Cooler Master Notepal U Stand Review – Testing Methodology and Results

TESTING METHODOLOGY AND RESULTS

Luckily, I have two laptops to test with the U Stand. One is the 13 Dell Vostro 1400, and the other is a 17 HP Pavilion DV7-1428CA. Since both machines are not capable of gaming (especially the Vostro), I decided to run the AIDA64 stress utility benchmark, and record the temperatures from both AIDA64 and Speccy:

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I wanted to provide a specification chart for each notebook, but found the Speccy did all of the work for me:

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Most users will probably just use the normal height when the U Stand is in its folded position, or perhaps go up to the first groove. I decided to show what the setup looks like when the U Stand is folded, and when it is at its greatest height, to see if it could really support the size and weight of the two notebooks:

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I left each laptop on the U Stand for thirty minutes. Suffice it to say that the U Stand easily held both. There is a ton of room around the Dell, but for the HP, the U Stand fits perfectly and thus does support up to 17″ notebooks. Also during this test, I ran the mini-USB cable from the U Stand input to the respective USB port of each laptop on the opposite side. The cable is just long enough to reach the other end and can be managed like the fan power wire at the bottom of the U Stand. Again, this reduces cable protrusions and clutter, and just makes things more hassle-free.

Finally, here are the temperature results for both notebooks when idle and under load. Both laptops functioned under the Windows 7 “High Performance” energy pre-set:

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Yup, that is 99 degrees you see. The HP does not really get that warm when it is under heavy use, but I will have you know that the Dell really does break the 100 degree mark on idle! If I don’t give it breathing room after about ten minutes, it overheats to such an extreme that it shuts itself down and is scorching to the touch. What really impressed me is how well the Dell ran, even after I had it resting for over thirty minutes on the U Stand. It did not even release the waves of heat I always expect it to when I use it.

The fact that the U Stand dropped temperatures by a consistent ten degrees on every test is extremely impressive to me considering that I will never use 100% load on either of these notebooks. Also keep in mind that these are the temperature drops you usually see when one removes a stock CPU cooler and installs an aftermarket heatsink on their processor in a desktop setup. The U Stand yields the same results, without being anywhere near the CPU.

What saddens me the most out of all of these results is not buying a laptop cooler sooner. Oh all the wasted years!

NEXT: Final Words and Conclusion

INDEX

Page 1: Introduction

Page 2: Features and Specifications

Page 3: Packaging and Contents 

Page 4: Packaging and Contents (Continued)

Page 5: The U Stand

Page 6: Testing Methodology and Results

Page 7: Final Words and Conclusion

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