A really sleek and cool (literally!) Cooling pad.

The NC-09 is the latest in a series of cooling pad unveiled by this Taiwanese manufacturing giant. Lian Li is into manufacturing of Aluminum Chassis and Chassis peripherals, so it is not surprising that the NC-09 comes from them. This notebook cooling pad is meant for laptops of sizes ranging from 12” to 17”. It’s made of light-weight aluminum structure, a pretty big fan with a neon blue-ish radiant when in operation. Meant for high-end laptops, the NC-09 cooler can serve a 17 inch notebook easily, and comes for about $70.
Performance
The fan is the main and probably the only moving part in the whole unit. Yes, a cooling pad is all about the fan – and the NC-09 takes good care of its fan. It is made of tough plastic with matte finish encased in a plastic wheel that is attached by screws to the steel mesh on both side – top and bottom. A wire connecting the fan and the power button is visible. There are in total 11 blades, which moves at a very good speed and with such low resistance that once I switched off the power – it took almost 8 seconds for the fan to come to standstill. As far as making sound is concerned – when the notebook is placed, the sound of the fan moving is absolutely blocked so that you work in total silence. When the notebook is not there, you will of course hear a little sound (not irritating though) through the steel mesh. The large steel mesh allows extra air-flow under the notebook.

The coolest part here is that the cooler draws its power via the USB port so that there is no requirement of batteries or power adapters. The USB cable provided along with in connected on one end to the cooling unit and the other end to the notebook USB port, from which the unit will draw power. I kept the NC-09 on my bed running overnight with my 14” Thinkpad on it, and found out it’s pretty evenly cooled out i.e., no particularly hot spots on the laptop – which in itself is an indication that the pad is cooling the system uniformly.

My Thinkpad T400 CPU runs up to 61°C (Everest Ultimate reading) when run full-loaded for one hour, and the NC-09 could bring it down to 54°C. Now mind you the T400 has a very good cooling system of its own. So you can be sure the NC-09 will give you quite a relief, added by the fact that it is also comfortable to keep (with the laptop on it) on your lap during those long e-mails and browsings and doesnot keep slanting down.