My Laptop is overheating and I'm unsure what to do.

[Ghubs]

I have a quad-core edition hp dv7 laptop. It used to run decently until about a year ago. It has slowly gotten hotter and hotter which makes me think that either the cooling is clogged with debris or the thermal paste is worn out... The only problem is that I'm unsure about my ability to disassemble my laptop and replace everything after I'm done. For reference, my cpu (using a program called RealTemp) gets up to 102 C (not F, C) on almost all cores. I am fully aware that this is a little to high for safety and longevity reasons. It is cool in the room I have it, so the ambient air temp wont get any lower... I already have a cooler master aluminium cooling pad with 3 80mm fans... I have a little thermal paste left from my Noctua d14 I installed in my custom rig, could I use that?

Sorry if this was a bit of a rant, but I'd rather not send it to HP because I use it regularly.


Important Info:

Max load temp ~102 C (gotten it to 108 once O_O)
Idle temp as of time of writing this: 49 C
CPU: i7-3630Q (Quad core)
GPU: nvidia GT 630m 2gb
Windows 8.1 (not sure if important)
Oh, and there is only one fan in the computer in the top left of keyboard... It feels sluggish when it's running, but at least it's running

 

[ThatVietGuy]

Here's the service manual: http/h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03043778.pdf

Take it as far as you're willing. I suggest getting it open to the point where you can see then fan and hit it with compressed air. If you're confident in yourself, you can follow the guide to remove the heatsinks so that you can try re-applying thermal paste.

 

[Ghubs]

I looked at the manual and getting to the fan seems easy enough to do... thanks for helping me out.... Just out of curiosity, what should my laptop be running at under load normally?

 

[ThatVietGuy]

The max your chip can handle is around 105C, and you should keep it below 90-95C under load.