unsual laptop heatFollow

Hello all I wanted to ask for those who have computer knowledge why is it my laptop seems to get hot on low or balanced settings bet seems to run cooler on high performance playing eq. I find it odd the game would run cooler on high performance over low power setting. I have an Intel i3 dual core 2.0 ghz no turbo boost and Intel HD 4600 video card.

RoF cost less than a laptop. Just sayin'! ;)


As to the OP, are you talking about how much heat is being generated, or how hot the actual laptop feels? When computer activity reaches a certain level, the fans will adjust their speed (assuming it's set to do this), so as to keep things from frying. It's quite possible for there to be a range just below the fan threshold where sufficient heat is being generated to still cause a problem. Basically, low heat with low fans may feel hotter to you than high heat with high fans. Depending on how "high" or "low" the initial heat generation is.

You could go into your fan settings and change the thresholds if this is causing a problem. Also check to see what triggers various things. Sometimes the default settings on those things will ignore things like video activity and look only at CPU and disk. So you can get a case where the video card is working semi-hard displaying stuff (and btw, it still does the calculations for the display even if you've minimized it), but the rest of the computer is idle (like say sitting in the bazaar for example), so the card is generating heat, but the fans aren't on. Probably a good idea to play around with those settings to see if you can find something that works well.

Lol! It was just something on my mind because I recently had to play around with the powersave settings on my computer. I'd done something (god knows what) and realized that my fans were on full bore all the time. I thought I'd originally had my system set to auto mode, which will change things based on activity, had been the default when I first installed it, and I'd never touched it since (cause it seemed to work fine until I did whatever the hell I did that changed things). So I went into this little control panel thingie and just set it from the performance setting back to the auto setting, and assumed this would put it back to the way it had been. After that, I noticed that if I left myself logged in but idle for some reason (like say go afk in the lobby for buffs, while watching shows in the other room), I'd walk back in and find that I'd been logged out. Figured out that the auto setting would set me down to a powersaving mode when idle (which it was supposed to), but that this setting had somehow been changed so that it would actually go into a full sleep mode after 20 minutes of idle time, even if processes were running. Which, of course, was causing me to log out of EQ.

So I changed the powersave mode to not automatically put the whole system to sleep (just wind down the fans and shut down the display). Problem solved. But it did get me in the mindset of thinking about how the settings on those sorts of things don't always do what you'd expect (or want).

They also make laptop holders with fans in them. Don't know what the hell they're officially called, but I have a friend who has one, so I've at least seen one. It's kinda like one of those "breakfast in bed" type mini tables, but sized to set a laptop on, and with fans in it. Keeps the laptop off your actual lap (technically, the laptop sits on the holder, which sits on your lap I guess) and keeps the laptop cool at the same time. No clue how much they cost, but that might be something worth looking into.