Cooler Master Notepal X-SLIM Silent Laptop Cooler

Today we look at the Cooler Master NotePal X-SLIM Silent Laptop Cooler, which uses a USB port to power the internal 160mm fan to cool the laptops. Read on to see how it performs.

Introduction

Cooler Master has been designing and offering cooling solutions to the PC market for many years now.  New cooler designs are nothing new to the company and finding a way to cool pretty much anything seems to be the goal.

Today we are looking at the CoolerMaster X-SLIM Laptop Cooler. It’s a design similar to many other coolers as it sits below the laptop with a centralized fan to direct cool air around the lower air intakes and through the critical components to assist the built in cooling already used to cool the laptop.

Here we can see that as explained the whole top section is a see through metal mesh that allows airflow all through the top section to allow complete airflow across the complete laptop no matter where the air inlet may be.

Let’s take a look a little deeper into what makes it tick and whether its worth a second look.

Pictures & Impressions

Here we see what we get when we open the box. The cooler is packaged very good with foam supports on both ends and plastic covering to avoid scuffing or abrasion from shipping. When removed from the packaging we see the cooler itself and the only included item necessary the instruction/user guide.

Here we get a better look at the design of the cooler itself including the center area supporting the 160mm fan.

Here is the bottom of the cooler. We can see how the USB cord is wrapped and stored away when not being used or traveling. We also noticed the abundance of cooling cutouts covering basically the entire bottom of the cooler. This ensures that no matter what surface it is placed on, the cooler should have an area available for air intake.

To round things up we take a look at the contours and angles of the design of the cooler. These are probably more for fashion than for function. One thing to note is that plugging this cooler into the computer’s USB port doesn’t take up the port, as the cooler’s plug has a female USB port on the other side to compensate. However, the plug sticks out from the laptop, and could accidentally hit things, potentially damaging the port.

And finally here we have the cooler positioned on a laptop. The laptop simply sits on top of this device but it does not mount in any way and can be lifted away and USB port unplugged without any mounting. Now let’s go on to see how well it performs.

Testing & Methodology

Testing on a laptop cooler is a little tough as laptops are designed to run at a set temperature range. Additionally, the laptop’s internal cooling fan throttles accordingly, so we will test to see how this cooler interacts with the stock cooling of the tested laptops.

Test Rig

Testing Method

To test the cooling efficiency we tested with Prime 95 Small FFT test for 30 minutes each run.  After each run there was ample time given for the CPU to cool completely to normal operating temperature before each test.  We tested 3 runs each and averaged all runs.

Results

Here we can see that the inclusion of the cooler did make a noticeable difference on the temperature of the CPU and probably other internal components as well.  As seen the Core i3 330 runs much hotter without the cooler. While the difference with the cooler may only be a few degrees, that is a significant difference when considering that all of these components are in a very confined space and any drop in temperature can mean a better lifespan and durability of the components. Also, this cooler does its job without so much as a peep and is completely inaudible over the operating of the laptop.

CONCLUSION

The Cooler Master NotePal X-SLIM Silent Laptop cooler works pretty well considering it is just placed under the laptop. It worked as expected, cooling the laptop by a few degrees under load. This kind of solution is quite good and works well no matter the surface it is used on. The great thing about it is that it is simple and it just works. However, do take note as mentioned before that the USB connection does hang out and the port could be damaged if it strikes anything.