Boost your framerate and boost your DPS 6 comments
posted 19th of Feb 2010
by Aeiedil
If, like me, you play WoW from the comfort of a laptop then you may notice from time to time that your laptop gets a bit warm. When this happens the performance of your laptop is decreased. For the cost of a few quid you can get an air duster that will allow you to clean out your laptop and decrease it's operating temperature. Read on for why this is important, or click here to find links to some suitable products. This article is more aimed at laptops, but the same applies to desktops.
What can be done
Simply clean your computer. Here is a nice (slightly dated looking) Youtube video that explains more : Air duster video. Please excuse the attempted comedian. In fact here is a second link that takes you on a step by step guide as to how to clean your laptop : ehow link.
On that article the key point I find is point 6. I just hold my laptop on it's side, and spray air duster through the bottom air vents. All the dust comes out the side of the laptop, and hey presto the laptop runs cooler again. It is important to not turn the air duster upside down, as if you do that liquid may come out. This is undesirable.
Why do I need to care about heat?
There are 3 sides to this. The first bvious reason is that if your laptop overheats then it can get damaged. The chips within a computer are made up of very thin pathways. If they overheat, then they melt. For a comparison, if you get an incandescent light bulb and (carefully) smash the glass off you are left with a thin wire outside of a vacumn. If you then plug it in (this is not very safe) you will see that almost instantly the element melts. This is due to overheating. The thickness of a lightbulb element is far greater than that of the pathways within a CPU chip. Overheating melts these pathways and kills your computer (eventually).
Reason number 2, a simple one this. If your laptop is too hot to touch and you put it down on anything at all flammable, then potentially you have a fire hazard right there.
Reason number 3, modern computers have failsafes to help combat overheating. They do this by reducing the power to the components that are overheating. What this means to you is that while you are playing a game you will see the amount of power available to give you a nice high framerate will drop. In fact the more demand you put on the components, the more you will see the power drop because the increased demand will increase heat buildup.
Are you lost yet? To put it simply, a 10 man raid needs more power than a 5 man heroic. A 25 man raid needs more power than a 10 man raid. This is due to there being more players and therefore more spell effects. The increased power causes increased heat buildup. In turn your computer tries to turn down the power consumption to compensate. You then get your screen frozen as soon as the boss casts a debuff on everyone, you die, and the raid wipes.
Why does this happen over time?
There is a lot of dust just sitting around in the air. Over time the air circulation through your computer results in dust being deposited. The main places it will be deposited are on the heat sinks. This dust acts like a blanket that traps warm air next to the heat sink. This in turn reduces the ability for the fresh air bring pulled in to your computer to cool the heat sinks. This in turn causes your laptop to heat up.
Over time if left unattended this gets worse and worse, and then eventually you get to the point where either your computer catastrophically overheats, or it takes drastic action. Most modern computers will automatically kill the power (turn themselves off instantly) if the temperature gets to a point where it is becoming a potential hazard. If your computer turns itself off (and it's not due to Windows Update) then it is a sign that you may have overheating problems.
Why is this being posted here
This is not strictly a Moonkin post, however it seems lately that not a week goes by that at least 1 person I am raiding with complains of a poor framerate, either in my guild (you know who you are) or in a pug. Each time the advice is the same, so I thought I'd post up an article here that explains what can be done, and why it should be done.
If your computer experiences framerates in the order of 5 FPS then you won't really stand a chance of moving out of the fire (or equivilant effect). By performing simple housekeeping on your laptop (or desktop) you can ensure performance is maintained. As a side effect you are preventing damage caused by overheating, prolonging the life of your system and saving you money in the long run.
Example air dusters
Considering most of my readers seem to be from the UK and US, here are a couple of links to products on Amazon that will help you clean out your dusty air vents. On some of the alternative options, be careful because not all air dusters can be used upside down. If you get one that is not listed as invertible then make sure you do not spray it upside down. Doing so causes liquid to come out which of course is bad. I have listed what look to be about the cheapest good options that don't have idiotically high shipping costs.
Comments
When I played on a laptop, I "burned" through two video cards before I finally gave up and bought a desktop. In addition to cleaning out dust, you can also get fan cooling pads that the laptop can sit on to help give it an extra burst (if your laptop wasn't able to cool down enough just from dusting).
I'll certainly be considering a desktop as a next upgrade as my current laptop isn't exactly underspecced for most other things I'd need a laptop for. Your suggestion about fan cooling pads is good however not always viable. Ideally you should be using a laptop at a desk. I use it balanced on my legs and have had it fall off once or twice while being particularly energetic.
The main thing I've had problems with is trying to find a suitable monitor/keyboard rig that would allow me to comfortably play from my sofa. What I really need is an arm of some kind that can support the monitor/keyboard without being bolted to the wall or ceiling. Such things aren't very common :(
Damn you, Egg. Damn youuuuuu! :P
I had planned to write something like this, although not on heat :)
Hehe, I felt the same when Graylo posted up on something else recently just before me :)
There's plenty more room in the subject though, I mean heat is just 1 way to improve framerate and therefore reduce preventable latency.
Yes, but there is always so much to do. Im thinking i might have my next survival guide ready tonight, since my imputent guild think they can do hard modes without me! Sigh :P
C'est la vie hey :)
This last week I've been a bit envious of most of the rest of you bloggers who set up on Wordpress etc. Have moved to a dedicated server and converted my whole site from PHP to Coldfusion.
Now that's all out of the way though I'm free again to get back on writing content, and designing my extra special project for Strayegg :)