Laptop cooling... any tips?

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I have a m1710 XPS and it is hot. I toasted a marshmallow while playing wow. Usually gets around 70 degrees celcius while idling at 55.

I have tried laptop coolers of all sorts: Ones with fans, the heat adsorbing, etc, and they actually make it hotter in a few cases. It doesnt make sense.

Anyone have this problem and figured out how to cool it down?

Anyone know what happened to the air conditioning powered one that was rumored for awhile?

Thanks guys.
 
I dunno, mine used to run hot so I just opened a window near me when I was playing to prevent slow down.

Now I have one with a heat spreader and fans built into the bottom and it keeps it cool enough.

Not all that much else you can do.
 
Everytime I say this it's still cheeze but... It's about how good the suck to blow ratio is. You could be blowing air at an exhaust port for example. On my laptop I just make sure it's lifted off the ground at let it do it's thing. Mine isn't anywhere close to a gaming laptop though.
 
Usually gets around 70 degrees celcius while idling at 55.
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What temperatures are you talking about? For a GPU, that isn't too bad. Even for a CPU, that isn't dangerous, but you're getting quite close.

Unfortunately, laptops get hot...real hot. That's just what is going to happen when you jam a computer into a space that small. But in reality, people often over-estimate just how hot they get, because they are so close to you while you work or play. Though the machine may feel it like it is burning up, it's probably just fine. I've had my cheap Acer for over two years, and even though it feels like a campfire is sitting in my lap, the machine is still running strong.
 
Yeah, 70 probably isn't too bad for a laptop. Only a 15 degree difference between idle and peak is about right. You could get one of those aircooler plates. I had an Antec model that worked OK, but it was loud and was another set of power wires to worry about. I wouldn't recommend them.
 
Yeah, like many have said, gaming makes laptops run hot. Tighter space, more resistance, more heat. Gaming cards in XPS systems are incredible toaster ovens.

I always try to keep mine on a large, flat surface if I'm going to be gaming. Never carpeting, never my lap... gotta keep those vents free and clear. 70 degrees can be okay as long as heat is continually dissipating.

In your case, with an XPS 17 incher, your LCD's resolution is massive, which means that you're kind of screwed no matter what resolution you set WoW at. Your native res could be 1440x900 or even 1920x1200... if you drive it at native resolution, it stresses the system and generates lots of heat. If you scale from another 16:10 res, like 1280x800, the scaling process still generates heat--although it may be less stressful on the GPU. I, personally, would never drive a laptop GPU above 1280x800 in DX9 games... that's a lot of pixels to draw as it is.

Also, WoW isn't the most demanding game... you could underclock your GPU and its memory a bit, and probably knock your temps down a few degrees with little performance loss.

Also, if you ever use it to play games on an external display, be aware that it seems to generate even more heat in most laptops, and that closing the lid is usually a bad idea.

If you're really worried, I'd just set the laptop feet up on some risers. Heat usually pipes out the bottom on most notebooks.
 
And here I thought mine actually getting to 60C was a problem.

After getting an Inspiron 1520 and having the insides melt the same week I got it, the first thing I did when I got the replacement was I downloaded I8kfanGUI. It now idles at 40 and tops 60 when playing games. It's at 45 now because Azureus is passing around Ubuntu 8.04.

After reading the help forums, I have come to the conclusion that the builders at Dell are asshats for setting the fan temp too high, then locking it so you can't change it in the BIOS.
 
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