If you’ve had your laptop for a while, you may have experienced slowdowns, strange blue screens, or restarts. Several things can cause these problems.
There are a lot of things that could be causing this, but it’s very likely that your laptop is overheating.
Because modern laptops are smaller, thinner, and easier to carry around, the parts are now tightly packed into a smaller chassis.
This doesn’t leave much room for air to move. A laptop is likely to overheat if it isn’t taken care of regularly and dust and dirt aren’t cleaned out.
If you don’t pay attention to it, it could even cause the hardware to break. Here are some simple things you can do to keep your laptop from getting too hot.
How Do You Know Your Laptop Is Overheating?
If you can always hear the fan on your computer running at its fastest speed, this is a clear sign that your computer is overheating.
The fact that laptop fans can make a lot of noise is enough to make you want to fix the problem.
When there isn’t enough cooling, the chassis of a laptop computer can get so hot that it’s dangerous to touch.
At this point, you might even see a drop in performance, since modern CPUs can change their clock speed in response to more heat stress.
Also, the fail-safe software might shut down the computer quickly to keep the hardware from getting hurt.
How to prevent your laptop from overheating
If your computer is getting too hot, you need to act quickly so you don’t lose data or damage the hardware in a way that can’t be fixed.
If your laptop’s fans work too hard, the battery will die much faster. Keeping the core temperatures at a steady level is also important for the long-term health of your battery and the other parts inside.
There are a number of things that could cause your computer to get too hot. Here are some things you can do to cool it down and keep it from shutting down unexpectedly or not working as well in the future:
Always use your laptop on flat surfaces
Most laptops have vents on the bottom or on the sides. When you put your laptop on a flat or uneven surface, like a pillow, bed, above your laptop sleeve, or your lap for a long time, the air flow gets blocked. This makes the laptop get too hot.
When you use it this way, you might notice that it gets hotter and hotter. To stop this from happening, you should put something under the laptop, like a book or a plate, and make sure none of the ventilation holes are blocked.
In fact, you might want to get a laptop stand or a lap holder if you want to raise your laptop.
Invest in a laptop cooling pad
If you have access to a room with air conditioning, you should use the laptop there. If the room doesn’t have air conditioning, you should use a cooling pad for your laptop along with a ceiling-mounted or table-mounted fan.
Most laptop cooling pads have fans that move cold air around and help your computer stay at the right temperature. Also, it helps your laptop stand up.
The laptop cooler will help cool the bottom of the laptop, which will lower the temperature of the parts. Still, even though this solves the problem in the short term, other steps need to be taken.
Clean the vents regularly
If you’ve been using your laptop for a while, you may have noticed that there’s a lot of dust around the vents and fans.
This makes the cooling less effective and stops air from getting through. You can also use a vacuum cleaner or an air blower to clean dust out of your laptop if you don’t want to use a cooler.
Move the air smoothly and steadily through the cooling vents on the sides and back of the laptop.
If you can, you should take the laptop to a service center and have them do a maintenance check on it.
Your laptop’s temperature will go down, and you may also notice that it runs a little faster.
Monitor your laptop’s temperature
Some temperature monitoring tools are Real Temp, GPU-Z, Speccy, HWMonitor, and Core Temp. There are still more. All of these are free and can be used to keep an eye on how hot your laptop is getting.
Check that the temperature of your laptop’s processor is at its highest, which should be around 65 degrees Celsius, and that the temperature of your GPU does not go above 80 degrees Celsius. These temperatures are thought to be safe for these parts.
Improve airflow for desktop PCs
Even if all of the fans in your computer are working properly, it could still overheat if there is not a constant flow of cool, fresh air.
Two things you can do to keep the vents clear are to put your computer on a flat, solid surface and make sure that neither of its sides is blocked by anything.
You shouldn’t try to make your computer’s ventilation better by taking off side panels or other parts of its case.
Doing so will change the pressure inside, making it even harder for the fans to keep moving enough air. Instead, you should try to get better airflow by moving your computer to a new spot.
It will also let dust, fluff, and other trash build up inside your computer, which will only make things worse in the long run.
Avoid using programs that use a lot of CPU power
Your computer’s central processing unit (CPU) gets hotter as you make it work harder. But if it is overloaded for a long time, temperatures may rise, and your hard drive may create virtual memory to deal with the extra stress. This could cause your disk to be used up to 100% of the time.
Hit Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager, and then look through the programs in the CPU column to see which ones are putting the most strain on your processor.
To stop processes that are taking up a lot of CPU time, right-click on them and choose “End task” from the menu that appears.
Overclocking your CPU is a great way to get the most out of your system, but it makes more heat that your device might not be able to handle if it gets too hot.
You can lower the temperature of your CPU by putting the clock speed back to the default or by gently underclocking your machine.
The same is true for overclocking your graphics processing unit (GPU), random access memory (RAM), or any other part.
Close unnecessary browser tabs and programs
When you have a lot of programs open at once, the processor in your computer may start to get hot.
To keep temperatures under control, you need to turn off any programs that aren’t being used and keep the number of active processes to a minimum.
To free up space on your disk and stop background processes from causing your computer to get too hot, you should uninstall any programs you aren’t using and get rid of any programs that might be unwanted.
Having a lot of tabs open in your web browser can also put a lot of pressure on your computer’s resources.
Close any tabs that aren’t being used right now, and add a bookmark to any tabs that you might want to use again in the future.
Some web browsers, like Avast Secure Browser, have built-in features that help users find tabs that use a lot of power and memory so that they can be closed.
Clean and dust your computer
Your computer’s ventilation ducts will eventually get clogged with dirt and dust. This will stop important parts from working right, reduce airflow, and cause the computer to get too hot.
If you haven’t cleaned your computer in a while, doing so will help it run smoothly and quietly again.
Don’t forget that bloatware and files you don’t need can also slow down your system and cause it to get too hot.
You can also give your system a digital spring cleaning by using trusted cleaning software that can automatically get rid of temporary files you don’t need and keep your PC running smoothly and quickly.
Check for viruses and malware
Malware like viruses and worms can start high-impact processes on your computer without your knowledge. This will cause your computer to heat up very quickly and shut down.
Use a program that can both find and remove malware to get rid of any potentially dangerous programs on your computer.
Keep your software updated
Keeping the most recent versions of your computer’s operating system, drivers, and other software gives you several performance and security benefits. One of these benefits is that it keeps things from getting too hot.
Your computer will be able to run faster and better if you get new updates, since these updates also fix problems and make things work better.
Using a specialized driver updater tool lets you get the most out of your computer by checking for corrupted or outdated software and automatically fixing it.
Shut down your computer
Just like you and I, computers break from time to time. The best way to cool down a computer is to turn it off and leave it alone for a while.
When you turn it back on, it will have the benefits of a cold start and probably run much better because of it.