How To Keep Your Laptop Cool While Gaming

Gaming laptops are really great, especially when compared to a normal laptop. They offer speed, they are good for multitasking and most importantly gaming. Overheating is an issue but there are many ways to cool down your laptop.

Gaming laptops usually use a higher grade of hardware. They have a higher-grade GPU, backlit keyboard, high-quality displays with higher refresh rates, and much more. With time they are now becoming slimmer and compact. They are not any less than a desktop when it comes to performance.

They are great, but there has been a problem with gaming laptops since the beginning, which is overheating issues. With so much to do at a single time, heating is inevitable but most of the time laptops maintain that temperature themselves. But if your laptop is overheating while gaming or performing any other tasks, this is a serious issue because it can significantly reduce your laptop’s life and reduce performance.

So we are here with ways to keep your laptop cool while gaming. You will be able to reduce the temperature of your laptop significantly preventing overheating and increasing performance.

Placement of Laptop

Proper placement of a laptop is very important especially when you are playing games. The ventilation system in a laptop takes in air from the bottom of the laptop and releases it to the sides.

So if you keep it on uneven surfaces like your bed for your lap then the vents do not get proper air intake. So it is important to keep your laptop on a flat and hard surface which will allow the fans to take in enough air for proper cooling. If you still want to keep it on your lap then you can use small plywood as a stand or else make sure you are not blocking the bottom vents.

Keep the Room Cool

Ok, so just the placement of the laptop is not enough. Sometimes it may happen that your laptop is overheating because the external environment hot. So keeping the room cool is also necessary. The cooler your room will be, the cooler air your fans will take in keeping your laptop’s temperature lower.

You are more likely to experience this problem in summer than in any other season. Will the ideal room temperature for the laptop to function properly is between 18°C to 35°C. So if your room temperature stays above 35 degrees celsius then that can add to your laptop’s temperatures rising up.

So make sure your room is properly air-conditioned and you maintain a cooler environment while gaming.

Also Read: Using Gaming Laptops for Work

Clean Your Laptop

Dust is the enemy of hardware, the air going in through the vents builds up a lot of dust on your internal hardware. Whether you have a messy room or you have a very clean room, dust will find its way to your laptop so you can’t prevent it. You should clean your laptop every 4 to 6 months.
Well here is how you can do it:

• First, switch off the laptop and let it come to the normal temperature, and then clean the vents and the sides with help of a small soft brush
• If you know how to open a laptop(unscrew from the backside) then open it and clean the parts again with a soft brush, be careful and do not try to move or disturb any part.
• If you do not know how to do the above step then take it to a nearby service center they will do it for you. If you can’t go there then try buying some compressed air spray and then spray it to the vents. Make sure you keep the spray bottle straight upright. Keep doing until you see no dust particles.
• After you are finished doing the above process, switch on the laptop and then run your fans at full speed. You can do it by using various software available for free. This will help you remove any dust that is left inside.

If you follow these steps, then you are good to go to play games again. You will start to see noticeable changes in temperature and it also increases the life of your laptop.

Use Cooling Pads

Apart from the above-mentioned steps, you can also use an external cooling system to lower down the temperature of your laptop. To do this you can buy a cooling pad, cooling pads are usually cheap and you can manage to get one around 10-15$(₹800-2000).

But before you buy a cooling pad you need to see which type of cooling pad is best for you. Only buy a cooling pad that is powered from an external source and not from the laptop or else, it will only decrease your battery performance.

There are two types of cooling pads available in the market, one which throws air towards your laptop and the other which throws a year away from your laptop, choosing one actually depends on what laptop you are using and in what environment. Also, go for a cooling pad that has more than 2-3 fans because only two fans will not be enough especially for a gaming laptop.

Look for software problems

There can be many software problems that can cause your laptop to heat. These can include problems such as too many software running in the background or a particular software that is clashing with your current game. They can also be used with the cooling software designed for your gaming laptop. There are several ways in which you can solve this issue

• Go to the start menu and search for task manager, now click on processes and close all unnecessary tasks or applications which are running in the background. To end a task right-click on it and choose the End Task Option.
• Go to the Dedicated cooling software of your laptop, for example, it is Nitrosense for Acer Gaming Laptops. Now look for any setting which can cause an issue, mostly the dedicated software will give you enough options to cool down the system and increase performance.
• If you stream using your laptop then compare the temperature when you stream and play and when you just play. The streaming software can put an extra load on your laptop. Try a different streaming software or stream using a different PC connected.

Lower Game Settings

Well, this is obvious but it is one of the best ways to lower down the temperature while gaming. Your laptop might perform well when you bought it but with time passing and games being updated every year they demand more and more hardware capabilities such as a more advanced GPU, extra RAM, and much more.

Lowering down the game settings such as resolution and frame rate can help you in lowering the temperature of your gaming laptop as it will significantly reduce the burden on the CPU and GPU.

Playing in medium and low settings will also make your game faster as there is data to render. This is mostly done by fps players to increase who play online fps and other competitive games.

Look for Fault in Fans

One of the Other major reasons that your laptop is overheating can be due to any fault in your fans. This is more likely to happen in old laptops. There are several ways you can find that your fans are working properly or not.

One of the easiest ways is to download any software which shows the fan speed. Usually, your dedicated cooling software also shows the fan speed. Check if the speed of a fan is very low even when you are playing games. This might indicate that your fan is broken or damaged.

Also if you hear a cracking/rattling sound from your fan then you can take it as an indication that your fan is damaged. It is best not to take matters into your own hands as changing fans in laptops is not an easy task.

If your warranty is still valid then take it to the company service center and if not you can take it to any service center and get your fan replaced.

Replace Thermal Paste

While you are at the service center and if you are the one with the old gaming laptop you can ask them to replace your thermal paste. Thermal paste is usually cheap and you can also put it by yourself with help of a youTube tutorial.

It is advised that you replace thermal paste off a laptop every year after your warranty is over.

Also Read: Best Chipsets for gaming mobile

Use an External GPU

This one is not a solution based on your laptop but if your hardware cannot handle intense gaming then you can consider investing in an external GPU. Well, we most don’t recommend it in most cases but if you are short on money and cannot buy a new laptop or a PC then this will work for you.

Gourang

Gourang Parekh is the founder of serinose, who is a gamer, aspiring actor, and a former e-sports organizer and a tech savvy. He is also a big fan of Cricket and his favorite batsman is Rohit Sharma.