How to cool down your Laptop – Overheating Solutions

With laptops now being more compact and powerful than it ever was, it has also brought home a serious problem of excess heating. Laptop Overheating has indeed become a common and recurring problem for its users. You may be facing this problem right now as you are reading this article.

You shall be getting several indications that will tell you if your Laptop has overheated or is in the process of overheating.

Firstly, certain parts of your device would be so hot that you would not be able to place your hands on it for a long time. The fan of your Laptop could also make a whirring sound as it tries to cool your Laptop. In the meanwhile, your Laptop would start running slower than its average speed. There could also be error messages popping or horizontal flashes of lines appearing on the screen. There is also a chance of your Laptop turning a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) or shutting down all by itself.

Immediate actions are required if your Laptop is overheating or it could lead to further damage. Some of the overheating solutions to fix your device is mentioned below.

Restart Your Computer

More than often, the reason for the overheating of the Laptop is because of too many programs running at the same time. If such is the case and you can feel the Laptop getting hot then save your work, close all the applications you were using and shut down your device. Restart your Laptop after a few minutes. By this time, your device should have cooled down. If it starts overheating again, we would have to look for other alternatives.

Clean the Vents

While working with your Laptop, you could be placing your device on all types of surface like desks, tables, sofas and more. Dust is sure to accumulate over a period of time in your laptop vents, thus blocking ventilation and trapping the internal heat.

The simplest way to take care of this is by using compressed air cans to clean the vent. Depending on your laptop variant, you might not have to open your gadget.

Always station your Laptop on a Hard and Flat surface.

The majority of the laptops suck cold air through their bottoms. Uneven surfaces like your lap, cushions, pillows, blankets etc. obstruct the cold airflow. This results in heat building up, and your laptop surface becomes hot. With the blocked air unable to cool, the temperature inside the laptop increases and eventually leads to overheating.

Station your laptop on a hard and flat surface so that there is proper cold airflow. You can also use Laptop trays to avoid these situations.

Use a Cooling Pad

Place your Laptop on a cooling pad. These pads are platforms that have fans which blow on the bottom of the Laptop thus keeping the temperature of the device under safe range. These pads are available at various price ranges. However, before purchasing one, do understand the airflow dynamics of your Laptop. If your Laptop has air intake grills at the bottom, buy a cooling pad that blows air upwards into the device. You can also use a passive cooler that does not consume power and only absorbs heat.

Add more RAM

RAM (Random Access Memory) is the hardware inside your Laptop that stores your data temporarily for immediate access. However, as your Laptop reaches its RAM limits, it could start to overheat. Purchasing more RAM should not only keep your Laptop cool but also improve the performance of other applications as well.

To find the exact solution, one needs to understand the reason for the overheating of the Laptop. It could happen that despite hardware fixes, there has been no improvement in overheating issues. Check for any software problems in such cases. Update your drivers. You can reduce the brightness or decrease the CPU clock speed. Underclocking is possible through software tools.

Before you go for any diagnosis, it is always wise to create a backup of your data.

The tips, as mentioned above, should be more than enough to resolve your Laptop overheating issues and stop causing any damage to your system. However, as a caution, remember if your Laptop is very old and keeps overheating, you might have to consider purchasing a new one.