deciding between brands for laptop cooling pads...

I'm not sure exactly how to fix it though...I have Toshiba Satellite from a year and a half ago with a full power Pentium 4. I've cleaned out the heat sink before with compressed air (there was only a little bit of dust in there), and although it has helped (it doesn't overheat now to the point where it shuts itself down), a week later it started getting pretty hot again. I use this computer for music production, so I'm often pushing the processor, and similarly I have a lot of information that I can't lose (some of which I am contractually obliged to).

I did a little bit of research a while ago and even came upon some things recently on this forum that these models have had trouble cooling off such a powerful processor. Also, this didn't really become a problem until a couple of months ago, past the computer's warranty. So it's not overheating, but it is getting pretty hot, and I don't want to clean the heat sink every week if I can just spend some money, get a hub that I need, and not worry about my HD or motherboard melting.


BUT...if you have any tips that might apply to my situation, I'd love to hear them =P

Disassemble the machine and make sure the CPU heatsink is on proper as well as add a dab of heatsink compound along the way. Moderate to advanced work so don't do this unless you can risk it.

For now, try the pads.

Bob

heat is a common problem/issue. All laptops
will produce heat and if you add a P4 desktop
cpu, you will get real toasty really quick.
The problem is 4 fold. Laptop design and or
cpu placement, poor ventilation, inadequate
cooling scheme (via power options) and/or a
poor cooling fan. Then theres' always the
auxiliary issue that some are just simply not
aware of. Rogue Programs/websites/spyware
and un-needed hidden processes holding the
CPU cycles at 100% - check via windows task
manager (cntl+shft+esc)

Since your machine is out of warranty, you can
try the heat sink mod but you must be willing
to open you laptop up. The gains could be
worth it, but if you have three left thumbs,
better think twice...

here's the original thread for the mod...

http://snipurl.com/fdsp