Laptop overheating and shutting down

gamerTM21

gamerTM21

gamerTM21

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West Midlands
I've had my laptop for around a year now, I'm running Windows 7, and the specs are:

AMD Phenom II N930
4GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD4650

Before Christmas, the laptop was perfect, I was doing a bit of casual gaming on it with no issues, when out of nowhere one time in December when I was playing Football Manager 2013 my laptop decided to switch off. I felt the keyboard area and it was pretty hot, so I put it down to not giving the fans underneath enough space to let air out and adjusted the position.

Recently I've got into my gaming again, so have bought a fair few games. I first noticed with Team Fortress 2 that my laptop would just shut down suddenly, from overheating, even though I was trying my best to leave all my fans in an open space...

So I downloaded a CPU temp. monitor and realised that the laptop was shutting down because the temperatures were hitting close to 100! :eek: I bought a cooler for my laptop a few days back, nothing fancy, just a basic one, although a fan blowing cold air into the vents should be enough for it to cool down, and now games like Bad Company 2 and Bioshock can run without it shutting down, but still hitting temperatures around 85-90, but a few other games like with Crysis, the laptop just keeps getting hotter till it hits 98 then shuts down!

I've looked without opening it at the vents and I can't see any dust in them, so I don't think thats an issue, I'm quite lost on what to do and really want to play my games, please help!

Oh, and for reference, when I'm on the internet the temperatures around 60-70....
 
No doubt could use a good strip down and clean out. With those temps I'd also be tempted to replace the thermal paste on the CPU/GPU. Another issue could be a fan has stop working but you'd visibly be able to see this.

What laptop model is it? Most dis-assembly manuals can be found online.
 
BuToNz said:
No doubt could use a good strip down and clean out. With those temps I'd also be tempted to replace the thermal paste on the CPU/GPU. Another issue could be a fan has stop working but you'd visibly be able to see this.

What laptop model is it? Most dis-assembly manuals can be found online.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's not the fan, I've looked at it and its running fine, and I can hear it fine...
Its a Dell Inspiron M5010, I might consider grabbing a can of compressed air and giving it a go opening it up, was just worried about messing something up, and I can't really afford to lose this lappy!
 
gamerTM21 said:
Yeah, it's not the fan, I've looked at it and its running fine, and I can hear it fine...
Its a Dell Inspiron M5010, I might consider grabbing a can of compressed air and giving it a go opening it up, was just worried about messing something up, and I can't really afford to lose this lappy!
Click to expand...

Sounds like a good plan, make sure not to shake the can before using it. Seen plenty of people do that and spray a ton of moisture onto components.

The Dell Inspiron is pretty easy to get apart and to the fans, the CPU/GPU heatsink isn't the easiest to remove though.

Service manual here: ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-prod...op/inspiron-15-m5010_service manual_en-us.pdf

It's a shame you aren't close by, I'd be more than happy to strip it down for you. Should really put my Dell certification to more use! :p

An alternative is to take it to a local repair shop (Not the purples shirts or any of the big places). A good place should be able to strip down and clean a laptop within the hour, so you'd be looking at under £50 for the hours labour.

:EDIT: Good video guide here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YXGa5rTw1o
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the help guys, seems to be the first step of action then, hopefully it sorts it out! I'm going back home in a couple of days and the old mans quite good at tinkering with things so I might wait and ask him to take it apart for me...
 
As above, compressed air into the vents (while off, you dont want to potentially damage fan bushings while spinning) and also look at where you use the laptop, can you set it on a slight angle to help airflow around it etc. Using it on your knee etc isnt so good for temps either.
 
brendy said:
As above, compressed air into the vents (while off, you dont want to potentially damage fan bushings while spinning) and also look at where you use the laptop, can you set it on a slight angle to help airflow around it etc. Using it on your knee etc isnt so good for temps either.
Click to expand...

Yeah, at the moment its at a bit of an angle on the cooler, and I always have it resting on an object on the desk, trying to keep as many of the vents open as possible, temperatures normally aren't overly bad when I'm just browsing, around 60ish, its just when certain games start up it goes pretty mad!
 
Can i jump in on this thread please. my toshiba stays on for about 20 minutes then goes off.. the fan always came on and recently was making a dragging noise then stopped coming on .. i have undone as many screws as i can see to open and have look but cannot open it completely to see inside .. any help please .. James
 
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