Since I game mostly on a laptop, I have a laptop cooling pad. It's old, but it works and seems to keep things from throttling. But it's big, bulky and noisy, so I wanted a better solution that moves around the house easier and I can potentially take with me if I decide to travel with my laptop in the future. I'd been looking on Amazon and you can buy stuff for pretty cheap, but then it suddenly occurred to me: I bet I could 3d Print one.
So here we are:
It seems pretty handy so far. Durable and light. So I got one of those wild hairs I get from time to time and did a bunch of testing today, checking out my performance and temps between the Riser, my Cooler and Nothing. Long story short:
There's really not a huge difference between the laptop cooling pad and the riser, which I kind of suspected might be the case. Between CPU/GPU, running multiple 3dMark tests, as well as Benchmarking on Cyberpunk, the differential was only about .5-1*c (with the Cooler being well, cooler) in most cases. Versus having nothing was as much as 5-6*c hotter in many cases. I'm sure it depends on surface for that number, as I was testing on a wooden table and I've definitely seen higher and significant thermal throttling testing on a rubberized hobby mat that soaks up a lot of heat.
However, I did have two interesting finds here:
1. Performance differential on nothing vs Cooler/Riser between 3DMark and Cyberpunk was essentially nothing. I got roughly the same 3DMark score no matter what and roughly the same FPS in Cyberpunk. 59.88 vs 59.64, so basically nothing.
2. Running nothing under the PC actually improved the 3DMark CPU score and dropped the GPU score, whereas using the Riser/Cooler bumped the GPU score and saw the CPU score fall. I tested this numerous times and it held true every time, no idea why.
I got to at least 36! Then got alt'itis and made a new character on a new server. Then moved to City of Heroes, which I liked QUITE a lot better. DAoC was the first game where I encountered players that would dash into a dungeon, ignoring all content, and just camp out on a spawn point that somebody on the internet determined was the "best place to level." If others were there already, you had to wait around for somebody to leave. Despite these games being world-wide, I think it's the only time I ever experienced culture shock in an MMO. That's absolutely NOT the way I like to play.
Not yet, but I need to get on the exercise bike Real Soon Now.
If I'm honest, I probably never made it past 20. I seem to remember never making it very far and maybe got to a max of like 24 or something, but it's been
forever. But I had the same problem, constantly trying out alts, but this was my early MMO experience, because I had the same issue in Everquest as well and even WoW later, until I finally buckled down and got my first level 60 several years in.
And yeah, my friends want me to come play Project 1999 with them, because we're all oldhead Everquest kids. But I just can't do that anymore, it's so absolutely dull to find a Camp whether that's in the world or in a dungeon and just sit and farm exp for hours. I've told them straight-up that I have zero interest in doing that, in spite of my many warm memories of Everquest. I remember going to one of the most popular dungeons (Lower Guk) and getting on a "Wait List" and just standing around waiting for others to leave so you could actually join a party and get leveling. No thank you.
I never did play City of Heroes. My only relation to it is a girl I worked with at a department store loved it; she was cute too and interested in me, but I was too dumbly attached to my girlfriend at the time, who definitely didn't like me
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