Hello!

Well, I got a question! It was answered before on the internet, but still, no direct answer and I still found this topic a bit controversial. So I am curious to know more of your opinions!

I have an MSI gaming laptop which is pretty ok (GTX 1050, i7-7700HQ, 8GB DDR4, 256SSD, etc...), but it runs pretty damn hot! I always had desktops with decent coolers, so it's the first time I am experiencing high temperatures.

So I want to know: When I am hooking it up to a TV or external monitor, should I leave the lid open? And if I close it while gaming. will these high temperatures damage the screen?

Thank you for your answers!

P.S. Yeah, I got Linus on my avatar, but I am still a noob tech wise!

Here are couple of ideas:

Close the lid, and after playing a while (when it gets hot and fans start revving up) open the lid and touch the keyboard, is it significantly hot, and is it causing the screen to become hot as well?

Also, you could try laying the laptop upside down, since heat rises, it would potentially be going in the opposite direction of the screen. I'm not sure how much this would matter though as the screen lays so close to the rest of the laptop body.

how do you use the keys with it closed?

Ok! Very interesting! I've tried gaming with the lid closed and I remember that screen was kinda hot...

Putting a laptop upside down seems like a funny, but an interesting idea tho, I'll try it this evening! I'm just plugging an USB keyboard, and then I play with a gamepad.

OH! :P
DUH

Many laptops are designed to run cool enough also with lid closed, at least those for which you can buy a dock station (because the meaning there is that it is just sitting in the dock station, and you are using an external monitor and keyboard.

I'm not quite sure about gaming laptops though, they normally don't have docking station accessories and generally generate more heat than "business laptops", I guess. Also I am unsure how susceptible the screens are for the extra heat that they might get through the keyboard (which they are facing), so I have to guess:

I'd probably leave it open or at least slighly open, if possible. It doesn't even have to be all the way wide open, just a small crack between the keyboard and the screen.

Still, I am fairly certain they are designed to run ok also lid closed, but who the heck knows? God? And some say he doesn't even exist, so there's that too.

Put the laptop in the freezer and run a cable from that through the water cooler.

Get a decent cooling pad for it and you should be fine - mine helps cut off peak temperatures by around 4 degrees in those hot summer days when you shouldn't really be gaming outside of the refrigerator.

At my house I get yelled at if I leave the lid down.

This.
Laptop cooling sucks, get an external cooling pad and you'll see noticeable decreases in temperature.

That being said, I'm not sure about the lid closed thing, I do worry about leaving it on (and running by disabling sleep) with the lid closed even for non gaming tasks.
If you can I would leave it open, but if it's not convenient too then I would check the regularly to make sure it's not getting too hot. The coolpad might reduce temperatures enough to eliminate the issue entirely, I'm not sure though as I don't have a proper gaming laptop and can't compare how hot it gets.

The times I've played on the big screen, I left it open. And it's partly because of the concerns you mention. The rig has good cooling but no sense adding to the thermal load if a simple option exists.

As an option to a cooling pad, I've had good results using a clip-on desk fan. Multipurpose, too.

How much does it help in your case? I haven't noticed it being that important, and logically thinking it is because the cooling pad helps to cool down only the exterior (the bottom part) of the laptop, not the innards. Certainly it makes sure there's enough fresh air circulating under the laptop, but that's it. If there is e.g. dust inside the laptop or the fans inside the laptop are not working optimally, then the laptop will overheat regardless of the cooling pad.

As long as the laptop is not lying on a soft sofa or something (blocking its ventilation), I don't feel a cooling pad is that important. In a way I feel it might even make the laptop generate more heat, after all it uses extra power from one of the USB ports.

Oh an about "laptop cooling sucking", it depends. I am happy with the cooling of my old ASUS ROG gaming laptop, and it is pretty quiet considering how effective it seems to be for cooling the innards. It has two fans inside the machine, one for the GPU and one for the CPU.

Honestly, I'm surprised by the amount of people who keep the lid up on their laptops while gaming out of pure concern for thermal efficiency. In my case, I never could detect any difference between keeping it open or closed.

I agree that your mileage may vary depending on the laptop you have, but I've been gaming for 6 years now with the lid down and never had any issues whatsoever.

Albeit, I do have one of those "cool touch" (marketing-induced term) cases that theoretically doesn't cause any thermal discomfort in the keyboard area even when you're swinging the CPU & GPU full throttle... which is not as fantastic as they'd like you to think, since it still gets rather warm sometimes, but never unbearable - I'd put it around 40-45C max. Your screen is bound to get to higher temps than that if you're using it in direct sunlight in summer - not that you should ever do that :).

I actually did a before/after measurement on my laptop when I first bought a cooling pad and it does have a noticeable effect - again this clearly depends on the laptop model you have. Mine has 2 intake vents on the bottom, one near the HDD enclosure/RAM modules and the other near the GPU heatpipe. I bought a cooling pad that has 3 adjustable fans that you can move around as needed, so I set all of them right under these vents.

The peak CPU/GPU temperatures dropped by about 2°C, and the temps on my classical 5400RPM HDD dropped by about 4°C, so all that cooler air that's being forcefully pushed inside the case while the laptop is under load does indeed help.

Various people that have similarly placed intake vents, complemented by a dorsal or lateral exhaust vent, have noticed a positive effect on system temps just by employing various solutions to lift their laptops by a few extra millimeters off the plane surface they usually come in contact with. This ensures better ventilation since the intake vents have a larger volume of air they can potentially tap into without creating vortices or suction, and better overall thermal transfer since you won't get a residual heat effect off of the surface you'd normally store your laptop on.

You don't have to take my word for it of course: I strongly recommend you try it out yourself and see if it works for your laptop. I expect that in some cases, for laptops that are built to operate very close to their max thermal limit or have dust-ridden internal fans, it won't be of that much help.

Well, my old laptop used to blue screen frequently when playing (or actually more often when I stopped playing for some reason) more intensive games (Civ 4 was the main culprit).
After getting the cooling pad that stopped completely. Admittedly the laptop still died, but it was a refurb and I think the previous overheating contributed to killing it off.

My new laptop I always plug the pad in when gaming and have never noticed any serious heat up even with quite new or intensive games, and never had any overheating related crashes. Though I'm not sure how much use it is with this one as it doesn't actually have vents at the bottom...

I think that does have a lot to do with it too, I used to just use it on my lap, and the fabric (and flesh) used to obstruct the vents. A cooling pad is a solid ventilated surface that will help distribute the heat better and prevent obstructing any vents or fans which might be there.

That's just my experience. Maybe dedicated gaming laptops are better, but I've never had a laptop that didn't run hot at some point, sometimes to the point of discomfort.