Solved! What is the best cooling pad for a 17" Alienware?

[matty2gats]

Hey Guys,
I have an Alienware 17" gaming laptop, its about a year old. I use it for some heavy MMO gaming, and it can heat up quite a bit during one of my sessions. Can anyone point me in the direction of a really good laptop cooling pad for a 17" ? I'm not too worried about price, my main concern is to keep this puppy cool and safe. Any advice would be great. Thanks!

 

[matty2gats]

Does anyone at least know a forum where i would be able to get help with this?

 

[BroHamBone]

Does anyone at least know a forum where i would be able to get help with this?

Im looking up the same information. I currently have a cooling pad that is smaller than my laptop... makes it wobbly.
Anyway, some good designs in brands i have found are: Cooler Master, Antec, and Thermaltake

I think toms may have done some reviews on them or Fuddys.

 

[AntiZig]

Ok, we recently had a thread on this, someone looking for 17" cooler.

Let me be clear on one thing first, laptop cooler doesn't provide additional cooling for your system, all it does is help circulate the air supplementing your builtin fans. Therefore, if your ambient air temperature is high, circulating that air through your laptop won't do much good.

As far as I'm concerned the best design fans would be a centrifugal fan, better a couple since they generate less noise than the axial fans (look up the difference between the two on wiki). Also, consider your usage ergonomics, typically laptop coolers only help direct the air, that said, you need to consider where cooler air intake is, where your laptop intake and exhausts are (you don't want the cooler to be recirculating the hot air exhausted by the laptop). Also, make sure your cooler intake won't be against a wall/blocked any other way.

All that considered, the posted above me listed the best companies in the market for coolers. Last I checked, Antec classic cooler (which I think is a very good design) is only up to 16" laptop, and the models they have for 17"+ aren't too impressive. Shop around, see what you can find.