Why Does My Laptop Overheat?

Many Laptops tend to heat up faster than Desktops. It might be a common analogy for some while others might have experienced something different. Whatever be the case, you want to know why and avoid it because excess heat may cause slowdown or even damage your computer.

To take care of the overheating issue, you need to first spot the reason why it occurs in the first place. Only then you will be effectively able to mitigate the issue. Here are the top offenders when it come to overheating:

1. Your Laptop Needs To Be Cleaned

   

   Yes, you do have air vents to take care of the dust. But, what about the fan? You have got to clean the air cooler fans within the laptop (intake vents). If the fans for intake are covered with sticky layers of dust, the air flow will not be effective, but it will hurt the hardware components.

   So, the fan needs to be taken care of. However, it is not just the fan, you have to clean up your Laptop’s internals regularly (not too often but in a month or per 3 months would be good). We would advise you not to screw up yourself but rather hand it over to a service center to take care of it (unless you are not sure what you want to do!).

2. Your Laptop Isn’t at a Cool Place

   

   By this, we do not refer to a bunch of ice cubes around your laptop but a perfect environmental temperature that is optimal for machines. You do not want to operate your laptop in a room where you feel completely burned out.

   We understand that you have work to do but your Laptop needs a cooler place. An air conditioned room would be the best thing you can find to have your Laptop at. Even if you do not have an air-conditioned space, you should consider working with the Laptop in a room where you encounter 35-degree Celsius or less – is perfectly fine as well.

3. The Surface is Uneven Where The Laptop’s At

   

   Let us assume that you have cleaned up your Laptop. But, why my laptop is still overheating?A possible reason for this would be the surface you have placed your Laptop at. Always keep the laptop at a flat and hard surface where the air vents taking in the air will not be restricted.

   The most common mistake people do – is to keep their laptops on their “lap” or bed. Of course, it is a “lap”-top. You can surely keep it on your lap and work. But, as a result, the intake vents would not get sufficient air to suck in when you place your Laptop on a bed or your lap.

4. Intensive Processes

   
   In order to fix the overheating issue of your Laptop, you have to maintain the software part as well. If you are running a high-end game with maxed out graphics settings, the Laptop may tend to overheat. Similar is the case when you launch any other resource intensive task like music production, video editing, and Photoshop.

   You’ve got to give your Laptop rest if you observe overheating issues while working on resource intensive programs for long. Nevertheless, a malware can run a disk-eating process in the background as well where the disk I/O service would be utilized to 100% and the RAM consumed would become higher (without you even launching a program).

5. Your Laptop May Be Poorly Designed – Watch Before You Buy

   This point might be more of an advice than a reason for overheating. Let us face it, the design of the Laptop – the placement of the vents for air flow lets the Laptop breathe and stay cooler.If the air vents are poorly designed and placed at a position where the airflow is more restricted than expected, it could lead to overheating.

   You should specifically look at the exhaust vents (more likely to be at the side or at the back of the display screen). The intake vents are always at the bottom. If you notice an exhaust vent at the bottom, do not even consider getting that Laptop.

   If you have a budget over $900, better go for a gaming build if you are serious about keeping your laptop cool.

Wrapping Up

So, the above-mentioned points are possibly the reasons why your laptop overheats. With these in mind, you can help prevent your laptop from overheating in the future (if it does now). Do you happen to know about some other reasons why your laptop overheats?

Ankush Das
Categories: Computers
Tags: Laptops