snake oil Is it just me or is this the dumbest thing ever made?

[DCWalt]

So I was poking around the web last night. My laptop has a cooling problem every now and then so I was looking at laptop cooling pads and out of shear curiosity I decided to see if someone had attempted to make a liquid cooled one... Well... I found this... The "Cool Breeze Liquid Cooling Pad".

 

I was interested. Not the kind of interested that would lead me to pay nearly $80 but the kind of interested you get when you can smell snake oil flooding the room. I did some poking around. At first I assumed the brand was "Cool Breeze" but all that yielded was a refrigeration company and a rapper. After a closer look at the Amazon page I realized the company was actually "PC Treasures"; an OEM company that distributes software along with some phone and tablet accessories. However, even their own website doesn't have this thing on it. I decided to pop on over to google images to see if anyone had an actual picture of thing instead of just the little marketing material I had found. No pictures of customers holding it but I did find something else. something much, much better.

 

I found a diagram of it's internal workings and I must say, it's kept me giggling for the better part of an hour.

 

 

So, Apparently the way this thing works is you place your laptop on it, it circulates water underneath and blows the air from the radiator back onto your laptop...

 

I never expected a liquid cooled laptop pad to work very well but I guess I did expect at least a certain amount of logic to be applied when designing it. You know, like, maybe the surface of the pad is a water block that your laptop touches and the radiator is in the back blowing the hot air away from your computer. But instead it looks like they tried to use the radiator as the water block while also using it as a radiator at the same time and are just exhausting the air (presumably hot air but probably not considering the design) back into your laptop. Essentially what you get for $80 is a regular old, $10 laptop cooler that someone made out of aluminum and slapped on a pump and radiator that do nothing just to jack up the price.

 

So what do you guys think? Am I missing something or is this thing as hilarious as I think it is?

[Zando_]

It seems hilarious. We’ll cool your air by somehow pumping back into your laptop, fighting against the built in fans, basically making a dead air space. Does it include magic? Seems like the only way for it to work. 

[PartyWire]

It ridiculous... won't work in any way, would be better if you built a Water cooled laptop, would be a lot more efficient.

[CatXice]

if u had a mac with a flat bottom like when linus "water cooled" a laptop i guess it might work might being hopeful

[DCWalt]

I just read the Amazon reviews. One guy apparently got two of them and they both leaked. Icing on the cake really...

[SageOfSpice]

If you look at the fin orientation on the fan, it appears to be exhausting the hot air underneath the cooler, not into the back of your laptop. =p

Still, I'm not sure how effective it'd really be. It seems that it's designed to cool the metal surface that the laptop sits on, but most full-sized laptops aren't metal to begin with, sit on rubber legs, and actually intake from the bottom of the device. So, it'd be fighting the fan on the laptop. On the upside, it would increase the air circulation around the laptop, and what air the laptop would be sucking in, would likely be a few degrees cooler than ambient which would theoretically increase the efficiency of the small radiator on the laptop.

 

Might work well for a netbook or something of the sort that doesn't actually have any active cooling, as those usually use the case itself as a heatsink.

[DCWalt]

1 minute ago, SageOfSpice said:

If you look at the fin orientation on the fan, it appears to be exhausting the hot air underneath the cooler, not into the back of your laptop. =p

Still, I'm not sure how effective it'd really be. It seems that it's designed to cool the metal surface that the laptop sits on, but most full-sized laptops aren't metal to begin with, sit on rubber legs, and actually intake from the bottom of the device. So, it'd be fighting the fan on the laptop. On the upside, it would increase the air circulation around the laptop, and what air the laptop would be sucking in, would likely be a few degrees cooler than ambient which would theoretically increase the efficiency of the small radiator on the laptop.

 

Might work well for a netbook or something of the sort that doesn't actually have any active cooling, as those usually use the case itself as a heatsink.

even if it did would spend $80 to cool a $200 netbook when you could buy any $10 or $15 cooling pad that would have a bigger fan and do the job better?

[SageOfSpice]

Just now, DCWalt said:

even if it did would spend $80 to cool a $200 netbook when you could buy any $10 or $15 cooling pad that would have a bigger fan and do the job better?

The better question is why you'd ever buy a netbook in the first place.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 minute ago, SageOfSpice said:

The better question is why you'd ever buy a netbook in the first place.

Because back then they were decent. You can't even buy one new nowadays.

