Why does laptop overheat

Sometimes, the fan has been turned off unknowingly. A quick Google of the model name and number should tell you whether a lack of fan noise is expected or not. Sometimes, overheating is caused by a hardware problem. This can become a nasty spiral, as heat can cause hardware damage and hardware damage can cause heat! Start with the battery.

A dying or defective laptop battery can expand and swell, and will often start generating extra heat when it does. Dried-out thermal paste can also cause overheating. Every CPU has a thermal paste layer between it and its heatsink to help keep it cool. As years pass, that paste can dry out and become less effective at conducting heat. The end result? The processor runs hotter, and with it, the risk of overheating increases. Laptops are made up of very fragile components. You can do it at home using a pressurized air spray without having to take the laptop apart.

First, shut down and unplug your laptop from its charger, the locate the air vents on your laptop. On some laptops, you might be able to see the fan blades through the vents. In that case, blow the air directly onto the fan blades. Short, sharp sprays are the way to go. You can clean more than just the fans and vents, of course: compressed air is also great for getting all the dust, crumbs, and hair out from between the keys and anywhere else on your laptop.

Both can damage your hardware. Speeding up your fan might be the solution to an overheating laptop. A fan may also stop working due to a damaged capacitor, which should be replaced immediately.

People often upgrade their laptops by adding different new components RAM or hard disk or even some new sound card. Sometimes these new hardware can make your laptop use more resources and in turn start heating up more frequently. This usually happens when the installed accessories are not manufacturer approved or recommended. If the heat sink of the CPU of the laptop dislodges, it will not be able to adequately cool the laptop.

If the thermal grease that develops between the heat sink and the CPU has degenerated this may contribute to the overheating of the laptop. Windows 10 has been often found to cause overheating in laptops. Similarly like operating system, new drivers can also cause overheating.

Laptops with onboard graphics may not display separate GPU temperatures. Potential reasons include dust blocking intake grills or exhaust ports, a clogged up fan, or degenerating thermal paste. Thermal paste sometimes a pad is a heat conductive material that connects the CPU or GPU with the metal heat sink ; the latter directs heat away from the processing units, usually to a cooling fan.

You can fix all of these things yourself, though some jobs will be tougher than others. If you need a quick fix and don't have the skills to de-lid your CPU or GPU and apply fresh thermal compound, read on. Fanless laptops use passive cooling techniques like spreading heat across the entire metal body, or throttling CPU clock speeds to regulate heat.

If you can't hear a fan, nor find intake grills or exhaust ports, your laptop probably runs on passive cooling. This means your laptop won't overheat, but you might notice decreasing performance in response to increasing heat stress. Since laptops with passive cooling don't have fans, there's little you can fix. You can, however, recover processing power lost to CPU throttling by addressing the excess heat with external cooling. Skip ahead to the section on cooling pads below. 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 airflow. Consult your laptop's manual or the manufacturer to find out how you can open the laptop to access and clean these parts. When you're ready, have a close look at your laptop, outside and inside, and clean the following parts:. See our guide on cleaning out dust from your MacBook or iMac if that's the hardware you use. Not only will your laptop run cooler, you might find it running a little faster.

These can be considered to be safe temperatures for these components. Some of the ways of cooling down your laptop can be done by just tweaking some of the performance settings on your laptop.

One of the ways is to reduce the performance of the processor. Click on the Power Saver mode or go to the Advanced Settings under one of the existing power plans. Even a 20 — 30 per cent reduction in performance can reduce the heating drastically. Some graphics cards can be entirely turned off when not being used.

These were just some of the ways to reduce the temperature of your laptop. If you have more tips and suggestions, drop us a line in the comments section below or post a comment on our Facebook page.