Cooling help, alternatives to fans

[horrorific]

My laptop for some reason is constantly overheated, especially during summer, during an average summer day it gets a core temp of about 120-142 degrees (F). So far I've tried a few things, none of which work consistently. One thing that has a moderate affect, but not for long, is a improvised icetray with a thick plastic cover (laptop on top to prevent water damage), unfortunately my laptop is a widescreen and the icetray is small and circular (covers about 70% of the base).

External fan coolers at best will cool it down 20 degrees, which means its still consistently about 20-40 degrees overheated (my aim is to cool the core to at most 80 degrees). Unfortunately after a few days of looking around, retail, I've only been able to find fan based stands and a exhaust vents extensions.

If anyone has any suggestions on products or improvised devices to keep laptops cool, please share

 

[tenaciousleydead]

what type of laptop is it and are you past warranty coverage? if your past it consider removing pre-existing thermal paste and applying some arctic silver 5. other than that most of the other fixes youve concocted will not help the portability of your system. other options are underclocking and cleaning out the the dust inside your laptop, considering the thinness of laptops dust easily gets caked in their and can be severely detrimental to its heat expelling abilities.

 

[horrorific]

This is my system: http/support.gateway.com/support/srt/allsysteminfo.aspx?sn=T3A6931000079&refresh=1
I'm fairly sure the warranty is past, the system is about 3years old.

I'm not concerned with portability. as long as I can get it to cool down. Underclocking is something I'd like to avoid, its already too low to be of much use (1 core, 1.86 ghz).

I started looking for arctic silver, and found that the company also makes "ceramique", is arctic silver better?

Just cleaned out the vent, now core temp is hovering around 125F. It also seems like my laptop came with a layer of arctic silver.

edit: one more thing, I noticed that the cpu fan isn't running most of the time. Is there a way to control it?

 

[tenaciousleydead]

ceramique is a non-conductive thermal compound, arctic silver is meant to be applied at least every year or two. as for speed control check your bios and see if there any "cool and quiet" features, then download speedfan and see if you cant adjust it through that. also make sure your not utilizing too many cpu cycles at idle, that can raise temperatures.

 

[horrorific]

as for speed control check your bios and see if there any "cool and quiet" features, then download speedfan and see if you cant adjust it through that. also make sure your not utilizing too many cpu cycles at idle, that can raise temperatures.

I already use speedfan, it works on my pc but not on my laptop and theres nothing in the bios.

How do I check idle cpu cycles?

 

[tenaciousleydead]

press ctrl+alt+delete, you can check percent cpu utilized and the processes that are using them. if speedfan doesn't work then its likely you laptop doesn't have any fan speed control.

 

[horrorific]

The "system idle process" seems to be around 80-90 on average.

Also, yesterday I wanted to check my system with cpuz and and apparently the clockspeed actually fluctuates between .7ghz and 1.8ghz.