Learn to Keep Your Laptop CPU Safe from High Internal Temperatures

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For maximum cooling, make sure that your laptop’s CPU cooler is working. Fans for a laptop’s CPU are small but they are also cheap, usually costing only a few dollars. However, these fans are not only cheap in price but in quality as well. Often, laptop CPU fans stop working leaving the heatsink as the only barrier between a working CPU and one that will overheat. If you laptop is suddenly quieter than you remember, check to be sure that the CPU fan is still spinning.

Laptops see far more environmental changes than their desktop big brothers. Moving the laptop from place to place exposes it to far more dirt, dust, and unclean air. The result can be a CPU and cooler that are caked with debris. This can have several results. First, it may not be operating at full capacity in terms of airflow because the fan’s blades are filled with dust and cannot spin as fast. Second, debris on a laptop’s CPU fan can cause a bottleneck in the fan’s airspace causing greatly reduced airflow. Finally, the dust forms an increasingly thick blanket on the surface of the heatsink, interfering with how much heat is allowed to escape.

A CPU can only be as cool as the ambient temperature surrounding it. Hot air around the CPU means that your notebook’s CPU is not as cool as it could be. The result is a CPU operating at a temperature higher than it could be which can, if high enough, shorten the life of a CPU.

Although the CPU is likely the number one heat-generating component in your laptop, other components can generate quite a bit of heat too. In particular, your notebook’s hard drive is probably the number two heat-generating component. A hot hard drive increases the ambient temperature in your laptop and reduces the amount of cooling that the CPU’s heatsink and fan can accomplish.

However, hard drives aren’t the only contributors to rising ambient temperature within your laptop. Spinning optical drives such as DVD-ROMS and Blu-Ray drives can add quite a bit of heat to the inside of a laptop. Even external devices such as USB drives can increase the temperature inside your notebook by a few degrees.

To keep your laptop CPU cool, unplug any devices you will not be using for a while and remove any optical media such as CDs, DVDs, and others from their drives to prevent them from spinning up and increasing the heat inside your notebook.

Although you cannot remove your laptop’s internal hard drive, you can tell the operating system to power the hard disk down when it has not been accessed for a specified amount of time. This is especially good advice if you leave your notebook plugged in but unattended for a long time. There is no reason to leave your laptop’s hard drive spinning and adding heat inside of the computer if you are not using it. Also, should you bump into the table on your way back to the laptop, a stationary disc is far less likely to have issues from shock or drop than a spinning one.

As mentioned above, laptop’s see far more environments than desktop computers. When you take your notebook computer with you on the road, to work, or to school, try to remember to consider where your laptop is located while you are using it.

Using the laptop near a direct heat source such as outside with the sun beating down on it or near a heat register can greatly increase the temperature inside the computer. This is especially true if you live in an area that often experiences high temperatures. What is a normal environment to you may be at the fringe or over the line of the heat threshold recommended by both the CPU and laptop manufacturer’s recommended operating environment.

Finally, be prepared to clean your laptop computer from time to time. Like a car, all computers require some basic maintenance and tune-ups occasionally. If you are uncomfortable doing it yourself, consider hiring a computer technician to open up and clean the inside casing of your laptop. You’d be surprised how easily your laptop can become overridden by dust and other small particles.

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The Laptop Pad serves two functions. First, it helps to draw heat from the laptop through conduction between the bottom of your notebook and the laptop pad. If you have ever used your laptop on your lap, you know that your computer can throw a lot of heat out of the bottom of your notebook. Second, the laptop pad acts as a barrier between the heat generated by you notebook computer and your body. If you often use your laptop in your lap, a laptop pad is necessary.

One of the most popular laptop pads on the market is Edova Innovations’ XPad. The XPad is a non-slip laptop cooler but it acts as a heat shield between you and your notebook computer. At just US$19.95, it is a wise investment that serves several functions beyond just helping to keep your CPU cool.

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The CPU in your laptop is one of the most expensive components to replace if the processor overheats and is damaged as a result. Even if the processor does not sustain damage, an overheating processor is the cause of several problems that can be downright frustrating to troubleshoot and fix. Follow the advice in this article and your notebook’s processor will stay cool and last longer.