Honestly? I thought they were a scam. But my laptop used to burn my lap, and now with a cheap pad from Amazon, it's actually comfortable again.

If you're tired of laptop overheating during gaming, it's a no-brainer under $40.

My cooling pad cools my table more than my laptop 😂

If portability matters, I’d suggest checking out the Klim Ultimate. It’s slim, lightweight, and easily fits in a backpack. For me, it was the best laptop cooling pad option when I was traveling for work in 2024. I expect by 2025 more brands will follow the same trend — thinner builds but with USB-C power instead of old USB-A. That would make them even more useful for modern laptops like the MacBook Pro or Razer Blade.

On my ASUS TUF A15, the pad barely helped. I think the internal thermal design matters more. Just my experience.

I used a cooling pad with my ASUS ROG Strix (RTX 3070) and saw a consistent 6–10°C drop in CPU temps.

For gaming laptops, especially ones with bottom intake vents, a laptop cooling pad makes a big difference.

The Cooler Master X3 has insane airflow but is louder, while the Havit pad is quieter and more budget-friendly.

TL;DR: If you're wondering “do cooling pads actually help laptops?” — yes, but pick the right one based on your thermal layout.

Llano V13

Look for memo fl08. Same performance relative to the most expasive ones and u can save some money to buy him some chocolate too

Llano v12

IETS GT600 or Llano v12

IETS GT 600

If you want significal temp change i would lift the laptop as high as i can. I do have a cooling pad and I also lifted it up and I can tell you, lifting the laptop up provides better cooling than a cooling pad.

I literally forced myself to learn about tech things that I didn't know before I owned a gaming laptop. I was able to hit the sweet spot of my CPU (i5-8300h) and GPU (GTX 1050ti) after a few tries (more like a week of optimizing my Lenovo unit). I only installed the simplest softwares to my liking and I'm glad that they worked. Most people at school doesn't really know about optimizing stuff so I studied more hoping that I could offer some assistance to those who encountered some small and simple problems that can be solved through some troubleshoots. I tried to help some but I stopped since I encountered a BIOS problem about Dell laptops (the systems of Dell units doesn't accept any optimization that I enabled on it). I think that what I did to my laptop isn't applicable to everyone given that we have different units but I'll search for my past post soon. I am also thinking about repasting my CPU and GPU soon as well as buy a new wifi card to upgrade my laptop soon when she turns 2 years old (my baby literally haha). Don't forget to open your laptop every 6 months or so clean some of that dust within the fans! I'll just edit this with the link soon!

EDIT:

Found it! I forgot that I was discussing something with a certain guy on the forums. My name is Pholax and I hope that this link can help!

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Gaming-Laptops/Legion-Y530-stable-undervolt-for-hot-climate/m-p/4548258?page=1#4548258

I used a cooling pad on an old laptop of mine for years. Completely safe. The fans should not be an issue unless you're using a cooling pad with industrial fans. As for efficacy, my laptop would overheat very quickly, with the cooling pad, it wouldn't. I'd only invest if you specifically have thermal problems, it won't really improve performance otherwise

For me it does not really do anything except for stopping my fans from going apeshit, but it also stops my balls from being burnt off.

For me it makes a difference, makes it run cooler. That's because the cooling system is bad to begin with and the cooling pad is decent with 5 fans that said not everyone will benifit

My laptop's temperatures never go beyond 60° Celsius after I optimized it about a year ago. My usual temps before was like 80°-90°+ under heavy load and I got scared about the heat that's why I studied for more than a month on how to take care of your laptop. My usual temps while under heavy load hovers around 55°-60° but with the cooling pad (Redragon IVY) it went down to 50°-55° cap. Casual usage at around 35°-45° and I live in the Philippines without any aircon... Don't forget to buy some external peripherals such as keyboard, mouse, or even a screen to preserve your laptop's hardware!

A regular type of cooling pad generally will only reduce temps by around 5°C. One with a foam seal will make a significant difference OTOH. My case must be fairly extreme with my ThinkPad fans being obviously weak so an Ilano v12 can easily drop the temperature by >20°C while at low rpms like 700. I regret waiting a year before finally spending the $100 on it because it makes all the difference in the world trying to game in 4k

100% worth it, chances are you never have to repaste in 4-5 years of ownership. Ive owned 6 laptops and the last 3 never had to repaste as my temps were always well managed, less then 85c. High temps = faster thermal paste degradation. I use the iets gt 600 which filters and drops my temps by about 10-15c . To me, it's a must have. Its an inexpensive way to protect your investment. And yeah, get yourself an air duster and clean your pc time to time. You don't necessarily have to open it but its recommended. Personally, I never open mine. I opened my last omen 2070 from 2019 once in the 4-5 years owning it and probably around 3ish year mark and I did airdust it time to time without opening it. When I opened it, it was 99% clean. The 2 cooling pads i had for it during its life sealed the bottom chassis to the pad and both had filters. Im never opening another one of my pcs again that I use my cooling pad with, waste of time given how clean it was. Airdusting and the filter was enough to keep it clean

Yes, even the cheap ones will lower a few degrees. Obviously with IETS or Ilano you will have a much better result and have dust filters. High temperature = Less performance

Got the IETS GT500 and it is great! The temps are 15 to 20 degrees cooler on i9 and 4090. The noise is higher but the temps are definitely much better, if stationary I am never gaming without it.

