SFM On a Laptop

[Zach]

I recently downloaded SFM on my laptop, and although I know it isn't very friendly towards Laptops, it's been running quite nice, aside from the fact that the editor viewports are a bit laggy. But I'm concerned about rendering. I've rendered at least 2 films, one of them being a minute long. Yes, it gets slow, and when I put my hand over the vents I can feel warmth, but not as much as to alarm me saying, "dude, you're computer is SOOOO dead." So, I need some help. Say for example I made a 4 minute SFM, and am ready to render. Should I be EXTREMELY worried about over-heating? Here are my specs:
Dell Inspiron 15 3000
Intel Core i5 4210U CPU @1.70GHz (Overclock to 2.70GHz)
8.00 GB RAM
Windows 8.1 64x Bit Operating System
Please help! Thanks!

[Pte Jack]

SFM will heat your laptop pretty bad. Most newer Laptops have built-in safeguards to prevent overheating and will shut your laptop down if it gets too hot.

The amount of work your push through the graphics chip and the cpu is going to determine how hot your machine is going to get, so if you're rendering at the highest render settings available at 1080p or greater and have 60,000,000 models alll doing some sort of animation through your entire 4 minute clip, don't be surprized if your laptop starts to glow red and start melting in on itself in a puddle of molten plastic and metal. Laptop heat syncs aren't designed to handle that kind of usage.

I have a pretty good Laptop that I use SFM on. It is 3d movie capable but rendering a 30 - 60 second clip can make it almost too hot to touch. (That being said, I multi-task while rendering, it is not uncommon for me to have SFM baking a render, a couple sessions of Blender working a vertex animation simulation, Sonar X3 saving a MP3, 5 or 6 tabs of images I'm creating VTFs for in GIMP and doing all that under a screenshare that I'm broadcasting while trying to help someone. ) My laptop is just over 4 years old and I had to replace the heat sync, fan and a harddrive (but I expected to have to do that sooner or later because of the age)

[Zach]

Do you think the best option is getting a fan and have it blow while rendering?

[EmperorFaiz.wav]

Originally posted by zachcantwell64:

Do you think the best option is getting a fan and have it blow while rendering?

duh... I always use cooling pad when using SFM and rendering. Better get one

[Zach]

Originally posted by EmperorFaiz. VACATION:

Originally posted by zachcantwell64:

Do you think the best option is getting a fan and have it blow while rendering?

duh... I always use cooling pad when using SFM and rendering. Better get one

Alright, thanks for the help!

[Pte Jack]

I have a cooling pad, however the fans don't line up with the intake vents, but the vents are in an up rotations and open. The big thing is that you want to allow the machine to pull as much air as possible to aid it in cooling. Placing the machine back desk pads on top of a couple of cup coaster so there is more air available helps as well. Just remember to clean the vents every now and then of any dirt and dust that may be sucked in to them.

[Zappy]

Just don't close the lid on your laptop, and it should be fine. (In my case, I can play/render stuff while my laptop is open, and it never shuts down from over-heating, where-as it does if I close it (I've made it not go to sleep mode when closed, since HDMI cables).)

Another good thing to do might be to check for video driver updates once in a while. Also, rendering as image sequences spares you from having to re-render everything if your laptop shuts off.