cRadia Flex

Testing

To test laptop coolers we take the temperature of the notebook’s CPU at idle and load, with and without the cooler. The temperatures are taken using SpeedFan and a temperature probe is placed inside the heatsink above the processor, giving a second opinion as it were.

Idle state is considered to be after 30 minutes of no user activity on the notebook. Load state is taken to be after running S&M for 30 minutes at 100% load.

The laptop used in this testing was a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo which runs a 1.7ghz Intel Celeron M.

Ambient temperature throughout testing was 21 degrees C.

Results

As you can see the cooler doesn’t make that much difference to either of the temperatures taken. It does reduce each by a few degrees, but not by enough to shout about. This was a little dissapointing given the size of the fan and the ammount of air it moves per minute. Perhaps if you could speed it up just a bit more it would make more of a difference. Although the temperature doesn’t change drastically, the laptop’s fans were quieter as they had to do less work at cooling.

Cost

Here’s where the Flex really falls down, and I mean really. Take a guess at what you think this might cost. If you guessed anything below £40 you would be wrong. £40 is a huge amount of money for a cooler of any sorts, let alone a laptop one. This cost is going to be mainly down to the brushed aluminium frame, which does look nice, but is it necessary for a cooler that sits under the laptop?

Weight

The Flex comes in at 2kg which is quite heavy for a cooler and with no carry case included, it could be pretty awkward to carry around. However, the box it comes in does have a handle so if you are looking to make this rather weighty cooler portable, that’s probably the way to go.

Noise

At every speed setting the Flex is pretty much silent. Even with the fan spinning up to its max RPM (which granted, is only 440 RPM) you can only hear a whisper of noise with your ear up close so it’s unlikely you will ever hear it during normal operation.

Coolers