So I just noticed today that my laptop seems to be putting out a lot of heat. Considering that I have used it for nearly a hundred hours at this point, I think that I would have been aware of it before now if it were happening. My laptop is linked below for reference. Below the newegg link is a teardown of a laptop which is very similar to mine in layout and heatsink size.
The amount of heat that it is putting out is now heating my leg below the vent as well as the chassis, making it warm to my left hand (the side with the heatsink) to the touch. Until today, that wasn’t the case. It seemed relatively cool running until now. Once I noticed that it was putting out more heat than I remembered, I installed HWInfo and started monitoring. During regular internet/word processing workload, the cpu is anywhere from 60C to 78C. I am no expert in mobile hardware, but that seems very high. My desktop i5 with stock cooler doesn’t get that hot while maxed out, so it has me concerned. I know that there is headroom yet, and that the desktop and mobile chips can’t really be compared, but you probably get my concern.
I ran realbench not long ago and it didn’t even take a minute (likely less than 30 seconds) before it started thermal throttling.
As I was writing this, I thought to check the fan. Previously, I had checked speed fan, but found out that it wasn’t uncommon for the laptop to not report having any fans in the first place. Not long ago, I listened to it, and I thought that I heard the fan spinning rather quickly. Just now, I slipped the laptop over and looked into the grill and noticed… the fan isn’t moving. That would explain everything that I am seeing. Now I just have to hope that I don’t have a dead fan on my hands. I always tried to keep the air inlet free for air, but maybe letting it sit on my bed or the floor did it in. I also had to disassemble the laptop in order to upgrade the hdd and ram. If you look at the second link I posted, you will see that is a pain in the ass and involved taking the fan out. Maybe I didn’t plug it back in sufficiently. I am not looking forward to opening this thing up to find out.
Considering that the fan is not spinning, I have to say that I am impressed with how cool this thing is running. The heatsink is tiny and relying entirely on passive cooling at this point.
You can try to clean the fan out, replace the thermal compound on your cpu and clean the heat transfer. You'd be amazed how well an old laptop can run with a little bit of cleaning on the inside. That's not to say it might not be a nightmare though depending on how difficult your particular model of laptop is to get apart. Won't fix the fan being entirely dead, but you might find that its just gunked up with shit and not spinning because of that.
I posted a tear down in the OP. It is a real pain to take apart. Also, the fan isn't spinning. That is my number 1 priority, but it doesn't seem to be TOO much of a problem as it was hours before I even noticed.
EDIT: Also, this laptop is brand new, so the thermal paste shouldn't be a problem and that wouldn't make it heat everything up anyway, I don't believe. It would keep more heat in the chip and raise the temp of the chip without raising the temp of the heatsink or surrounding hardware as much.
Chances are if you were to open her up and take a look you'd find a big puddle of compound gobbed over the edges of your socket, all over the mobo. Now back to the failed fan ... Are you able to find any replacement fans for you model online anywhere ?
Considering that I have already swapped the ram and hdd, the original ram is now in a secondary laptop, and am now using the stock hdd as external storage, the though of sending it in isn't too appealing. I might try to see how replacing the fan works, but I am afraid that it isn't the fan that failed but something on the motherboard. I guess that it less likely to happen than a failed fan, but still. It is possible that I buy and replace the fan only to find out that the fan wasn't the problem in the first place. sigh I really hate opening this thing up, but it looks like I will be doing that quite a few more times before all is said and done. I could just use an external fan or something...........