I think my laptop overehaets... just a tad

[Hoboclese]

I ran a stress test on my laptop for gags and found something alarming.
i had the laptop so that it had an air gap of about a 1/2" between it and the table and so to get better than normal cooling but the results of the test had the cpu temperature at a little over 100C which made me a bit scared.

I've had the laptop for about three years now and it has always had overheating problems so i thought it would be high but that was too high for comfort. What i am wondering though is if this would be accurate? See it was a temperature given by software and i know these can be inaccurate but seeing as this is a laptop i thought it would probably be pretty spot on?

so anyone who is knowledgeable in these areas care to call BS or to tell me to a fire extinguisher on hand at all times

oh and laptop is a fujitsu lifebook s series with a AMD sempron running XP sp3

[AndrewZorn]

What software (monitor and stress)

I thought Semprons were supposed to shut down at or before 100*C

At that temp it should be unstable... try running Prime95 and see if it gets errors at that temp (not that I'd want to get it that high if it actually gets that hot though, but then again, it's not good for much if it errors out).

[Martijn]

Most FS notebooks have tiny heatsinks that get clogged with dus easily. I would open up the notebook and see if you can suck out some dust with a vacuum cleaner.

[twilyth]

Most FS notebooks have tiny heatsinks that get clogged with dus easily. I would open up the notebook and see if you can suck out some dust with a vacuum cleaner.

I second that idea. I had to take a laptop apart for another reason and when I looked at the hs, it was completely clogged. I pulled out a pretty big hairball - was mostly fur.

Dust and fur are attracted to heatsinks like matter to a black hole. I have seen dust bunnies crawling into my computers against the push of exhaust fans. It was even more amazing than watching salmon swim upstream. (kidding :cool:)

[Hoboclese]

thanks for the tips guys. the stress ting was SiS sowtware Sandra Lite and gave me a readout of its own...

on the opening it up idea, I've tried before and it got to the stage where i couldn't find the screw that was keeping the last part of the case on but still couldn't get to the HS area. But i tried just blowing as hard as i could to try and dislodge some stuff and it was like i emptied a vacuum bag into the room! So i think ill grab my air compressor to see if that works better than my non 100 psi lungs

can anyone give me tips on taking the thing apart. Its not that I'm incompetent, so i claim, but i don't want to force something only to hear SNAP then have to buy a new computer :(

[SoulsCollective]

Whoah, careful there. I've heard horror stories about compressors literally blowing components off motherboards.

As for taking laptops apart, it's ridiculously tedious. Sometimes manufacturers will do stupid things like making you take the screen apart before you can remove the bottom cover to get to the RAM, I kid you not, so try taking apart everything.

[Hoboclese]

ok so no air compressor. Ill try taking it apart again tomorrow but its like 2 AM right now and if i start mucking round with that stuff now I'll wake everyone up. So ill have another crack and take some pics and inform you all of how it went. (if i find something surprising like a staple, toenail or anything else the pictures are going up if its just dust then no)

[Hoboclese]

ok so i took it apart and managed only to break the really fragile exterior shell and the cd drive release lever. Also i have a screw left over even though i numbered each one :confused:

anyway there was a huge amount of dust and i was surprised it even ran at all because the exhaust vent was completely blocked :eek:

the reason the cd drive lever broke was because i think it was jammed so i started hauling on it and it just broke off. The reason i needed to remove the cd drive was because it was covering some screws i needed to get to.

[[EvQ]RheA]

You should consider cleaning the laptop from dust at least once a year, especially if it's one of the compact ones / has some GPU horsepower - I've seen many of them getting toast and I managed to "revive" quite a few which wouldn't turn on / power down for no reason after x minutes. You could use a broken laptop to practice getting stuff apart - the concepts are pretty much the same and you can't go wrong if you work in layers / note the position of the screws.

[MomijiTMO]

This is the best thread this evening :D

I should pull apart the laptop we have and clean it.

[Boissez]

Before starting out with potentialy hazardous procedures i'd try to undervolt with either RMClock or NHC. A Sempron @1.6ghz should easily could be undervolted 0,1-0,2V which would drastically reduce temperatures/noise and lengthen battery life.

[Sgrios]

ok so i took it apart and managed only to break the really fragile exterior shell and the cd drive release lever. Also i have a screw left over even though i numbered each one :confused:

anyway there was a huge amount of dust and i was surprised it even ran at all because the exhaust vent was completely blocked :eek:

the reason the cd drive lever broke was because i think it was jammed so i started hauling on it and it just broke off. The reason i needed to remove the cd drive was because it was covering some screws i needed to get to.

With Co2 at 75 psi, I've never had any issues. I've been cleaning computer systems that way for years.

[Hoboclese]

Before starting out with potentialy hazardous procedures i'd try to undervolt with either RMClock or NHC. A Sempron @1.6ghz should easily could be undervolted 0,1-0,2V which would drastically reduce temperatures/noise and lengthen battery life.

the problem is for some reason it doesn't let me do those things with those applications. Because i have tried to do that before and they would not let me, as in the option was greyed out

[STEvil]

With Co2 at 75 psi, I've never had any issues. I've been cleaning computer systems that way for years.

I use compressed air at a little over 150psi.

The idea is to keep the nozzle a fair amount away (start at 2-3 feet) from the item you are blowing the dust off of :up:

No need to take them apart to get the dust out.

[tiro_uspsss]

I use compressed air at a little over 150psi.

The idea is to keep the nozzle a fair amount away (start at 2-3 feet) from the item you are blowing the dust off of :up:

No need to take them apart to get the dust out.

+1
common sense prevails :yepp: :up: