What are general causes for a laptop to run hot when it has not done so in the past?

Zonie8541

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Aug 8, 2014
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I have a Toshiba Satellite L655. Had it for years and have enjoyed trouble free operation. Recently it has started running very hot. I have cleaned it and do not see any obvious problems. Any ideas of possible cause(s) would be appreciated.
 
Solution
Awesome - it's always nice when the fix turns out easy:) Laptops tend to run on the hot-side because of the cooling limitations of their small size, so it's important to keep it clean. The cooler you can keep it, the better it will perform.

Armo1000

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Jul 25, 2014
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I have the same problem with my HP Pavilion G6 1209-AX.. Dunno what to do.. at normal usage its fine.. while playing games.. it gets too hot..

While playing FIFA 12

CPU % 56
Memory % 48

When I try Borderlands 2 , My laptop overheats and switches off

But previous I was able to play them without any issues
 

Armo1000

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Jul 25, 2014
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Its been 2 years and a half since i bought it
 

V1ctor89

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Apr 17, 2010
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Dust accumulation is the most probable cause. Take it apart, clean the fan and heatsink with a brush and change the thermal paste. Check the temperatures before and after, to see the difference. Clean the old paste as well as you can.
 

Armo1000

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Jul 25, 2014
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i will try that
 

volcanoscout

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Jan 5, 2014
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I've torn apart many laptops and I've yet to see a factory thermal paste application that was better than sloppy but barely adequate. Whenever I get a new laptop or am given one to trouble shoot, the first thing I do before I even turn it on is pull the battery and backplate and blast everything with canned air (best done outdoors, lol). Then I pull the fan and cooler and clean everything using 99% alcohol, qtips, a narrow pipe cleaner for the cooling fins, and coffee filters. Then I apply new paste properly and reassemble. I don't even check before and after temps anymore, because I've yet to see an improvement of less than 5C (usually it's 8C+) even on brand-new straight from the factory laptops.

As an aside, it's bad form to hijack someone else's thread. I would recommend following the thread and appropriating any likely solutions or just starting a new thread of your own. ;)

 

Zonie8541

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Aug 8, 2014
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Not familiar with thermal paste (?)
 

Zonie8541

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Aug 8, 2014
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Sorry. Not familiar with the tasks you described but I figured it out. Disregard previous response.
The correct numbers are CPU 97%/MEMORY 1.67G
 

volcanoscout

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That's a heat conducting paste that gets sandwiched between the CPU's integrated heat sink and the heatsink for your cooling system. Basically, the heat generated by the CPU gets transferred to the cooler's heatsink, down a metal tube and ends up getting spread between the cooling fins that you can usually see if you peak into the exhaust vent. The fan pulls in cool air and blows it across the fins to dissipate the heat.

If the paste is bad, heat can't make that first jump from the CPU to the heatsink. With nowhere to go, it just stays there and cooks the chip. $5 or $6 will get you a tube of top-grade paste. It'll cost you 10 minutes to find and watch a tutorial on Youtube, and since it's probably your first time, maybe 20-30 minutes to execute. Easy as pie.

 

Dunlop0078

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Feb 13, 2014
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The cpu is running at 97% at idle? If that is true that is defiantly your heat problem the computer is working as hard as it can i bet you have way to much useless crap running that is eating all your cpu its probably a lot slower than it should be too.
 

V1ctor89

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Enter "msconfig" (type it in the start menu search bar) and disable from there (startup tab) all the useless things that load at system startup. Do a clean-up with ccleaner and a defragmentation with Auslogics Disk Defrag.
 

Dunlop0078

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Feb 13, 2014
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If they dont know what thermal paste is or how to enter the task manger you SHOULD NOT try to end start up programs or go anywhere near msconfig and a disc defrag or a disc cleanup isent going to help bring down that cpu usage at all. I would take the labtop too an IT professional or buy a new one.
 

volcanoscout

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If the OP was interested in pursuing either of those options, he wouldn't be here asking for advice. A disk cleanup and defrag, even if they aren't going to fix the temp and CPU usage issues, are things that every PC user should know how to do, and should do on a regular basis, so why not learn how to do it now? Using msconfig to access startup programs is not dangerous voodoo - it's just another way to get to a Task Manager feature, rather than using CTRL/ALT/DEL. I'm guessing that you weren't born with that knowledge, so you must have learned how to do this at some point, too. Either you learned it from something you read, from experimentation, or someone taught you. Why would you want to deny the OP the same benefit?

On this website, telling someone to "take the labtop too an IT professional or buy a new one" is contrary to our purpose for being here. If you are not interested in helping the OP beyond the short, easy answers, then I'm sure there are other threads where your time could be spent more productively.
 

volcanoscout

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@Zonie8541

In your Task Manager, under the Processes tab, if you click the CPU column header it will stack the running processes in order of usage levels. If there is a process (or processes) that is using large chunks of your CPU capacity, it or they should be at the top of the list. Can you tell us what you see there?

Edit: Just to be clear, identifying processor hogs is a good thing to do and will help out in a general sense with your PC health, but is not necessarily going identify or fix the cause of your temperature issue. If it's not the problem, eliminating it as a possibility will help narrow the field.
 

Dunlop0078

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Feb 13, 2014
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What? you dont tell an inexperienced computer user to start killing startup processes if they dont know what they do they might kill something that the computer needs to boot then they will defiantly need to take it to an IT professional if you want to sit here and guide them threw the process of telling them what processes they can and cant kill when you dont know what they have running in the first place good luck.