Suggestions for an overheating laptop?

[Mahdi]

My 10 month old POS laptop has had overheating problems as of late and the temperatures are only going to get warmer.  Does anyone have any suggestions on how to keep it cool?  Yesterday it overheated to the point of shutting down three times while I was working, and I had to take it to a cool dark spot for 5- 15 minutes for it to recover. 

[Dragoon Knight]

We get this a lot in our workshop.  The most common causes are dust clogging fans / heatsinks, along with the laptop being used on surfaces that don't permit adequate air flow.

First, check the fans and any vents on your laptop.  Give them a short, sharp blow of breath and prepare for probably quite a bit of dust to come out.  Pick out any straggling bits.  Ideally, if you can grab some canned air (about

[Mahdi]

We did do some very dusty renovations so it could be the fans are clogged, I'll try blowing them out.

The problems with overheating have occured when it was sitting ona  coffee table or a desk.  Yesterday, when it was really bad, it was on my desk in the sun (the spot where it was, minus the laptop, was 40 degrees C thanks to the sunlight).

[Gruntlord6]

We did do some very dusty renovations so it could be the fans are clogged, I'll try blowing them out.

The problems with overheating have occured when it was sitting ona  coffee table or a desk.  Yesterday, when it was really bad, it was on my desk in the sun (the spot where it was, minus the laptop, was 40 degrees C thanks to the sunlight).

I have a huge Over Heating problem with my laptop gpu, the cpu under load is 100, the gpu is 130. It says celceius, but it doesnt shut down intill 140, so I find that unlikely.

[Andrew]

I have a huge Over Heating problem with my laptop gpu, the cpu under load is 100, the gpu is 130. It says celceius, but it doesnt shut down intill 140, so I find that unlikely.

Make sure to have fire extinguisher nearby.

/seriously

//unless your in some tropic area where that is normal for all computers.

[Dragoon Knight]

Either the temperature reading is incorrect, or something is seriously wrong with your laptop.  130 degrees is much too high.  So is 100, for that matter.  Your computer should have built-in safeguards that shut it down before it gets that high.  Even if it didn't, your laptop fan should be spinning off its bearing trying to dissipate the heat.

Download GPU-Z and take a look at the sensors tab.  Post a screenshot, if you like, but that should give you a better idea of the real temperatures your GPU is experiencing.  And if it really is that high, then take Andrew's advice.  That's a fire hazard.

[Gruntlord6]

most likely the internal monitoring is telling me the farenheit temperature is Celsius.

[D2k Sardaukar]

what you could do is putting a vacuum cleaner on the exit of the cooling fans/ribs. if that not works, you could take it apart and if you can vacuum clean it from there. if that not works, you could remove the heatsink and check if paste is still OK. perhaps buy some good quality paste in case the paste is all dried out.

there was also something with nvidia laptop videocard going bad because of cracks somewhere (bad production), I don't remember which version/edition that was.

[Gruntlord6]

what you could do is putting a vacuum cleaner on the exit of the cooling fans/ribs. if that not works, you could take it apart and if you can vacuum clean it from there. if that not works, you could remove the heatsink and check if paste is still OK. perhaps buy some good quality paste in case the paste is all dried out.

there was also something with nvidia laptop videocard going bad because of cracks somewhere (bad production), I don't remember which version/edition that was.

theres no heatsink to use thermal paste on.

[D2k Sardaukar]

is there even a fan that really turns?

[Gruntlord6]

is there even a fan that really turns?

yes, the case fan and the cpu fan lol.

[Mahdi]

Ok, my computer has been crashing like once an hour all day today for no visible reason.  I activated the CPU sensor but dunno what it means.  Here are the details:

TEMPERATURES

CPU Clock: 1996 MHz (is that the temp in computer speak?  It doesn't say it in degrees?)

CPU usage fluctuating between 5 and 20%

Memory usage holding at 48% (which is weird, because I hve very little running)

[Dragoon Knight]

The CPU Clock is basically how fast your processor is.  It's saying that you have a 2GHz processor, but it doesn't directly relate to how hot it is (unless you're overclocking).

The CPU and Memory usage aren't really anything to worry about, unless they're constantly sitting at extremely high values (like 95 - 98%).  Remember that your operating system is likely to take a good chunk of your RAM.  Again, this isn't directly relevant to how hot it's running.

If you want to check your CPU temperature, I'd recommend something like CoreTemp, which has a wide variety of supported CPUs.

[Mahdi]

Turned on Core Temp - 85 degrees C....

[Dragoon Knight]

Woah, that's way too high.  This is a pretty warm day in the North-East of Scotland, and it's about 24 degrees celsius in my room.  Both the cores on my processor are idling at about 30 to 35 degrees.

There's definitely some cooling issue here.  Did you try the canned air approach?  If so, then I'd really recommend a laptop cooler.  Most BIOSes are designed to auto-shutdown the computer when the CPU reaches those sort of temperatures, to avoid permanent damage.

[Mahdi]

The temp at my desk right now is 22 C.  I can't find my compressed air - I blew into the vent myself for a bit - a bunch of dust came out and the temp dropped into the high 50's.  BUT  now that I have my laptop set back down onto my desk and plugged the second monitor in the temp is back into the low 60's.  Definitely a noticeable difference in sound though from when it was in the 80's.  I'll try to find my compressed air to give it a good blowing to see if that drops the temp more.  How hot should it be running?

[Mahdi]

And yes, I do realize that I just said I was going to give a good blowing.

[Dragoon Knight]

Innuendo aside, that's a good plan.  Try to make sure the straw attachement is there, since the more directed, the better.  Also, ensure that you use short bursts of air, rather than long ones.  The can tends to freeze up otherwise.  If you can't find the canned stuff, try to replicate it with short, hard blows of air directly into the side vent, then from underneath (or wherever the air flow leads).

This is simply packed with innuendo now.  Oh, and turn the thing off before you do any of this. :)

[gryphon]

How hot should it be running?

Mine is running with the values listed below.

CPU 61 C

WLAN 66 C

Mem 52 C

Northbridge 53 C

overall enclosure roughly 27 C

No active cooling at the moment.

[Andrew]

When it overheats is is sitting on your lap or non flat (carpet/fabric) surface?

I had someone phone me today complaining their laptop was randomly shutting off, and most likely cause was overheating because sitting on their lap. I told them to get a cutting board or something to place underneath it if they need it on their lap.

As for temperatures it all depends on the hardware. My desktop CPU is running between 50-60 Celsius. But this is a desktop so it can handle more heat.

85 celsius is probably too hot for a laptop (only going to get worse in the summer!).

One way to decrease heat is less cpu usage. Do you have lots of crap in your sys tray you don't need/use? Possibly open up windows task manager to make sure no apps are using all your CPU power while idling. I had one laptop with broken software using 100% of a core (it was dual core processor), which killed the battery and made it slow.

If you're really desperate to cool it down, there are some cooling pads with fans that could help. Prices range between $20-$60.

[Mahdi]

It is sitting on my desk.

[Andrew]

85 C sitting on a desk :(

You mention sound, I presume the fan is running, and faster than normal when high temps?

I don't know how difficult it would be to open it to see about dust problems.

What's the brand/model number? Maybe someone on the internet has same problem and found a solution, or pics showing it opened up.

[Mahdi]

Since I blew it out with my own lungs the temp is down to the 50's.  We did a lot of reno's here (dusty renos - lots of cutting and sanding) so that's probably the problem. 

[athanasios]

So your laptop may need a good bath!  8)