Hot laptops

[diligentcircle]

I think it's pretty common knowledge that a lot of laptops have a problem of collecting dust in their fans over time which is impossible to clean out. Well, my laptop (a Toshiba Satellite L305-S5955) is at that time where the fan just doesn't work as well as it's supposed to, so it tends to get too hot and perform an emergency shutdown after only ~5 hours of use in my cool bedroom (and with my cold hands).


For now, it's not too big of a deal. I deal with it by shutting my laptop down whenever I take a break to play a game on my Pandora or eat something. That helps cool it down. Or, if I really want to keep using it, I'll grab a cold drink (with ice) and set it on top of the laptop. Seems to be somewhat helpful.


It's an old, low-end laptop (as you can see if you google the name of the laptop), so I'm not all that interested in taking it to a repair shop to clean out the fan (unless it's cheaper than a good laptop cooler, the heating is a serious problem, and I REALLY can't afford to buy a new laptop). So, simple question: What household solutions would you use to keep your old laptop cool? Since it seems you can buy a decent laptop cooler for $25 on Amazon, it has to be cheaper than that. ^_^


(Don't say "open the laptop up and clean the fan"... I don't know about other laptops, but this one seems to be manufactured specifically to prevent you from opening it. I think It's possible, but it feels like trying to open it would break something. Too risky for my tastes! )

 

[Kaepora Gaebora]

I actually bought a laptop cooler fairly recently, and it has noticeably helped. I say the $25 is worth it, if you optimize your purchase decision based on where the fans may help you most. Just having the laptop lifted off the solid surface of the desk would probably help (such as lifting the corners a bit for air flow underneath).


I don't have any metrics to support my experience, but my laptop would overheat while gaming previous to buying the cooler. After buying the cooler, the laptop hasn't overheated once.

 

[diligentcircle]

I actually bought a laptop cooler fairly recently, and it has noticeably helped. I say the $25 is worth it, if you optimize your purchase decision based on where the fans may help you most. Just having the laptop lifted off the solid surface of the desk would probably help (such as lifting the corners a bit for air flow underneath).


I don't have any metrics to support my experience, but my laptop would overheat while gaming previous to buying the cooler. After buying the cooler, the laptop hasn't overheated once.

Yeah, I believe you. Actually, I'm considering buying a cooler. I'm just interested in the topic of household solutions.

 

[mcobit]

I clean the notebook fans at work with airpressure. Works pretty well. 3 bars should be sufficient.


But block the fan from moving before using compressed air, as they colud take damage while spinning too fast.


Edit: Only thing, that really killed a coolingsystem of a notebook for me was high humidity and a lot of dust and cigarette smoke...


You can imagine, how the coolers looked like.

 

[Mr Rob]

I bought a netbook a few years ago, and I was lucky as it was one of the few laptops that are actually good at being opened up and tinker with the insides. Unscrew the base, and there's the fan, easily removable, cleanable, and I can even oil it from time to time. Even gave it a memory upgrade one day, too. Spilled coffee on the keyboard once, popped it out and put a new one in. Three year old netbook still runs like a champ.


I really wish more systems were like this.

 

[Darkknight512]

Blast of air with a toothpick to hold the fan from moving will remove dust. If your up to it, take the notebook apart and take the cooler off and replace the thermal paste. The high heat from laptop chips tend to make thermal paste turn into "rubber" and it is absolutely useless at conducting heat.


Replacing thermal paste just's needs a small tube costing about 5 bucks and a screw driver. I've dropped temperatures by about 10-15C in laptops before by using good thermal paste and the correct amount, most notebook manufactures put way too much on there,

 

[Hoodoo]

Oh, I need to get mine cleaned. Need to bring it to a laptop workshop which already did it for me, maybe even get a newer CPU if the motherboard can host it and more RAM.

 

[Darkknight512]

Oh, I need to get mine cleaned. Need to bring it to a laptop workshop which already did it for me, maybe even get a newer CPU if the motherboard can host it and more RAM.

You usually can't take the CPU out of a laptop motherboard if I'm correct, they are soldered in.

 

[TrashyMG]

Actually very few laptops use soldered on processors, they generally have similar socket designs of a regular motherboard.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

I thought this thread was called hot lapdancers :blink: where am I? what the....oops.

 

[Hoodoo]

You usually can't take the CPU out of a laptop motherboard if I'm correct, they are soldered in.

You usually can. Well it used to be this way. You just need to find out what CPs do socket and BIOS support. You can swap HDD to SSD, install better screen, stick in more RAM and do many other cool things.

 

[maxxdoutvdub]

I bought a netbook a few years ago, and I was lucky as it was one of the few laptops that are actually good at being opened up and tinker with the insides. Unscrew the base, and there's the fan, easily removable, cleanable, and I can even oil it from time to time. Even gave it a memory upgrade one day, too. Spilled coffee on the keyboard once, popped it out and put a new one in. Three year old netbook still runs like a champ.


I really wish more systems were like this.

i have a 2 year old acer netbook that i put 2 gb of ram and a 500 gb hd in. picked up a 9 cell battery from amazon.com. i have ubuntu and backtrack on it (atheros wifi ) and itll even run a windows xp virtual machine quite well. the thing is a beast and it gets like 8.5 hours on that monster battery, cool thing about the batt is its so retarded huge it keeps the netbook at an angle with about 1.25" of air space under it. it seems to help it disapate heat when its on a solid surface.