I have seen just about every variation on materials, angles, bling and fans in what is readily available on the market in notebook cooling products. From the days of a beanbag strapped to a piece of wood, set on your lap, just to keep the heat away, cooling tech has come a long way. The frame materials are either a choice of aesthetic appeal, or you go with plastic due to budgetary reasons. Either way is no better than the other, as long as the frame is sturdy and vibration free. The lighting and hocus pocus that sells some coolers, doesn't need apply really. For the down to basics idea of "cooling" the laptop, "bling" does very little to cool anything. So essentially it all comes down to the fan or fans in the unit that are going to make the biggest difference in any notebook cooler.

Even as far as fans go, I really thought I had seen it all. 80mm fan, 120mm fans, all the way up to a single 20mm fan; I have tested them all as far as standard fans go. If I remember correctly, I even tested a cooler with a rather large "squirrel cage" style fan that was the size of a hamster wheel. I also recall that that fan idea didn't work out too well and offered very little in the way of actual cooling to the laptop. This time around Cooler Master uses a blower style fan, or rather a pair of them, to do the cooling in the notebook cooler we received for testing.



Link: Tweaktown