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| Once the laptop was powered on, the Massive23 ST comes alive with a 200 x 200 mm fan and cool blue LED | Shown here is the Dell D320 resting on the Massive23 ST with zero spacing. |
After placing the Massive23 ST on the desk and placing a Dell D320 laptop on the face I noticed right off that the 17″ laptop bridged the mesh which ran down the middle of the cooler. The D320 laptop’s hard drive does not have much for standoffs to hold the laptop up off any surface, so through further investigation the D320’s hard drive was not sitting on the metal mesh and there was no space between the bottom of the laptop and the plastic face of the Massive23 ST. This resulted in the middle of the laptop where the RAM is located in staying cooler, which did help with the performance of the laptop over a long period of time as it helped keep the PC more responsive. In turn the hard drive located near the front left of the keyboard was getting little (if any at all) cool air. There is about a 16th of an inch of space between the bottom the D320 and the surface of the Massive23 ST, but as we know that forced air will take the path of least resistance, so most of the air the Massive23 ST is pushing is coming out the front and back of the meshed area and not enough is coming out the sides (starving the hard drive).
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| This photo shows very little spacing between the D320 and the Massve23 ST’s surface. | Another angle. |
Other than the hard drive not being cooled by the laptop cooler, the laptop was noticeably cooler as the keyboard of the D320 was comfortable to use over hours of use. Previously the heat generated by the RAM, processor and hard drive would try to escape out the bottom and couldn’t due to the limited clearance between the bottom of the laptop and table it was resting on. Which because of this inability to dissipate the heat through the bottom, the heat would come up through the keyboard.
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| The Dell D series docking station sitting on the Thermaltake Massive23 ST. | This angle shows the D320 sitting the D series docking station while resting on the Themeraltake Massive23 ST |
Luckily I have a docking station for my D320 which adds an additional .5 inches of space near the back of laptop which assists with giving additional space for air to flow over the hard drive and processor vent. Though the drawback here is once I undock the laptop from the docking station, the docking station which was hanging off the back of the Massive23 ST hangs up on the laptop and eventually drops to the table.
