I have owned 3 of those notebook coolers... and they all pretty much suck. Noisy... but the best of them *do* reduce temps a little bit. If you are doing intensive stuff on your laptop, it might be worth it for you (I was compiling on mine, so wanted to keep it as cool as possible). As stated above ...

I disagree that the heat spreaders are just bling. My RAM gets very hot at stock speeds (although its entirely debatable whether the heat spreaders actually do anything useful).

RAM can get very hot (like burn my finger hot).

Just thought I'd follow up on this issue. I ended up ordering from Petra's. Cost delivered to my door was about 8 USD per fan, which is pretty good all things considered. In fact, that is cheaper than any brand name fan I could find here, so am happy

Yep agreed... all our lives would be considerably easier if motherboards had enough speed-controllable fan headers, or even better, fans were silent! :) EDIT: FWIW this is what I had in mind: http://www.pcdimmer.de/ This page (click the 'english' button) has circuit diagrams and instructions for mak...

Ok having read some more about mCubed, yep this is pretty much exactly what I was asking for. Its seriously over priced given the cost of the components, but given my lack of hardware skills...

Thanks for the help!

Redzo: I mentioned SpeedFan in my post. I want an add-on that can be controlled by SpeedFan (or something like it). Ideally without replacing my motherboard! Sorry if that wasn't clear. jessekopelman: Hmmm, that looks like it might do it. Actually it seems to do far more than I want, but also that. ...

Can anyone suggest a device that can control fan speed via software? For example, most motherboards have a couple of fan headers that allow speed control via appropriate software (speedfan). But, what if I want more? Having knobs and manually controlling the speed seems insane to me. Placing temp se...

Scythe were actually the first thing I looked for... but figured it should be easier finding something made in China than Japan. I would love to find any of: -Yate Loon/Nexus -Scythe S-Flex -ebmPabst -Noctua But haven't had any luck. I have found one company that at some point in time had GlobalWin,...

I wonder if anyone can help me find some Yate Loon/Nexus fans? Given I live in Hong Kong, with the factory most likely just over the border, you'd think they would be prevalent here... but they aren't. In fact, from what I can tell, I can get them from the US (high shipping cost), or from Australia ...