Long story short: the answer to “Does the cooling pad drain the battery?” is yes. That said, it doesn’t drain it faster than one might think.
External models may drain a laptop battery two to 10 percent faster, depending on the laptop’s and cooling pad’s regular power consumption. That’s not too bad, according to GadgetsPals, considering the device also helps the CPU run cooler, which is likely to conserve more power overall.
Now that we have that settled, let’s look at why the cooling pad is a necessary accessory.
What Is a Cooling Pad?
As its name suggests, the cooling pad is an accessory for cooling your laptop. Older laptops can be prone to overheat, and placing these tools under them helps prevent that from happening.
Some laptops have built-in cooling systems, but most require attaching an external cooling pad to the USB port. The latter tends to come with more features and control the pad’s height and fans’ speeds.
Cooling pads are great, but they aren’t the miracle workers some seem to think they are. If your laptop’s a dinosaur, placing it on top of a cooling pad isn’t going to turn it into a modern-day speed demon. Though all things considered, it’s definitely something worth getting.
Why the Cooling Pad Is a Must-Have
If you own a generic laptop, chances are you’re going to need one of these to keep it cool. Don’t wait until your laptop gets older and starts overheating before using a cooling pad. The accessory can be beneficial in many ways, including:
1. Provides Comfortable Coolness
Even in your laptop’s first few months, it isn’t immune to heating up to some degree. While that might not be something to worry about, for the time being, it should serve as a warning of what’s to come and spur you into preventive action.
Warm air getting blown around can also be uncomfortable if you aren’t in a cool room. That’s all the more reason to use the cooling pad.
Aside from elevating the chassis of your laptop, allowing more air to circulate underneath it, cooling pads have a fan system that spreads air around the heat-prone bottom. This even disbursement of air over the area helps dissipate heat considerably.
2. Controls Temperature
Once a laptop overheats, it’s usually difficult to cool down. Using a cooling pad ensures a laptop doesn’t heat to that level in the first place. These accessories help maintain a balanced temperature, so your gadget doesn’t heat too much even after hours of use.
Laptop owners often use their devices in bed or on the sofa perched on pillows or blankets. These materials can block airflow, causing the laptops to heat even faster.
Instead of laying your computer on these fabrics, place them on top of a cooling pad instead. You should notice a considerable drop in temperature when you do. That could make all the difference in preserving your laptop’s performance.
3. Enhances Performance
As mentioned previously, cooling pads aren’t miracle workers. However, that doesn’t mean they won’t deal with some slight improvements to your laptop’s performance.
At the very least, these tools could provide a two percent boost in processing speed or a couple of additional frames per second on a computer game. That’s already a noticeable enough difference.
How Heat Impacts Laptop Performance
To understand the impact of heat on your laptop, it’s vital to first go over its heat-generating components. The main culprits are the CPU and GPU, which are responsible for algorithm performance and image processing, respectively.
Based on this information, you can surmise that gaming laptops produce more heat than most other laptops. An average notebook doesn’t require the GPU to work nearly as much as a high-end gaming model.
Aside from the central processing unit and graphic processing unit, the hard drive is another main heat producer in our laptops. This section tends to hit higher-than-normal temperatures when transferring large audio and video files.
Lastly, there’s the optical disc drive. Warmth can soar in this area when playing either a CD or DVD. It’s not just because heat is required to spin the disc, but it’s also because disc-reading generates heat.
All these factors working in tandem over time take a toll on your laptop. They may damage your device’s components prematurely and beyond repair when unaddressed. From that standpoint, the inconveniences of a cooling pad should seem inconsequential.
Battery Drain Doesn’t Matter Nearly as Much as Performance
Even if you somehow get your battery to last longer by foregoing the cooling pad, although that isn’t likely, your laptop’s other components might give up a lot sooner due to overheating. At the end of the day, the cooling pad provides more than it takes away. Yes, you need it; sooner rather than later, we might add.
