Gaming on Laptops

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Following up on and idea someones reply gave me in the Final Fantasy XI thread in the playground:
I have a laptop that fuctions as my p.c. Yet I am finding that most games I play on the thing just seem to freeze up at some point, normally around an hour or 2 of play, and I have to restart my comp. It happens more so on internet MMORPGs such as star wars galaxies and Final Fantasy XI. But it happens on some newish games I bough recently also, not as frequently however. I have Zone Alarm firewall on my laptop, perhaps that has something to do with the MMORPGs, but I do set the security to low when playing them etc.
I was just wondering if laptops have alot problems playing games, as I have noticed that some games are not even laptop compatible, such as Thief 3.
Any illumination on this area would be very appreciated, as it is making my gaming experience somewhat suck eggs.

 

Could be a heat problem. My friend who uses his laptop all the time has a fan sitting on it pretty much the entire time he's using it.

 

Yeah it sounds like a heat problem to me. A lot of the more recent laptops get really hot with just moderate business usage and if you start playing games that use the graphics card heavily that can put them over the top.

I have never had a problem playing games on my laptop but I have always stuck to either less graphic intensive games like Civ2/3, Master of Orion 2, Baldur's Gate 1/2, Icewind Dale 1/2 etc or playing for a relatively short time (an hour or less)at 3D games like NHL 2003/4.

 

For my laptop, I set it on an upside-down aluminium pizza-pan. The breathing holes on it let air flow up through the laptop, and the conduction through the pan pulls a little bit of heat away from the laptop and gives more surface area to dissipate the energy.

 

Is there anything that looks a little less obvious then a pizza pan?

 

A desk with holes in it where your laptop sits.

 

Centrino technology.

 

LapLogic makes a nice lap-pad that keeps your notebook cooler while you use it. Anything over 50 degrees celcius isnt good. Old batteries on their last legs tend to get hot too.

 

A perforated kettle stand?

My laptop didn't come with those little legs at the base that can be used to lift the rear end to allow better ventilation, and the processor area used to get hot as hell after two hours of use. Since I started using two little wooden pads to lift it, I have never had any overheating problems; and I play for hours.

Cheap fixes rule

 

Thanks guys, you're posts are really quite helpfull

@ Rastor - What's centrino technology?

@ Colthrun - So if i put my laptop on some raised wooden pads my problems might be solved? Seriously?

 

Centrino technology is Intel's new line of products designed specifically for maximizing mobility in notebooks. The idea is for them to be lighter, use less power to maximize battery life etc. This should result in less heat output which you want but at a cost of being less powerful and/or more expensive which you probably don't want. I have not used one myself so I really can't make any definitive comments on their performance.

Raising the bottom of the laptop off of the table/desk will help. By the end of the work day I can feel my laptop's heat right through my desk which is a good couple cm thick and that is without playing any computer games. Having a fan blowing to circulate the heated air away will help even more.

 

Thanks JSBB, I think i'll implement those ideas then. What about the whole pizza pan type idea?

 

The described pizza pan could work but I would just as soon make some sort of feet for the corners of the laptop to sit on - maybe small wooden blocks. The idea is to allow as much air to circulate under the computer as possible and it seems to me that an aluminum pan with some airholes would be somewhat less than ideal at doing so.

As an aside I find it interesting to hear the description of the pizza pan - the pre-made pizzas that we get here either come on cardboard and you have to use your own baking sheet or preferably pizza stone or they come on a flat sheet of aluminum with no raised edges.

 

@Gehn

Raising the base of the laptop will help combat overheating. Many laptops are poorly designed whith regards to ventilation, some of them even having some air vents on the base, facing down. I cannot work with my HP on my lap if I am using it for some hours, because it gets uncomfortably hot. So much for a laptop...

As DHB pointed out, old batteries can overheat too. If you keep the laptop connected to the mains at all times, remove the battery once it's fully charged and this will help. It will preserve your battery's life too.

If you plan on raising the base of your laptop using any type of support, ensure that you will not cover any lower air vents with the blocks, and that the base stays stable. Metal bases are not a good idea because they intensify the heat. And plastic blocks deform, and even melt (been there...). Use a wooden stand for the rear end of the laptop, or wooden blocks for the sides. Nature is your friend.

 

Thanks Colthrun, i'll give it a go.

 

Yes, and these will actually work a lot better: Laptop coolers

Also, I have a P4 3.06GHz im my laptop and I under-clocked it to just under 3GHz to cut down on a little heat...I know it's not much I have notices a reduction of heat, without any loss of praformance.

 

Sure, they've got fans. You could probably screw in a couple of 10mm (depth) fans to the pizza-pan, but those look a little more nifty. I'd wager the surface area is fairly close, if not favoring my pan a bit.

There's a guy that I work with, and when he first joined the group, he strolled into my office one day and asked me what the hell my laptop was sitting on. It's a round pan, with undercurled edges, and I had it "right side down" with the laptop sitting on the "back" of it. I yanked it out and told him $11 down at Walmart. It nailed him like a load of bricks; it took him a good ten seconds or so to take everything into account. I guess he was fairly used to using his laptop at home, literally in his lap, and they tend to get very warm when there's no airflow from underneath. Sure enough, just a couple days later, he had one in his office as well. He mentioned how much faster it seemed to be running, and I vaguely remember the same effect on mine.

The aren't the bare metallic aluminium pans, they are teflon "non-stick" coated to make them a dark grey. So they actually blend in very well to typical PC laptop colors.

But to each their own. If you care to spend $25, it's your money. My $11 does it very well, and with naught but the internal laptop fan. I could have made a fabric shroud and used a house-fan to force feed air through the underside, but this was quick and easy.

 

Sometimes you can find one of the "$25" ones that is also a USB hub...USB hubs alone can cost upwards of $30.

 

There's no better solution for heating issues than to have a notebook cooler, especially if you frequently use your laptop.

 

Wow, nice 6 1/2 year thread necro shantelhaynes. Did you realize that, for your first post on these boards, you picked a conversation that ended the better part of a decade ago?

Spooky.