Depends on which cooling pad we are talking about. Cheap one with no foam seal? You might as well just use cheap laptop stand or book to elevate the back of your laptop to improve air flow. But if we are talking about something like IETS, LLano and Flydigi, they will absolutely cool down your laptop, in addition of filtering the dust from getting in your laptop. I personally had Flydigi BS1 and it managed to reduce my laptop temperature from thermal throttling to 85 - 90 C. Now I have Flydigi BS2 Pro and it managed to reduce the temp further to around 70 - 75 C (after repasted and cleaned).

I also use one simply because my laptop has terrible thermal performance in demanding tasks. Also note the size of the cooling pad with the size of your laptop because that CNA make a huge difference

Edit: I didn’t note major thermal drops but quite nice drops depending (anywhere from 2-5 degrees C depending)

Cooling pads are excellent: first, they allow your laptop to breath ( constantly getting fresh air especially if intake vents are at the bottom ) which in turn results in way cooler insides. Secondly it allows you to adjust the height of your laptop to be at the same level of your head preventing you from hurting your neck)

Yes, I use one from cooler master (about 20 bucks where I live). Temps go down about 3 to 5 degrees but mainly bought it to lift it up from the desk a bit. Highest difference in temps comes from the lifting rather than the fans.

I've always used one, and yes there are some small improvements; also get a cooling stand instead of just a pad, the additional airflow underside helps a lot (I use a Cooler Master Ergostand 3, I splurged a little).

I've never seen the kind of decreases that reviews tend to put out though, which probably explains why most people are skeptical. As another post points out you're more likely to see a 5C drop on average.

I don't. So far an undervolt has been enough to keep my CPU in an acceptable range and the GPU, being a max q, was fine from the start.

I have both one for the 18 area 51 and the other for the m16r1. Both are great. The v10 has higher fan speeds so if you want really good cooling go with the v10.

IETS GT600 or LLANO v13 if you don't want RGB or v12 if you want RGB

I'm happy with https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQKHWHCM

I have iets 500 with x15r1

Also buy sony inzone buds, they have good noise cancelation. XD

my bad, corrected.

Hoping someone here can help. My son owns the llano V12 Laptop Cooling Pad for his Alienware laptop. It works great. However, he's studying engineering and often needs to run CAD and other heavy duty programs while away from home, and the llano doesn't fit in his bag and just isn't practical for taking on the go. Does anyone have a suggestion for a more portable cooling pad? I understand that with a smaller, more portable size, the cooling won't be close to what the llano provides, but I'm hoping to surprise him with something that might work "well enough" away from home.

>I wanted to maximize the vibes and cooling performance u/theoneandonlysauce

Nice! Am sure the RGB lighting drops the temperatures by another 5°-10°C for sure!

LLANO V10 for the G14 and V12 for the G16. The IETS is really the only other fan that does more than a few degrees of cooling for these laptops.

When the designer cares more about aesthetics than performance:

I'm not familiar with this brand, but even if the fans are super-duper strong, the vents appear to be working against them 🫣

those cutouts are probably blocking about half the static pressure of the fans lmao

That cooling pad is not really compatible for your zephryus. You should get one with more fan surface, like ilano v10 or v12, which essentially puts your laptop above 1 giant industrial grade fan

.... Why don't you re-paste it PTM is like $20 USD. Cooling pad isn't much better than a stand when the thermal material has gone bad

I used to use the IETS GT600, but the fan was noisy and rattling, even at 800 rpm.

Bought the Flydigi BS2, and running it at 1300 rom, and noise level is night and day compared to IETS

Flydigi BS2 Pro. Very quiet.

Awesome cheers

Well, good ones (GT600 or llano v10-12-13) will be with noise so if you are bothered with laptop fans you will be likely to be bothered by the cooling pad fans as well.

The next best thing that does it with air that is not gonna sound too much is either KLIM Everest or Klim turbofest

I'm looking to buy a cooling pad or mat as well. I just recently bought a Dell g7 7790.

You really don't want to use a gaming laptop on your lap. Ideally they're desktop replacements i.e. sit on a desk. At max load of over 80C they'll be way too uncomfortable to put on your lap anyway, nevermind how inadvisable it would be to possibly block the air intake/exhaust vents that way. Also I'd recommend a cooling stand over a simple mat, the raised bottom lets air circulate.

Lift up the back before buying stuff

Undervolting is the way I went to get my laptop down to the 70s at max. MSI GE63 w/ RTX 2070 Full and 9850h.

Jarrods tech did a whole video on cooling pads,give him a watch