“The Eumax Titan notebook fan pad is a cheap investment for those that worry about overheating their hardware or burning their lap.”
- Lightweight; quiet operation; will cool your laptop.
- Cheesy tribal graphics; may not cool as well as the company claims.
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Summary
For around $20 the Eumax Titan notebook fan pad is a cheap investment for those that worry about overheating their hardware or burning their lap. The fact that our informal testing didn’t match what the manufacturer claims is somewhat bothersome but in defense of Eumax they do not state what points were measured or how, making it impossible for us to perform an apples to apples comparison.
The bottom line is we did see an improvement in temperatures and that can only benefit the longevity of your notebook or your comfort while computing. Enlarging the size of the fans to 80mm would no doubt improve the temperature reduction but would also increase the noise factor. It seems the Eumax Titan fan pad is a nice tradeoff between temperature reduction and noise level and it’s lightweight, compactness and ease of use outweigh the cheesy tribal graphic.
Introduction
If you often push your notebook to the limits with multi-tasking, gaming or multimedia applications, you know how it can really heat up. It doesn’t even take intense use for the bottom of many laptops to get too hot to touch. The processor is the main culprit, and packing powerful processors into such a small space means the heat must be dissipated somehow. For the most part, manufacturers do a good job of preventing their laptops from overheating, but the result, as many of you are well aware, can be a very hot lap or desktop.
Products such as the Eumax Titan notebook fan pad are designed to help cool laptops to prevent overheating or uncomfortable heat on your lap. According to Eumax, the TTC-G1T Titan Notebook Cooler can reduce your operating temperatures a full 10 degrees or more and keep the noise level down while doing it.
Design
Weighing in at approximately one pound, the Titan notebook fan pad is lightweight and slim in dimension. It is constructed of what appears to be an impact resistant plastic material that is silver in color and is adorned with a trendy tribal graphic that thankfully gets covered up when placing your notebook over the unit. Choice of graphics aside, the unit is fairly unassuming. Measuring up at 12.8-inches wide by 10.4-inches deep and 0.7-inches high, it will comfortably slip into a backpack or briefcase right along side your notebook.
Tribal graphics aside, the Titan is a functional and lightweight laptop accessory.
Upon initial inspection, durability of the unit was a concern but the Titan has indeed lived up to it’s name and held up quite well in it’s travels in a soft-sided briefcase paired with a Dell Latitude D600 notebook.
The Titan gets its power from your notebook through a built-in USB interface. It operates at USB standard 5 Volts and draws 2 Watts of power. The major components of the unit are it’s four 60 x 60 x 10mm cooling fans. The fans Titan has thoughtfully put a high/low thumbwheel as well as an on/off switch with LED along the front
Performance
Connection to your notebook couldn’t be simpler by using the provided DC to USB cable. Turn on the power switch and select High or Low speed and you are done. The Dell laptop we were using sat nicely on top of the unit and only raised it by a half an inch. We noticed no additional discomfort with the raised profile.
The engineers at Eumax definitely had sound pollution in mind as they developed this product because operating the unit at high or low speed produces only the slightest whisper. Those of you that work in a quiet home office or the loudest corporate cubicle may never notice the slight hum of the four 60mm fans.
The Titan’s profile measures only 0.7-inches high, thin enough to fit in your laptop bag.
Using the cooler for several hours during a normal work day, which consisted of multitasking with E-mail, Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint, the unit never faltered or intruded upon our productivity and we were quite pleased that the power usage was minimal while operating on the notebook battery. The device surely must affect overall battery performance, but the impact was barely measureable. If you are working with your laptop plugged in, or with the optional AC adapter for the Titan, this will be of no concern.
Cooling Effectiveness
For our testing scenario, we used a Lian Li model T-3 LCD Thermometer that is equipped with dual thermometers and powered by a separate Antec SL300S 300W power supply. One of the Thermometer leads was inserted into the NIC compartment until approximately halfway into the notebook while the other was snaked into the CD-Rom compartment.
To get a baseline measurement we left the above setup in place and went about our normal workday with the Titan turned off. After three hours we took a reading off both thermometers. Thermometer 1 (NIC Bay) was 107.9 degrees F and Thermometer 2 (CD-ROM Bay) was 94.1 degrees F.
Now that the baseline has been established we turned on the Titan to high speed and again worked normally. After 3 hours of usage we recorded the temperatures. Thermometer 1 was 101.8 degrees F and Thermometer 2 was 88.5. The net temperature reduction was -6.1 degrees on Thermometer 1 and -5.6 on Thermometer 2. This is certainly not the 10 degrees stated on the manufacturer’s website, but it was a noticeable difference. However, the fact that the Titan will create a physical buffer between your computer and your lap or desk will make it seem cooler as well.
Conclusion
For around $20 the Eumax Titan notebook fan pad is a cheap investment for those that worry about overheating their hardware or burning their lap. The fact that our informal testing didn’t match what the manufacturer claims is somewhat bothersome but in defense of Eumax they do not state what points were measured or how, making it impossible for us to perform an apples to apples comparison.
The bottom line is we did see an improvement in temperatures and that can only benefit the longevity of your notebook or your comfort while computing. Enlarging the size of the fans to 80mm would no doubt improve the temperature reduction but would also increase the noise factor. It seems the Eumax Titan fan pad is a nice tradeoff between temperature reduction and noise level and it’s lightweight, compactness and ease of use outweigh the cheesy tribal graphic.
