Laptops have undergone an incredible amount of development over the past couple of years. A steep increase in performance was facilitated by chips that are ever more densely packed with transistors. In parallel, the amount of processors was multiplied, the hardware was put into slimmer cases, and better graphics cards enabled bigger screens with higher resolutions. These developments, however, come at a cost: heat. The greatest threat for your laptop, except for your your coffee mug, is overheating. It can cause hardware failure and permanent damage. In this article I will introduce ways that you can prevent or fix an overheating laptop and thus improve the performance and the extend the lifespan of your laptop. A sure sign that your notebook gets too hot is when your fan always runs at maximum speed. You may also experience reduced performance because the CPU cuts back its clock speed to escape heat pressure. Moreover, the fail safe software may trigger a sudden shutdown to prevent hardware damage.

Refer to the article 3 Laptop Computer Temperature Monitor Apps That Could Save Your Hard Drive 3 Laptop Computer Temperature Monitor Apps That Could Save Your Hard Drive to find out how you can measure the actual heat values inside your laptop. In two words: insufficient cooling. The reasons include dust blocking intake grills or exhaust ports, a clocked up fan, or a degenerated thermal grease (aka thermal compound) between the heat sink and the CPU. There are several hardware fixes that can cure overheating. The first and most important thing you need to do when your laptop is overheating, is to clean the fan/s that provide/s cooling to the CPU and graphics card. Over time they build up layers of dust and dirt that slow them down and block flow of air. Consult your laptop’s manual or manufacturer to find out how you can open the laptop to access and clean these parts. Before you attempt to do any cleaning, however, follow these steps: Carefully clean the fan/s with a cotton swab dipped in a drop of alcohol.

Make sure the alcohol has completely evaporated before you reconnect the laptop to the power. You can also use a vacuum cleaner to remove the dust and dirt that clocks up the fan/s. To prevent damage to the fan, do not let it revolve in the wrong direction. If you want to use canned air to clean the fan, arrest the fan by holding it down. Next, you can clean the exhaust port by sucking out air with a vacuum cleaner. The exhaust port usually sits on the side of the laptop. It’s the opening that blows out hot air. The intake grills are small openings that allow air to be sucked into the laptop by the revolving fans. They can sit on the sides or at the bottom of your notebook. To clear the intake grills, spray them with canned air. Finally, you can apply fresh thermal grease to the interface between the CPU and its heat sink. Again, please consult the laptop’s manual or manufacturer to obtain instructions on how to disassemble these components. Inside My Laptop has some great tutorials on how to fix your laptop, including How to apply thermal grease on laptop processor.

Most laptops suck in cooling air through their bottoms. If the laptop sits on an uneven surface like a blanket, pillow, or your lap, the flow of air into the laptop is disturbed. Subsequently, the cooling is not optimal, heat builds up, the surface becomes hot, the temperature of sucked in cooling air increases, and eventually the laptop overheats.cost of ac coil cleaning This scenario is easily avoided by keeping the laptop on a hard and flat surface. best battery operated pool vacuum cleanerYou can use something as simple as a tray or get a special laptop holder or lap stand.best way to clean tan leather car seats Laptop coolers are meant to provide additional cooling. hp 2000 laptop cpu fan

However, getting the wrong cooler can actually make the problem worse. Before you purchase a cooler, you need to understand the flow of air into and out of your laptop. As mentioned above, most laptops suck in air for cooling from the bottom. vacuum cleaner price delhiThis makes sense because warm air rises upwards. best way to remove duct tape from a carHowever, a cooler that sits underneath the laptop and sucks air away from it, does not contribute to laptop cooling and rather causes a more rapid overheating. If your laptop has intake grills at its bottom, purchase a cooler that blows cool air upwards, i.e. into the laptop. You can also get a passive cooler that does not consume power and merely absorbs heat. If none of the hardware fixes result in lasting improvements, you can also revert to software fixes that address the performance and power usage of your laptop. 

However, addressing excessive heat with a software fix means you give up performance in favor of preserving the hardware. You can either reduce the brightness of your screen or reduce the CPU clock speed. In Windows, underclocking or undervolting is done in the BIOS, but can also be controlled through software tools. Consult the Undervolting Guide on the Notebook Review forum for more information about this procedure. Finally, let’s lighten this up a little. This list was inspired by a Top 11 list on BBSpot. How often do you clean your laptop to prevent it from overheating? Do you have any additional tips and tricks to share? Image credits: Steve Cukrov, Sergej Khakimullin,  Olga Popova, Jiri Pavlik Sometimes my laptop heats up too much and it will shut down my computer (it also burns my legs if it's on my lap). Nothing permanent has happened yet, but I'm afraid that it will sometime. I use it in different places around my house, usually at my desk or on my lap if I'm in a recliner.

