Clean your notebooks !

[Coupe70]

I learned another lesson:

Notebook fans suck LOTS of dirt into your notebook,
MUCH more than I thought.So what can happen after a while ?

- the fan runs more often (-> more noise)
- the fan runs faster (-> even more noise)
- cpu is slowed down due to overheating
- the notebook powers off without any warning
- the graphic chip dies due to overheating

That's what happened to me. So open your notebook
(check if the warranty allows you to do so !) and
clean the air inlets, outlets, fans, boards, etc. - you
can't clean it properly from the outside with a vacuum
cleaner held at the in- and outlets.

Telling from what I found in my notebook after
2 1/2 years it should have been cleaned AT LEAST
once a year.

[AceLuby]

I like to take a powerful shop vac to the vents every month or so to clean it out. It really helps and keeps your warranty in tact.

[jeffplaysmoog]

Man, you are preaching the truth. My MBP was overheating and shutting down. I had to open the case (not an easy task) and blow out all of the dust and dirt... the old girl runs like a charm now!

[4am]

true!
this happens after a couple of years of use. some friends of me have almost thrown away their laptops because of that.

coupe70: i like the music on your myspace page!

[Guff Tong]

Thought I found a dead mouse in my wife's PC..was in fact about 3 years of fluff stuck to a heat sink. It had a pulse so it did....

[crumhorn]

Just hoovered my vaio to within an inch of it's life. (Been meaning to do it for ages)

Vast improvement. Hardly any fan noise and CPU clocking at just below 2GHz even under extreme duress.

Thanks for giving me the necessary nudge.

[Guff Tong]

....No worries about exherting extreme pressure to the sensitive components in my lappy is there?

May try it on the wifes pc/cat/wii first

[re.mark]

erm.. (this might just be an old wives tale ive heard).. but can't taking a hover to your notebook/laptop/towers insides cause some damage to your computer? causes static or something?

[Guff Tong]

erm.. (this might just be an old wives tale ive heard).. but can't taking a hover to your notebook/laptop/towers insides cause some damage to your computer? causes static or something?

I'd seriously be worried about putting your laptop internals under that kind of pressure.

I'm an fluid tranfer engineer that works with pressure vessels all day long and if it was me I would let the warranty run out, get a nice low-pressure pc hoover, take the back off and be really carefull.

Try sticking the said power vac to your ear and see how well it works afterwards. (Your ear that is)

[re.mark]

[Coupe70]

To be clear, I didn't say "Take the most powerful vac cleaner ever !".
And of course you have to be careful. But it's nothing you have to
be an computer expert for.

At many places of the inside you can or should carefully blow the dust away,
take a brush or a spray bottle with compressed air. But around the fan (not
the one on the cpu/gpu if there is one) a vac cleaner works best as there
is usually a lot of dust. You may need to block the fan with a pen or something
as it will start to rotate when you are coming close with the vac cleaner.

[nuxnamon]

hhmm.. how do you exactly open the all white macbooks (model previous to the current unibody model)?

[crumhorn]

did mine through the inlet vents - didn't take the covers off, far too many screws.

quite a big wad of fluff collected behind the grill which I was able to pick out quite easily with a pin.

could hear the fan whizzing around like mad - which worried me a bit (motors act as generators?) but it seems to have survived, and it's performing much better now (according RightMark rmspy), also much cooler to the touch!.

[chris vine]

I was getting the same symptoms, "random" crashes when doing any vid or CPU intensive stuff...I thought I'd cleaned it out, but it wasn't until I opened up the bottom of the laptop to use compressed air on the fan (and anywhere else that needed it) that I discovered the main exhaust vent was totally blocked with lint.
Since I removed that, CPU rarely goes above 50C. It was regularly hitting the 80s before.............

Be careful with the compressed air........stop the fan from spinning when you apply the air and keep the air can upright, so that no ultra cold propellent zaps a chip in yr lappy.

[sven303]

Freaky coincidence....my laptop has been getting really warm recently so thought I should give it a clean.
Went to a local photographic store and bought a can of compressed air....blew the hell out of the intake/outlet
Took the memory cover off and gave it another blast from there

Working like a treat now!

Id advise that you dont have the laptop switched on when you use the compressed air....leave it for a while to ensure any moisture evaporates before you switch it back on