Quote - use whatever you have to.  ive rendered with my laptop while traveling.

if its a laptop the most important thing is to make sure the cooling vents arent obscured - ie: not sitting on your lap or on a blanket and partially blocked.

you can tune your render settings to render quicker, but AFAIK unless you are using a CPU throttling app your CPU usage is going to hit 100% regardless.

 

 so if i keep the vents clear  - do you think its safe to keep rendering without screwing up my laptop? i would be gutted if i couldnt render....