Tech Tip Tuesday - Fix Your Hot Laptop

Although desktop computers can get hot themselves, laptops are much more prone to this problem. There are several reasons that this is the case. For one, laptops are much more compact meaning  heat generating components are stuffed into a relatively small case. Less space equals less airflow equals more heat. Engineers know this so laptops are designed to maximize airflow with specialized components and placement to prevent overheating. Despite this design and construction, laptops can still get dangerously hot. Some things that defeat this design are:

• Using the laptop on a surface that prevents good airflow such as carpet or a bed or blanket
• Accumulated dust
• Non-functioning fans

When you use a laptop on the carpet or on your bed some of the vents that air flows through become blocked and air cannot circulate. This is the easiest (and perhaps the most common) cause of overheating to fix. Avoid using your laptop on carpeted floors, your bed, or even . . . well your lap. All of these things block airflow. The small rubber feet on the bottom of your laptop are completely unused (as is when you use it on your lap) or cannot raise the computer high enough to clear the nap of the carpet, etc. There are a few things you can do if you have to use your laptop on anything other than a table or desk:

• Use a thick hardback book or a couple of paperbacks to prop the rear of the computer up when using it on carpet.
• When using it on your lap or on the bed try to find a hard flat surface that you can place the laptop on. I personally use a lap desk (http://bit.ly/T1pw3i), which is a flat tray with a beanbag bottom. You can use it both on your lap or other surfaces, like a bed.
• There are also laptop cooling units (http://bit.ly/T1pBUL) that you can purchase. These not only provide good circulation, but also use fans of their own to increase airflow. These can actually help laptops with fans that are beginning to or have completely failed.

Accumulated dust can cause a laptop to heat up too. One might wonder how this could be, but once you consider that some areas that air has to flow through in a laptop has a clearance of less than a millimeter, it is easy to see how even a thin layer of dust can disrupt circulation. Another way that that dust becomes a nuisance in this respect is that it can gather on fan spindles slowing the fan down and also collect in vents obstructing them. Dust is the second easiest overheating problem to cure. There are basically two approaches that you can take.

1. Buy a can of compressed air (http://bit.ly/MXYcQP). Stand your laptop on it's edge and blast all of the vents on the bottom with the compressed air. You will likely see dust shooting out of other vents, so you might want to do this outside. Also blast the fan (usually located on the side or the back). This will not only blow out and loosen dust bunnies it will free up and blow out anything that might be obstructing your fan. Keep blowing out the vents until the dust stops flying. You should see a noticeable difference in temperature the next time you run your laptop.
2. The second option involves using compressed air as well but is a little more advanced. If you are comfortable taking things apart and putting them together again, you can take apart your laptop and use the compressed air to clean out the dust even more thoroughly. This is what I would do to your laptop if you gave it to me with overheating issues. There are a couple of cautions here though. First, be sure that you keep track of where all the screws go. I have yet to encounter a laptop that didn't use at least 5 or more different sizes of screws. Second, use care when blowing components. Some circuitry can be delicate and if you have the nozzle of the air can too close you could potentially blow a delicate piece off. I have not encountered this myself, but it is within the realm of possibility, so be careful. All laptops are different, so I am not going to go in depth as to how to take apart your laptop since it's going to be different for everyone.

Finally, fans can break or become stuck, which prevents air circulation causing the laptop to quickly heat up. You can tell if you have a broken fan if you cannot feel any hot air blowing out of your computer's back or sides. Now it is possible if this is the case that your fan is obstructed so before attempting a fan fix, use the compressed air method to see if you can dislodge anything that might be blocking the fan from spinning. If you are still  having trouble, you can either take your laptop to a tech to have the fan replaced or you can do it yourself. Again, computers are different so I'm not going to go into detail here, but you should be able to Google your model and find all the information that you need to fix the fan including the part number for the fan replacement. Replacing the fan yourself is not hard, but it does involve partially disassembling your laptop to get to the fan, so use your own judgement to decide whether you are up to the task or not.

This covers the most common overheating problems that you will encounter with laptops. There are some very rare things that can cause a laptop to overheat, but these are instances when a tech's expertise would be best anyway, so if the methods above don't fix your problem, take your laptop to a tech to get it properly diagnosed and repaired. 

I do not endorse any of the products that I have provided links for in this post. The links were simply provided to show you examples and to allow you a place to start your own shopping. I urge you to read reviews on products before purchasing.