Monday, February 16, 2015

Product review: Sabrent FAN-NTP3 Business Notebook Cooler Pad


Number of fans:____ 3
Air flow:__________ One speed, low air flow
Cord:______________ non-detachable USB cord
On/Off switch:_____ yes
Size:______________ width 11.85" x front to back 10"W x height 1.125" to 0.5"
Noise:_____________ VERY quiet
Color:_____________ black
Feet:______________ Has plastic feet (pad itself is metal)
Stand:_____________ non-adjustable, single height, slightly angled
Flaws observed:___ None so far
USB ports:________ no USB ports on the cooling station, it has a USB cord to plug into a computer
Packaging:________ no manual, documentation is on the box

This is a relatively small cooling station, it is extremely quiet. It gets it power from the computer it is cooling and requires it to have an empty USB slot.

I have an older Acus netbook that began overheating (I suspect the internal fan failure). Without a cooling pad I was not able to finish an OS upgrade (it shut down due to overheating), putting it on the Sabrent cooling pad allowed me to complete the upgrade.

I measured the CPU temperature when the system was idle as well as under a large load.

On idle the Sabrent cooling reduced the CPU temperatures by 5C.

Without Sabrent cooling pad (idle system):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Core 0: +75.0°C
Core 1: +73.0°C

With Sabrent cooling pad (idle system):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Core 0: +70.0°C
Core 1: +68.0°C

I ran system diagnostics to generate a heavy load. Without Sabrent cooling pad it was able to run the diagnostics for 36 minutes before it reached a critical temperature (> 100C) and shut itself down. With the Sabrent cooling pad it was able to run the entire diagnostic set (3 hours) reaching the following maximum temperatures:

Motherboard: 99C
CORE 0: 98C
CORE 1: 96C

Sabrent cooling pad certainly made a difference for this old netbook and I am able to keep it going even though at these high temperatures I suspect it is not going to last very long. It is best when computer CPU core temperature is under 50°C, if it is the in 60°C or higher it shortens the life expectancy of the computer components.

The cooling pad should be blowing towards the device you are trying to cool. How well it cools depends not only on the cooling pad but on how many ventilation holes each device has on the bottom. In addition ventilation holes on the computer tend to fill up with dust. If you are not getting good results with a cooling pad try vacuuming the ventilation holes.

So far I had no issues, the fans are operating quietly. Attached video shows the cooling pad in operation, I hope it helps to illustrate my review.


You can find it on Amazon by following this link.



Ali Julia review ★★★★★

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