I'm wanting to put some kind of filter (like felt) over the opening where the air is sucked in through my laptop to help keep dust from building up inside the computer, but I'm not sure where the intake is. Is it on top of the computer in front of the black hinge between the keyboard and screen, or on the backside of the hinge? Any suggestions on how to do the filter?
Is this a good question?
Rep: 479.4k
35
329
971
Well I love the idea, sadly you’ll kill your system!
Your laptop uses a drawing fan design letting the air to come in thru quite a few different openings. So you can’t filter the inward air and even if you could there is not enough draw to allow the fan to properly cool the logic board.
For the sake of argument.. You have an air tight case which has two holes one hole has a fan mounted let’s say 3” fan with an inflow setup that offered the needed cooling for what’s inside the case. If you placed any filter you would reduce the air flow so the logic inside would overheat. In fact the exit hole in this example would need to be larger than the inbound as the air friction running across the logic would need to be calculated in. If this was setup as a drawing fan pulling the air out the entering air hole would also need to be larger.
CFM air flow calculation is not easy! As the heat load is not constant you need to base it on the higher level.
Was this answer helpful?
Are Mac laptops quite a bit different in how their cooling system is set up compared to PCs or gaming systems? I've seen people use filters on those.
@felicitym11 - A gaming laptop is not even close to what a MacBook Pro is. Yes, there are some similarities, but the basics like cooling is very different as a gaming system is about three times the size and to run it fully out you need to be plugged in. Otherwise your performance is throttled as they are not what I would call a true portable system and they are heavy. And clearly a laptop is not a desktop either.
Past 24 Hours: 0
Past 7 Days: 0
Past 30 Days: 7
All Time: 135
