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Power & Cooling: Are gamers calling for the opposite of Netbooks?
Posted by niero gonzalez in Gamer PC | Nov. 26, 2008 11:00 AM
As if cooling dense notebooks isn't hard enough, we gamers can't wait to make it harder. One glance at the WePC Gamer community submissions reveals that our most common request is more raw power from our gaming laptops, but how do we get there without requesting Asus to build us a fireball that you'll never want to actually put on your lap? Or worse - an external power supply unit that resembles the monstrosity that comes with the Xbox 360? Let's explore some possibilities.
Liquid cooling is only cool in theory
One of the most popular techniques adapted in the last few years (primarily by the overclocking community) is liquid cooling - a process that uses pipes and pumps instead of large heatsinks and fans which also reduces noise. Making this happen on a notebook is tough due to the size of the pieces involved, not to mention factoring in the amount of weight it would add. Even external gel-based cooling products can weigh as much as five pounds, so using any legacy cooling technique has its drawbacks. To a minor degree there's also the thermal conductivity between aluminum and composite materials, but when we're talking about cooling an Core i7 and double video cards in a notebook that's the least of our worries. We need a bigger idea. In the gaming universe a little bit of overkill can go a long way.
Absurd power calls for an absurd portable chassis
Even if the chassis was literally built out of an absurd number of cooling fans (one guy actually did this!) it would consume more battery life than passive cooling. After all, it is possible to overclock a Pentium 4 chip to a blistering 5 Ghz but do you want to be at the airport with a tank of liquid Nitrogen strapped to your backpack? You can see why negative airflow in gaming notebooks has become the standard: reality has handed us slim pickings so far.
Maybe we should ask the industry to go steampunk and build a laptop with Gothic steel pipes all around the monitor. Just make sure it doesn't touch anything or you'll be sorry! I kid, but perhaps it would be a more constructive exercise for gamers to put their money behind an absurdly heavy notebook that falls into its own super power monger category, regardless of the weight. I suspect it hasn't been done before because anything over 10 pounds these days will be stoned to death by notebook critics, but if it was positioned as a boulder from the get-go (the polar opposite of netbooks, if you will) they may have a chance. The Anvilbook cometh?
Is that what we really want, or should we just strap wheels and a car battery to our desktops at this point?
I'm not your average traveling businessman, so for me, I'd like two extremes for my mobile needs. A netbook for the light stuff, like sitting on the couch browsing the internet while watching TV, and a monstrosity, weight be damned, if I want to do some serious work or gaming somewhere other than my desk. If I have work to do and it's a nice day outside, I'd rather go sit on my deck and program away, but to do that, I need a hell of a lot more power and screen real estate than an average laptop offers.
Sure, some people would rather have a happy medium, and those are probably the people who need to travel with a laptop and do work in a hotel. Not me, so I'd be happy with a 12 pounder and half an hour of battery life, so long as it was pretty quick with a giant display and didn't cost three grand. Essentially, a mobile desktop more than a desktop replacement, though I suppose if beefy enough, it could work as both.
All i can say is that more power = more heat. so vote for me.
Sorry to double post but check out the ASUS's C90. I love that laptop design, especially the cooling design. 4 fans =
Water cooling can be integrated into the base of the laptop and the back of the monitor, like plates that the water runs through and back to the CPU. It can be done, in my opinion. The only other solution for cooling is faster, more powerful fans and more efficient heat sinks. Or cooler GPU/CPUs by using more space for less heat? Just my two cents.
The big talk these days are SSD Hard drives. It would be really cool to put 3 or 4 SSDs in a RAID 5 configuration on a 17" wide screen laptop. Now were talking performance.
To add even more performance, what about an out ot the box solution. Start out with a 17" laptop that has a 2-3" base or something the size of a brief case. This would allow for more room for batteries, a RAID 5 configuration, bigger power supply, and desktop components so your CPU can run at 1066 or 1366Mhz FSB, instead of the lame laptop 800Mhz standard. Also you could use all desktop components including heat sink and fans. And for the icing on the cake..... integrate the dc adapter into the case, use a regular desktop AC cord to plug into the case. Life would be Cool!