Stop stacking your laptop on notebooks - here's why that's making it hotter

I keep seeing posts where people lift the back of their laptop with a thick book or a stack of paper to get airflow underneath. But I tested this with my old HP last week using a thermal gun, and the paper actually traps heat against the bottom panel. After 30 minutes of gaming, the surface temp was 8 degrees higher than when I used four bottle caps at the corners. The paper insulates instead of letting heat escape into the air. Has anyone else measured temps with different materials under their machine?

2 comments

2 Comments

jesse8412d ago

Funny you mention that with the bottle caps... I actually saw a thread on Reddit where a guy was testing exactly this with different materials, and he found that rubber erasers worked way better than any book or paper stack. Something about the rubber not conducting heat back up into the laptop. His temps dropped by about 5 degrees compared to just sitting flat on a desk. That paper thing makes total sense too, it's like wrapping your computer in a blanket or something. Wish more people knew this before they start piling their textbooks under there.

sage_lewis1011d ago

Oh man, I actually heard about this from a friend who builds custom PCs. He told me that materials like paper and fabric act as thermal insulators because they trap tiny pockets of air. That lines up with what jesse84 was saying about rubber erasers working better. I also saw a test once where someone used those silicone muffin cups under their laptop feet and got similar results to bottle caps. It makes sense when you think about it - you want something that lifts the machine but doesn't hold heat against it.