Laptops have become a very popular item over
the last few years, with sales growing each year. Another
thing that is growing is the performance of laptops, they have
gone from one or two generation old technology to being right
on the edge of technology.
Coolermaster is one of the larger cooling/case
manufacturers, with many OEM coolers and some OEM cases they have
a hold in that market, while also having a very strong presence
in the retail and enthusiast sectors of the market. We have
reviewed many products from Coolermaster, from cases to heatsinks
and have found most to be of very good design.
As we mentioned that laptops have increased
in performance in the last few years, a problem has continued
to crop up, as it has to a lesser degree with desktops, heat generation.
With a laptop you have a very small form factor for all the devices,
and you still have to worry about the heat generated by the CPU
and in some cases the GPU. While the both AMD and Intel
have created low power CPU's, they still produce heat in a small
area, and in many cases the computer can get very warm/hot to
the touch. Most if not all manufacturers have warned to
not use a laptop on your lap, because of the burns it can produce.
So today lets look at one cooling solution for laptops.
Coolermaster Notepal P1
So what did Coolermaster send us? The
Notepal P1 is one of their newer and smaller notebook coolers,
the specs of which are
located here.
The box is nothing out of the
ordinary with the front being a mostly open front so that you
can see the cooler, with its two speaker looking fan ports.
The back of the box gives most of the information about the
product as well as some pictures of various specific parts of
the cooler.
The look of the cooler is very
simple, an aluminum chassis with the two 70mm fan ports.
It is not a deep unit only about 6", so it doesn't
cover the entire laptop, just the back half of the unit, where
the CPU and 'GPU' are located. The exhaust fan is on the
back of the unit, with a small storage case in-between the two
exhaust ports.
We can see the side profile
of the unit which has an interesting curved design, the right
side of the unit is where most of the interesting items are.
Here we find the 'two' USB ports that are mentioned, though
only one is actually useful, as the other one is needed to connect
the included USB cable to the computer to power the cooler.
The on/off push button is also on the right side but blends
in easily as the opposite side also has a similar looking cosmetic
addition.
How does this unit work in real use?
Since it doesn't take up too much room its very easy to put under
the laptop and not even notice it is there. The one very
nice thing this cooler does is it raises the angle of the keyboard,
making it much easier to type on the laptop keyboard than previously,
as well as being seemingly more ergonomic. Because of the
design of the cooler, it shouldn't have any problem fitting most
laptops from 14" and up, though the smaller ones might have
the sides sticking out.
The sound levels produced by this cooler were
louder than that of my Toshiba M40-JM3 laptop with its fan running
at full.
System Specifications
| CPU: |
Intel Pentium M 730 (Dothan
Core) @ 1.6GHz-800MHz
|
| Laptop Model: |
Toshiba M40-JM3 |
| Memory: |
2 * 512 MB PC2700 DDR SODIMM |
| Hard Drives: |
Seagate Momentus 5400.2 120GB 5400RPM |
| Video Card: |
nVidia
GeForce Go 6600 128MB (300/600MHz) |
| Operating System: |
Windows
XP Home SP2 - DirectX 9c |
| Cooling: |
Coolermaster NotePal
P1 |
Default Cooling |
|
'Ghetto'
cooler |
| Drives: |
Matshita
DVD-RAM UJ-831S - DL-DVD Writer |
| Software: |
Futuremark 3D
Mark 05 - Looping Demo |
SpeedFan 4.29 |
|
Folding@Home 5.04 |
Riva Tuner 2 RC16 |
We used 3D mark in a looping
mode with 4X AA and 16X ansiotropic filtering and at a 800*600
resolution. Riva Tuner RC16 was running in the background
monitoring the temperature of the video card at the entire time.
Folding @ Home was also running at the same time with SpeedFan
checking on the temperature of the CPU and hard drive.
The test started after the system was idle for at least one
hour, and consisted of half an hour of full load and a half
hour of complete idle.
The default cooler is the internal heatsink/fan
combo. The 'Ghetto' cooler is the default cooler with a
double CD case lifting the back of the laptop up. The ambient
room temperature was kept around 23 but there could have been
up to 2 of variation. So lets see how the Coolermaster cools
this system compared to the other two 'cheaper' methods.
Temperature Tests
Lets see how the CPU temperature is with our
three cooling methods.
|
Minimum CPU Temp |
Average CPU Temp |
Max CPU Temp. |
| Default Cooling |
31 |
53.2 |
66 |
| 'Ghetto' Cooling |
34 |
52.64 |
66 |
| Coolermaster Cooler |
33 |
53.99 |
68 |
Looking at the numbers it seems
there really isn't any difference between the three cooling
methods, with the average temperature staying around the 53
mark and the maximum CPU temperature staying in the mid 60's.
Looking at the graph though we see some interesting information.
Looking at the idle cooling results, we see that the Coolermaster
cools the system quicker from low to high and back in about
one minute. The 'Ghetto' cooler takes about 1 1/2 minutes
to do the same, while the default cooler does it in over four
minutes.
Next lets take a look
|
Minimum GPU Temp |
Average GPU Temp |
Max GPU Temp. |
| Default Cooling |
39 |
71.35 |
79 |
| 'Ghetto' Cooling |
43 |
71.67 |
81 |
| Coolermaster Cooler |
37 |
70.67 |
83 |
We see similar results
to that of the CPU temperature tests, though the minimum temperature
fluctuates a bit more than the other tests. All three
average temperatures are within a single degree of each other.
The Coolermaster cooler takes about three minutes to go from
low to high to low, about three times longer than with the CPU
cooling time. The 'Ghetto' cooler takes four times longer
than its CPU cooling time, or about six minutes. The default
cooler takes ten minutes to go through its cycle, which is only
two and a half times longer than it takes to cool the CPU.
We can see from these results that there isn't too much of a
difference between the three different cooling methods.
Conclusion
We've taken a look at this product so what
can we see in conclusion?
The packaging is fairly simple but does show
the product with the window on the package. Most of the
information is listed though the information is slightly wrong,
as the listed 2 USB ports are not useable todether, as one is
to connect to the laptop, while the other is available for actual
use, thus only giving you one useable USB port on this device.
The product itself is a simple idea, and works for most laptops
you find, from 14" widescreens to 17" models, though
it many not cover the entire laptop or may cover too much of it.
The other nice aspect about it is that it angles the keyboard
up so that it seems to provide a more ergonomic feel.
Performance wise this device didn't set itself
apart. It is louder than the internal cooler of my Toshiba
laptop, though not by a large amount. The unit didn't display
any real performance improvement over either the default cooling
or a double CD case lifting the back end of the laptop.
Why this is is mostly unknown but may have something to do with
the direction of the airflow. Overall a disappointment performance
wise, but then again each laptop is different so your results
may vary.
Price is one of the considerations with a
product, and what I could find out as a price
is about the $40 (Canadian) mark. About the middle of
the price range of most laptop coolers. Overall this cooler
doesn't do much to prove its value, the only thing that it seems
to cool is the bottom of the laptop, which makes it better for
using the laptop as a laptop, except the cooler doesn't exactly
fit on most laps.
If
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