Common for laptops to overheat as they age?

[ioni]

Recently my laptop has started to shut off from over heating. A couple days ago I was only surfing and streaming some tv shows and it shut down from heat. Now I was just playing SC2 and it shut down from heat in the middle of a match. I even had my cooling pad on it

The laptop is about 4 years old. I'm looking to get a new one but want to hold out a little longer until more sandy bridge laptops get released in March/April and I can see some reviews.

I was assuming my laptop would be resellable but if it keeps over heating and shutting down, it's hardly going to be worth anything when reselling it. Anyway, is this normal? Or is it more likely there is dust built up inside somewhere? I don't have anything to open it since I'm on travel for a bit, but from looking through the vents, I don't see any dust in the fan.

 

[frostedflakes]

Probably dust buildup. I think the thermal paste under the heatsinks can dry up over time as well and lose performance.

Other than cleaning it, the only thing I can really think of is maybe buying one of those laptop cooling pads. This is more of a temporary fix, though.

 

[csubusa]

it may be common.

is a cooling performance degradation due to normal factors common, probably yes.

your laptop is about to die, take it apart, clean or replace the fans, new thermal paste on the heatsinks, or pay somebody to do it.

Your laptop has a heat problem.

 

[Emulex]

Need to clean the heat pump from dust and re apply thermal paste

 

[GFORCE100]

You need to roll up your sleeves and unfortunately strip it out enough to get to where the fans and ventilation holes are to clear them of any dust build up. That's why it's overheating, assuming it's not a design defect and it always ran hot from when new.

Dust and computers don't mix, it's like a disease, slowly but surely it will do its harm if not taken care of. If the fans are forced to run faster due to heat then they'll suck in more dust quicker too, another reason to buy laptops that keep their fans on low speed most of the time.

That's the best you can do. Perhaps re-apply some thermal compound to the CPU and GPU if possible.

 

[hans007]

the thermal pads in laptops tend to be more of this rubber looking stuff with a metal strip in it. i think its just because its easier for factory workers to apply.

that said, i've had laptops before where i swapped that out for regular thermal paste and it made a huge difference.... if anything the original thermal pads, tend to conduct badly causing the fans to run all the time AND heat up the bottom of the laptop since heat isnt dissipating right.

 

[flensr]

The cooling fan might have even completely died, or isn't turning fast enough. Some laptops have 2 fans and if one dies you might not hear it since the remaining fan will be running full-speed to try to cool everything down.

Depending on the laptop you might be able to open it up and fix it yourself, but that isn't always easy or even possible. My IBM thinkpad is easy to open and fix, but my wife's old toshiba took over 6 hours to carefully, without the service manual, open up to replace the cooling fan. And that was after I managed to convince an authorized toshiba service center to send me the fan, because toshiba refuses to sell replacement parts to regular customers.

So, it depends on what is really going wrong. Taking a can of compressed air and carefully squirting some air into the fan intake and exhaust vents may help some, but be careful not to blow too much in there or you could damage the fan or blow dust farther inside. Just short bursts is best, and if you hear a fan whirring when you squirt in the air, then don't do sustained bursts in that area.

If the heatsink fan is really dead, you can try to take it to a computer repair shop that is certified to repair that brand of laptop but they may end up charging a few hundred bucks just to replace a $25 fan, because it can take hours to disassemble and reassemble some consumer grade laptops. That is one great thing about ibm and now lenovo thinkpad laptops - they are field serviceable by everyday users because the service manuals are available for download and they're not too hard to take apart or put back together. I wouldn't work on my wife's toshiba ever again though... taking that thing apart sucked and I almost couldn't get it back together again because it was like a badly designed puzzle.

 

[flensr]

I almost forgot... yes, that is "normal", from the perspective that fans and cooling solutions can degrade over time. My thinkpad's cooling fan died after 5 years and when it did, I had to replace the heatsink and fan together since they come as a unit. My wife's toshiba laptop cooling fan also died after about 4 years, and that was a separate small fan that was very hard to replace even though it wasn't attached to the heatsink.

So yes, it is "normal" because it happens sometimes. Fans just wear out after a period of time especially if they're left on all the time or are running at high speed all the time due to heavy cpu loading. My thinkpad fan runs a LOT faster all the time when I have the windows 7 visual effects turned on, because it runs the gpu a lot harder and creates nearly double the normal heat load. Turning off the visual effects makes it so the laptop runs a lot cooler and the fan rarely goes to full speed. Since I need this laptop to last up to another year or so, I am running win7 in ugly mode to save wear and tear on the fan since it wasn't designed for the gpu to be working hard all the time.

 

[hal2kilo]

Recently my laptop has started to shut off from over heating. A couple days ago I was only surfing and streaming some tv shows and it shut down from heat. Now I was just playing SC2 and it shut down from heat in the middle of a match. I even had my cooling pad on it

The laptop is about 4 years old. I'm looking to get a new one but want to hold out a little longer until more sandy bridge laptops get released in March/April and I can see some reviews.

I was assuming my laptop would be resellable but if it keeps over heating and shutting down, it's hardly going to be worth anything when reselling it. Anyway, is this normal? Or is it more likely there is dust built up inside somewhere? I don't have anything to open it since I'm on travel for a bit, but from looking through the vents, I don't see any dust in the fan.

Check the vents, open it if you know how and clean all the dust that's accumulated in it. Mine had a screen that was completely covered up with dust.

 

[ericlp]

Not just do the fans slow down from dust build up but the entire heat sinks get coated with dust as well. Bust thing? Open it up "REPLACE" the fans, replace the thermal paste and clean the heat sinks really well. blow out any dust hiding around in the machine!

 

[Tom]

I had one that ran a lot cooler after cleaning the vents with canned air even tho they didnt look dirty.