You Can Have A Liquid-Cooled Laptop - But There's A Catch

Laptops don't have liquid cooling systems the same way that desktops do because they're not designed for them, nor would they be decent candidates for them due to physical limitations. That's not to say there's no liquid-cooling solution at all for laptop users; you can technically buy an external liquid cooler and set it up for your laptop, but it won't be anything like the built-in ones you might be acquainted with in a desktop computer. Those all-in-one or custom liquid cooling systems aren't constructed for portability; they have many parts, can sometimes be sensitive to impacts/placement, and are generally heavier than their dry counterparts.

Installing one would require a workaround. A few gaming laptops do already use external systems with small, detachable water-cooling docks or sealed, flat vacuum chambers containing a little liquid. Liquid cooling does bring some advantages, as it allows computers to sustain higher power draw at safer temperatures without overheating, since too much heat exposure risks damaging components over time. Liquid cooling helps prevent this issue because it dissipates heat more efficiently than air. It can also lead to a quieter system because fans don't need to spin as fast to cool the components.

But using liquid cooling with laptops also has some drawbacks. For one, you're usually equipping your laptop with an outside apparatus (a mechanical pump) or a dock, meaning that's more components you need to bring with you if you travel — which might encourage you to keep your setup stationary instead. When you do that, it essentially means turning your laptop into a mini desktop computer — defeating the purpose of owning one.

Lenovo built a self-contained liquid cooler for VRAM cooling in the Lenovo Legion 9i, but only for the 2023 model. The Gen 10 refresh variant replaced the system with the Legion Coldfront Vapor system. It turns out that the installed liquid cooler only added more weight to the design, and it didn't actually make too much of a difference. So Lenovo shifted its approach: using a high-performance air-based system that uses phase-change liquid to cool the components instead of looping liquid through.

Other laptops use a similar design to what Lenovo changed to, and that's sometimes referred to as the liquid cooling solution you'll see in these portable devices — the phase-change liquid (vapor chamber) setup. Asus also uses IceCool and Vapor Chamber technologies. What this does is use phase-change with a small amount of deployed coolant inside copper heat pipes — the heat from the CPU/GPU vaporizes the liquid coolant. The vapor travels from the heated pipe or vapor chamber toward the cooler end, then makes contact with the heat exchanger, then condenses back into liquid. The cycle keeps repeating once it goes back toward the heated part of the system.