RadDevonWhy do most gaming laptops have vents on the bottom?
Decoy321It’s by necessity. The hardware in a gaming laptop gets a lot hotter, so you need wider openings that are closer to the heat generating parts. If you were to do this on the sides, you’d need to build the case bigger and put a much stronger heat transfer system to account for the smaller and further opening.
How does it help though when the user inevitably uses it on their lap and covers those vents?
beefcatIt doesn’t, the assumption is that users will not use them directly on their laps for heavy loads.
There isn’t muchthey can do. There isn’t enough room on the sides to vent all of that heat. This is the tradeoff you make when you ask for 200 watts of performance in a laptop form factor.