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Resolved Question

Reason for overheating: dust in interior fan or cooling pad?

Aug 9, 2011 10:32AM PDT

Yesterday my laptop shut down 3 or 4 times b/c of overheating. I looked in this forum and found a lot of advice to take it apart and shoot compressed air around, which I did. Its been working fine ever since.

There was a lot of dust on the grate over the internal fan. Just as I was putting it back on my cooling pad, I noticed that there was a lot of dust on the grate over the two fans in the cooling pad. I shot compressed air into them, and I couldn't believe how much dust shot up into the air.

Now I'm wondering---if anyone can make a determination--which is it more likely to have been--the dust over the internal fan, or that covering up the cooling pad? The reason why I'm asking, is that it is much easier to grab a can and shoot air into the cooling pad, than taking apart this laptop and then hoping that Humpty Dumpty has been put back together again when you are done. I can quickly clean off teh cooling pads every month or so if that would do any good.

I did notice yesterday that the cooling pad itself seemed just as hot, if not more so, than the part of the laptop where the CPU/internal fan is.

I'm wondering if all that dust in teh cooling pad was what was causing the overheating in teh laptop itself, or not.

Discussion is locked

psaulm119 has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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I'm going with no.
Aug 10, 2011 12:14AM PDT

Without repeating this as an experiment it would be conjecture or a guess.
But it is well known we want to keep it dust free and do the canned air every 6 months or less.
Bob

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(NT) OK thanks EOM
Aug 10, 2011 1:16PM PDT
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Answer
Dust and dirt are enemies
Aug 12, 2011 1:42PM PDT

Just like a desktop, these things with fans collect dust, dirt, carpet fuzz and animal hair. Besides an exhaust vent and cooling fan, most have a heat pipe, a heat sink that has fins mounted in the fans air path. Once the unit is cleaned of all that debris, a cooling pad or even just a flat surface will help to move the air around inside the unit better and keep it running cooler. Some units, depending on the model and your preferences when you bought it, may have a heatsink attached to the video processor too. This also needs to be cleaned as either processor overheating will do irrepairable damage to both the componets and circuit boards.