About a month ago my laptop used to run at about 65-80 degrees while playing a particular game. Now it overheats to the point it will shutdown while playing that same game. Why ;_;?
For reference, the game is heroes of newerth. Laptop has 4 gigs of ram, 1 gb 9600m GS gpu, and a core 2 duo at 2.6 and 2.7 Mhz. My old laptop died a similar death, as have many of my friend's. Why does this happen, what causes this? Is there any way to fix this situation? The laptop is a young one year old, poor guy, not ready to go yet!
Posted Jan 17, 2010, 6:41 AM UTC
319
You probably need to clean out the fan. When dust gets clogged in there, the fan can't intake/expel air as well as it should. Try getting a can of compressed air or even a vacuum cleaner and clean it out.
Definitely do this. I dusted my computer last night after trying everything else to get it's old performance back. Dusting it was like flicking a switch, everything ran faster and smoother. It's better than a defrag, virus scan, and clean all at the same time.
Thanks, I'll make sure to get some as soon as I can. Is there a best way to spray the air in there, or should I just go to town on the vents/intake?
It depends what kind of laptop you have. Some are a lot easier to take apart than others. The best way to clean out a fan is to open the whole shebang up, but I guess it all comes down to whether or not you are comfortable doing that. The laptop I own (Toshiba) has an intake vent on the bottom and an exhaust on the side. If yours has a similar setup, you could always try blowing air in that way (in the intake and it'll come out the exhaust). That should get some of the dust out.
It's really better to take it apart, if possible. I've seen fans where the dust has turns into a felt-like mat, and I don't think it'd be dislodged with compressed air. I've even one time seen a moth wing covering most of the air intake! I guess the rest of the moth fell out or got away...
Plus you can pull the heatsink off the CPU & GPU and add some good Arctic Silver or equivalent thermal compound on there. It does help.
LOL! Poor moth didn't know what he was getting himself into..
I'm going to try to figure out how/if opening would effect my warranty, and then go from there..sounds like it's pretty much inevitable though. My dad has some experience building comps, so I could probably call him up..between him and google hopefully I'll be able to get the right amount of thermal glue on there.
TheWaterGod & apullin have some solid advice here. I'd also suggest the following: get a multi-compartment tray to hold the different sized screws, take pictures as you go to remember which screw went where. If possible find a detailed disassembly guide with photos & have this on-screen on another PC or print it out.