I try to stay in places where it is cool around me, but this only helps a little bit. I also have a cooling fan stand at one of the tables I sit at, but this obviously down work when I have the laptop on my lap. Is there an easy way to keep my computer cool when it is on a table or on my lap? The fans are designed to keep the components of your laptop cool. When the inside gets inevitably dusty, the fans have to work harder to be less effective. In the worst of cases, it'll look like this: In most laptops, using a vacuum from the outside will be strong enough to get most, if not all, of the dust. If you're comfortable doing so, I would still recommend taking it apart though. Place it on a book (or clipboard) on top of your lap The fans are designed to blow hot air either to the back or to the sides, and suck air in also from either the sides or back. Placing the laptop directly on a fabric surface plugs the vents. Placing the laptop on a book, clipboard, or other hard surface between you and your lap will allow the vents to do their job.

First, we must know why laptops overheat. All of the equipment inside a laptop, processors, RAM disks, hard drives, etc., work really hard, so the computer gets hot. Most computers have a cooling system on the bottom, but when the computer is on your lap or a table (mostly your lap) the vents of the cooling system get blocked, so the laptop overheats. Therefore, a very simple solution is to use an old egg carton. If you put the egg carton under the laptop, it won't overheat because the holes in between each egg holder allows air to circulate under the laptop allowing it to cool. Only do this at home, unless you want to look weird at a coffee shop or something. This is an approach not discussed so far - taking into account all the physical considerations, like placing the laptop in a hard surface, clean the vents, and don't placing it near fabric, the only thing I can think of is taking care of it through the actual laptop's software/hardware settings: Make sure that the vents are working at full speed - for this, you may want to check the BIOS settings for an option to set the speed of the vents to a fixed value.

The most common way to access the BIOS settings is to power on your laptop, wait for the first logo to appear (generally, the logo of the laptop's manufacturer), and press F2 or ESC in the keyboard. Depending on your Operating System, you may want to check the "Power Options" - if you set this to an option like "Power Saving" or "Balanced", you are (non-technical at all explanation) forcing the CPU to work slower, hence consuming less electrical power, therefore not heating up so much as it would in a "Best Performance" option. If you have a container with the same size of the bottom of your laptop (or bigger), you can fill it with ice and cool water (water to have better contact with the top of container) and put your laptop on it. It wouldn't be permanent, but even when the ice will melt, the cold water will serve the cooling function (don't think that the water will get warm really fast). You can also use multiple small containers, but it will reduce efficiency, unless those containers are interconnected.

Also: you can lean those containers to the wall, it will absorb the heat which these containers get from the computer (especially if it is cold outside). I have seen this same problem with Toshiba laptops. Vacuuming did not do much to resolve. So off to computer technician who disassembled the laptop to clean the fan area. Noting that my computer draws air from underneath and exhausts to one side, I built a "box"....a sheet of 4-5 mm building board matched to the size of the case. Around the perimeter of this board I glued a series of blocks 8 mm high and 15-20 mm wide in the form of a dashed line " - - - - -". On top of the "dashed line", a solid piece of block continuous around the perimeters. Now cut a few slots in the continuous block for the "studs" or "legs" that support the case. The gaps between the dashed blocks are covered externally with a piece of fine muslin or cheese cloth glued into place. The face of the block meeting the underside of computer case is sealed with a strip of foam rubber ( 4 mm x 15 mm) such as found in hardware stores as window "draft stopper".

The critical issue will be whether your box filter allows enough air flow, so maximise the gaps between blocks This seemed to work for me stopping the accumulation of dust internally. Use a rack like the ones in bakeries used to keep bread on a shelf. It helps the laptop fan breathe and produce wind. First question: has it always been like this? If not, did it start abruptly, or develop gradually? (Gradually means it's probably dust buildup.) One thing that hasn't been addressed is to see what your laptop is actually doing when it overheats. Install a CPU monitor and check the load. If you're just doing stuff like text editing & web browsing, you should see only a few percent CPU utilization. If you're e.g. gaming and running the CPU near 100% for long periods, it will naturally run hotter. A monitor should also be able to show you actual fan speed &c: if it's heating up and the fan's not turning, there's your problem. You can use a program like PowerTop (on Linux) to discover programs & hardware that aren't really being used, but still suck power (and so create heat).

In addition to the recommendations to vacuum out the vents, you may also want to make a note that the vents on a laptop for intake might actually be on the bottom - while the vent holes on the bottom of the laptop might be being obscured by the table/book/clipboard/your legs, that will also increase the temperature in your laptop. I own a Multimedia grade laptop that gets hot when the vents are obscured, and actually, it gets hot just running the OS I use (I don't use Windows, and it's not an Apple product) - I run sensor applets to report me the sensors temps, but I always catch it before shutoff. A portable cooling pad could help, with two fans, and the ability to use that as the surface even on your legs and such (~$20-$45 US). The closest to what I use is this model by Targus sold on NewEgg, but there are a lot of similar models that also work. (Ones that have their own internal power by battery to control the fans, ones that connect to USB, etc.) After you've had the laptop awhile you should take it apart and clean the dust away by blowing or vacuuming.