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5 Ways to deal with your overheating laptop




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 If you’ve been using your laptop for a while, you might have noticed instances of slowdown or random blue screens, or rebooting. This can be caused by a number of problems, but it can very likely be a case of your laptop overheating. As laptops have gotten portable, more compact and slimmer, components are now closely fitted into small chassis. This means little space for airflow. A laptop that doesn’t see maintenance and clean-ups often is going to overheat. If left ignored, it can even lead to hardware failure. We’ve put together some simple ways to prevent your laptop from overheating.

Always use your laptop on flat surfaces

Most of the laptops have air vents at the bottom or on the sides. Placing your laptop on a flat or uneven surface like a pillow, bed or on your lap for a long time blocks the air flow, causing it to overheat. You might notice your laptop heating up when you use it like this. To prevent this from happening, ideally raise the laptop using a book or a plate, to make sure none of the vents are blocked. In fact, consider purchasing a laptop stand or lap holder to elevate your laptop.


Invest in a laptop cooling pad

If you have an air-conditioned room, preferably use the laptop in there. If the room is not air conditioned, make use of a ceiling or table fan along with a laptop cooling pad. Laptop cooling pads have fans in them which help flow cool air keeping your laptop cool all time. It also helps raise your laptop. The laptop cooler will help cool the laptop from the bottom, reducing the temperature of the components. It’s a temporary fix to the problem, but there’s more that ought to be done.


Clean the vents regularly

If you’ve used your laptop for a while, you’ll know that there’s a lot of dust collected around the vents and fans. This reduces the cooling and restricts air flow. Besides using a laptop cooler, clean out the dust using an air blower or a vacuum cleaner. Blow air slowly through the cooling vents on the sides or the back of the laptop. If possible, take the laptop to a service center and ask for a maintenance run to be done. Not only will your laptop run cooler, you might find it running a little faster.


Monitor your laptop’s temperature

There are several temperature monitoring programs such as Real Temp, GPU-Z, Speccy, HWMonitor and Core Temp. They’re all free and can be used to keep track your laptop’s temperature. Ensure that your laptop’s processor temperature is at maximum, around the 65C mark and that your GPU operates at under 80C. These can be considered to be safe temperatures for these components.


Other performance tweaks to reduce temperatures

 

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. We’re hardly ever using all of the processor’s performance on our laptops. When we’re just browsing, chatting or listening to music, the processor can be made to run at a slower speed. This can be done by going to the Power Options, under the Windows Control Panel. Click on the Power Saver mode or go to the Advanced Settings under one of the existing power plans. Go to Processor power management setting and set a value that’s ideal for your processor requirements. Even a 20 – 30 per cent reduction in performance can reduce the heating drastically.

Similar settings may be available for the graphics solution, depending on what hardware you’re running on your laptop. 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.