How can I cool down a laptop power supply?

Solution 1:

Absolutely, the best thing you can do is to allow the PSU to cool naturally, don't try to cool it quicker as doing so may cause damage (if it's not already damaged). Allow it to cool fully before attempting to use it again, and monitor your laptop and the supply when first using it in case it has been damaged.

Solution 2:

Raise it off the floor as suggested and train a desk fan on it - and/or get a higher wattage unit.

Solution 3:

This is a fairly old question but I have a rather unique solution. Buy a good laptop fan just for the power brick, it won't provide so much cooling that it will cause damage but will keep it running at a reasonable temprature. I own both an ASUS ROG gaming laptop and an Alienware one as well. Both power supplies have heat issues.

Personaly I use a box fan leaning at an angle against the wall and I have made a support to hold the psu against the fan. This keeps it very cool.

The picture I attached is an older setup in which I used the power cables size to hold it on the fan! (also the psu has feet which fit in the fan notches

Solution 4:

I came up with a way to keep my power supply cool.

I have an m17xr3 Alienware laptop which power supply gets extremely hot, especially with overclocking. It's just drawing more power from the supply than it used to. Now that I have unlocked the BIOS and am pushing the CPU and GPU harder, which in turn draws more power the CPU, has gone from stock 2.4GHz up to 3.7GHz, which it seems to have no problems.

Doing very stable temperatures, no real increase from stock, I did adjust fan timing so they come on earlier now, but overall temperature never exceeds 80 degrees Celsius. The main issue was the power supply getting so hot you couldn't touch it.

I solved this by cutting a rectangular whole in the top of the plastic on my PSU and attaching 2 old CPU heat sinks with the fans still attached to the metal plate. Inside the PSU, some heatsink paste and an old 12V power adapter to power the fans.

It never gets above 20 degrees Celsius now.

Here is a pic: