 We've reviewed our fair share of gaming laptops here on Linus Tech Tips, and while recent models have really tried to up the mobile gaming ante with features like 4K displays, SLI, and full-blown desktop-class GPUs like the GTX 980, pushing the performance envelope so much means that heat management is a constant challenge, and it has always been so. And many laptop coolers on the market can be pretty hit or miss. However, after we noticed the well-reviewed O-Polar LC-05 on Amazon, we wanted to put it to a test to see if this little guy could tame the fiery demons inside a couple of our high-end notebooks. Intel's Skull Canyon NUC features a 6th generation Core i7 processor and Thunderbolt 3. Learn more in the link in the video description down below. Most laptop cooling solutions out there today take the form of a pad that you sit your laptop on, which cools things down with a series of USB-powered fans on the inside. The O-Polar LC-05 takes a different approach, though, as it's a vacuum-style CPU cooler which attaches to the side of your laptop and sucks additional air out, giving the computer's built-in exhaust fans a boost. O-Polar included a pretty solid attachment mechanism that includes an adjustable adhesive pad that sticks securely to the bottom of your laptop, but is a little bit difficult to remove due to the adhesive being so strong, and a pair of string-loaded arms that clamp the cooler into place. There's a limit to how far these arms will go, so they might not fit a really bulky laptop. There are also three flexible shrouds to form a seal around the laptop vent. I picked gray, as the other two colors were grody nursing home green and old-person denture beige. Then lastly, there's a squishy filter to keep out dust. The cooler is clearly designed for notebooks with side air vents, as you might have difficulty mounting it if your only vents are on the back of your laptop, just a heads up. The whole thing is powered via USB and includes four rubber feet, just in case you have a thin laptop, and the cooler makes it so that you couldn't balance it on a table otherwise. The build quality isn't too bad, with an unfortunately glossy black design with some silver accents around it, and a ball-bearing fan on the inside. The cooler is controlled by the three buttons on top, which are present for fan speed up, fan speed down, and a switch that switches between on automatic, on manual, and off. The auto setting uses a temperature sensor to determine what speed to run it at, while the manual setting allows you to pick from one to 13 different fan speeds. Maybe a bit excessive, but for those of you who really want that granular control, I guess you might appreciate it. But how does it actually perform? To answer that question, we used a pair of gaming notebooks. First off was our new EVGA SC17 laptop, featuring an Intel Core i7 Skylake Mobile processor, a 980M GPU. Yeah, this thing can put out a lot of heat when gaming, especially on the bezel between the top of the keyboard and the monitor, which can actually become kind of painful to touch due to the high heat levels. So this laptop seemed to be a great candidate for some extra cooling. We also tested our Venom Blackbook, featuring a Haswell Core i7 processor and a 970M graphics card. Much like the SC17, the Blackbook can get pretty hot, both on the inside and to the touch, so we were curious how the O-Polar would handle this smaller, yet still very powerful laptop. We used our Crysis 3 Skybox load test to heat up our GPU and our CPU for the SC17. We ran the game at 4K at high settings, and then for the Blackbook we used 1080p resolution, but cranked the settings up to very high. We decided to first run the cooler all the way up to max, just to see what it was capable of, and while it was actually rather surprisingly awesome, the results did vary. On the SC17, temperatures on our GPU and CPU only dropped 3-4 degrees Celsius, and the front bezel was nearly the same scorching temperature. However, there was a much more noticeable difference on the smaller Blackbook, as our bezel temperature dropped around 7 degrees Celsius, and our CPU and GPU ran 9-10 degrees colder, a very significant improvement. After switching over to automatic mode, the O-Polar did a nice job with recognizing when to kick things up a notch, but again, the results varied quite a bit between the two laptops. It didn't seem to make a dent in the SC17's temperature. In fact, the O-Polar results were similar to when we just used EVGA's FanBoost option that roughly doubled the speed of the built-in fans. Even when we combined the O-Polar with FanBoost, we only saw a 1 degree improvement on what we got using just, you know, FanBoost. However, the O-Polar's auto mode did cool off our Blackbook a fair amount, about 6 degrees on the bezel and 7 degrees on the GPU, and a full 10 degrees on the CPU. Funnily enough, the O-Polar did an unquestionably better job on the Blackbook, even though the Blackbook's CPU and GPU temperatures with default cooling were higher than those of the SC17. While we can't say with complete certainty what's responsible for the huge difference in our results, the smaller body of the Venom Blackbook may have meant there was a smaller volume of hot air for it to pull out, which would benefit a lot. Or that the smaller space made it easier to apply pressure in order to pull the air out. Or it's quite likely that the SC17 may have just had a more aggressive built-in cooling solution for its higher-end GPU, and the O-Polar couldn't really supplement that very well. So just like any random CPU cooler for your desktop, your mileage may vary in terms of how you're using it and what you're using it for. At 26 bucks on Amazon.com, the O-Polar LCO5 is probably worth trying out if you have an average size to smaller laptop that always seems to be a little bit too hot for comfort, especially if you like to take your games on the road. TunnelBear is the easy-to-use VPN app for mobile and desktop. It lets you tunnel to up to 20 different countries, allowing you to browse the internet and use online websites and services as though you are in that different country. There's also the anonymity of it. They've got apps for iOS, Android, PC, and Mac. They've also got a Chrome extension, and it's super easy to use. You just pick your country in the app, turn the TunnelBear switch on, and watch as your bear tunnels your internet connection to your new location. When you turn it on, two things happen. Your connection gets encrypted with AES-256-bit encryption, and that public IP address that websites can see whenever you access them gets switched, so you show up as though you're somewhere else. And they fixed all the annoying parts of using a VPN for personal use. There's no DNS or port configurations or blah blah blah. You just hit the switch, boom, it goes on. And they give you 500 megabytes of data per month for free, so you can try it out with no credit card required. Then if you want to upgrade, by the way, you can save 10% by going to tunnelbear.com slash LTT. We've got all those links in the video description. Thanks for watching, guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do, but if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit the like button, or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at the Amazon. If you want to buy a $26 cooler for your laptop, I guess. Buying a cool t-shirt like this one, or with a direct monthly contribution to the forum. Now that you're done doing all that kind of stuff, you're probably wondering what to watch next, so click the little button in the top right hand corner to check out our fairly recent video on the SC17, that EVGA laptop that I just told you about, the thing that we cooled. Kind of makes sense.