[OnionRings]

It seems stupid, water has to come in contact to a water block connected to the components to work right? I mean this thing seems to work as good putting a block of ice inside a ziplock bag.

[SCHISCHKA]

basic physics should tell you it does not work. You dont make things cool by adding water unless you are using evaporative cooling; which this does not. Water cooling works by transferring heat to a radiator that has a larger surface are than you could get by placing a heatsink directly to the heat source. This device does not place any heat transferring material to the heat source so it is literally pumping water around in circles with no cooling effect whatsoever.

[DCWalt]

Just now, OnionRings said:

It seems stupid, water has to come in contact to a water block connected to the components to work right? I mean this thing seems to work as good putting a block of ice inside a ziplock bag.

In theory if you had a laptop like a mac book with a solid aluminum bottom and the top of the pad was built like a water block and the water was being pumped away to a radiator then it might help cool the laptop. How much it would help or if it would be worth it is another question though.

[SCHISCHKA]

6 minutes ago, SageOfSpice said:

The better question is why you'd ever buy a netbook in the first place.

i had one at uni and it was awesome. I carried around a lot of gym gear so the bag space was a premium. Battery life was good too.

[SCHISCHKA]

1 minute ago, DCWalt said:

In theory if you had a laptop like a mac book with a solid aluminum bottom and the top of the pad was built like a water block and the water was being pumped away to a radiator then it might help cool the laptop. How much it would help or if it would be worth it is another question though.

the radiator needs to be larger than the surface area of the laptop. Macs do get hot and noisy while gaming but a more practical solution is to use it in an air-conditioned room which is where I am normally found using my laptop.

[DCWalt]

Just now, SCHISCHKA said:

the radiator needs to be larger than the surface area of the laptop. Macs do get hot and noisy while gaming but a more practical solution is to use it in an air-conditioned room which is where I am normally found using my laptop.

Yes, no one said it was a good idea, only that it would at least do SOMETHING in that configuration

[dizmo]

The water cooled idea is kinda weird and stupid, but cooling pads make perfect sense.

27 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

It seems hilarious. We’ll cool your air by somehow pumping back into your laptop, fighting against the built in fans, basically making a dead air space. Does it include magic? Seems like the only way for it to work. 

I always thought having the fan oriented that way was stupid, but it does work.

[SageOfSpice]

Think it works something like this. Though honestly, it'd probably work better in reverse.

Spoiler

 

[DCWalt]

1 minute ago, SageOfSpice said:

Think it works something like this. Though honestly, it'd probably work better in reverse.

  Hide contents

 

Perhaps but the original diagram makes no mention of larger heat pipes that cover the surface of the pad. That's more an assumption on your part. Yes it would make more sense (still don't know how well it would work) but not of the marketing materiel mentions it.

[SCHISCHKA]

9 minutes ago, DCWalt said:

Yes, no one said it was a good idea, only that it would at least do SOMETHING in that configuration

im pretty sure I saw LTT review a water cooled gaming laptop. It had aircooling but when placed in a dock it was water cooled.

[DCWalt]

Just now, SCHISCHKA said:

im pretty sure I saw LTT review a water cooled gaming laptop. It had aircooling but when placed in a dock it was water cooled.

He did, it was pretty interesting... this is not that

[SageOfSpice]

1 minute ago, DCWalt said:

Perhaps but the original diagram makes no mention of larger heat pipes that cover the surface of the pad. That's more an assumption on your part. Yes it would make more sense (still don't know how well it would work) but not of the marketing materiel mentions it.

Yeah, but when it comes to products like this, you kind of have to make assumptions. If not, you end up with your cat in the microwave, and sensitive bits in the ceiling fan.

[DCWalt]

Just now, SageOfSpice said:

Yeah, but when it comes to products like this, you kind of have to make assumptions. If not, you end up with your cat in the microwave, and sensitive bits in the ceiling fan.

That seems like a terrible way to make a purchase. just assume it is what you want it to be even though there's nothing saying it is

[SageOfSpice]

2 minutes ago, DCWalt said:

That seems like a terrible way to make a purchase. just assume it is what you want it to be even though there's nothing saying it is

Eh, no need to know the specifics. Everybody knows watercooled PCs are faster and cooler than the competition.

[DCWalt]

I think Linus needs to review this thing. Even if he didn't test it i just want him to take it apart and laugh at it