Toshiba Laptop Cooling Problem

[rkoenn]

I am working on a friends older but rather high end Toshiba laptop. It starts fine and boots into windows but within 5 or so minutes it simply shuts off, not shuts down, just turns off instantly. I opened it up and found dust caked between the fan and heat sink fins. I cleaned it up and started it again and it does the same thing. So today I left it open, powered it up and inspected it while it was running. Well the CPU part of the heat pipe started getting warm and then hot and then quite hot. I felt further down the heat pipe and the pipe itself was just a bit warm. Also the cooling air coming off the fins was cool and barely even warm. So is it possible the heat pipe is not working, that certainly seems to be the case. However before I buy a replacement I was wondering if anyone has any experience with something like this. Obviously if the pipe had leaked that would be the case but I see nothing that indicates that. I don't know if the working fluid would show it it did or not. Any thoughts and experiences with something like this are welcome. Thanks.

Cross-posted in several forums.
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[Valantar]

Heatpipes can take damage from excessive heat (although that does take some doing), so that might be a possible cause if the laptop has been caked with dust and run under high loads for significant amounts of time. Or it might have been improperly sealed, developed a hairline fracture from physical or thermal stress, or a thousand other possible solutions. In any case, easily detectable temperature differences across a heatpipe is a pretty clear sign of it not doing its job, no matter the cause.

Unless a replacement is really expensive, I would give it a try. Make sure to get the necessary TIM and thermal pads for installation (replacing thermal pads with a thick layer of TIM is possible, but generally a bad idea).