit the Razer Blade 15 2019, but actually, work very well with my Razer Blade 14 2021 due to the feet on the bottom of the laptop having the same design.
This helped improve the airflow a considerable amount, and I noticed my laptop ran a little cooler (avg 3°C while gaming) and quieter, with no assistance other than the 3D printed lifts. Not much cooler, but we’re getting there.
Take Three
Ok, so we’re seeing some improvements whilst reducing the audible volume. This is fantastic news. Next up, I wanted the laptop off of my desk, so now we enter the HUANUO Desk Mount. This is a £39.99 desk mount and it came with all the correct mounts I needed, two mounts for screens, and one mount and tray for a laptop. It can support either two screens, or one screen and a laptop.
Perfect, exactly what I needed. So what I did was bought this desk mount, and installed a monitor on one arm and the laptop tray on the other. This mount is really good because it has lots of ventilation holes to help with airflow, so this combined with the above 3D printed lifts, is fantastic.
Since I originally purchased this desk mount, I’ve had some more ideas on how to cool my laptop, as well as changed some other things around such as buying a larger screen.
Take Four
Finally, I introduce you to the Bodhi200 USB to 4-Pin Adapter. This little beauty costs just over £5 including delivery. What this allows you to do is connect up two 3 or 4-pin PC case fans to a USB port. I had a couple of Noctua NF-P12‘s in a box from when I had a full-sized gaming PC, so the next step of my project began.
What I have done is screwed the Noctua fans to the underside of my laptop tray. Then I connected them to the Bodhi200 adapter. This was then connected to the USB hub I have connected to my laptop.
These fans are virtually silent and push a lot of air through the ventilation holes in the laptop tray. I’ve seen some pretty awesome improvements using this little-bodged setup. We’re talking about a saving of an average of 8°C and even up to 12°C cooler alongside the laptop lifts from Luizof. I can’t wait for the winter to see how cool my laptop will be using this setup.
So there we have it, bit by bit, I have improved the cooling of my laptop whilst not really noticing any additional noise. I’ve managed to cable manage a lot of the extra cables too. So you wouldn’t necessarily notice the fans and extra cabling lying around.
Not only that, my desk looks super clean with minimal cables on show. This is thanks to velcro ties and the arms so I can hide the cables on them. You will also be able to spot my Series X and PS5 in that last image. They’re happily sitting on my desk waiting to be played.
Let me know in the comments if you have any better ideas for practical cooling a laptop on a hot day. You can also check out our previous blog posts.
