Legit Reviews

Well, I got convinced to clean my notebook just by the fact that the fans always were on medium speed. It irritated me to hell. My gaming performance has sucked because the CPU runs too hot. If you read my "5.10 Drivers SUCK!!!" thread in the ATI forum, I can say, my gaming performance IS still affected by the crappy drivers.

I don't have any pictures, but this is truely sad.

My laptop is just over a year old now. The original owners hardly used it, but I do. Well, I went ahead and took my entire notebook apart. I got down to the CPU heat spreader and the video card, and my god! The heatsinks were COVERED in dust, even after frequently spraying them off externally. I have to say there was atleast 1/2" of dust on them, even stuck inside the fins as there is nowhere else for it to go. The thermal paste that Dell puts on the CPU was HORRIBLE!!! I can't even say there was any on it when I took it off... I put a nice new lair of AS5 on there, and it seems to be helping A LOT!!

I wanted to put some thermal paste on the GPU, but there was a thermal pad on it and a HUGE gap, too large for paste. So I ended up leaving that on there. Same goes with the Northbridge... thermal pad and a huge gap!

Well, I got it all back together, and crap! It didn't want to start... I'm like, uhh..... Well, turns out a memory module didn't get seated properly. Took 'em both out, cleaned the contacts, and put them back in, VIOLA!

Wow, my system now starts with the fans either OFF or on a very LOW speed. I am amazed!

The CPU temperatue is only a whopping 48* C at idle. I'll probably run the burn-in process to get an even better result. I don't know what my GPU is running at currently as I need to find another piece of software to read the probe, but good god. I used to be running at 58*C at idle and ~68* under load. I was getting angry that this thing was getting so hot.



So, moral of the story, CLEAN THE GUTS OF YOUR LAPTOP!!!


I'll post better temperature numbers once the burn-in is done.



P.S. Here are my laptop specs:

- Pentium 4 2.8GHz (800MHz FSB)
- 2x 1GB PC3200 DDR RAM (Dual Channel)
- ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 - 64MB
- 60GB 5400RPM HDD
- 8x DVD Combo Drive
- 15.4" WXGA
- 6450 mAh Battery

excellent thank you!! i never would have thought that would effect a laptop like it would a desktop. My only problem is that the one laptop i took apart i couldnt get to power back on. Thank goodness it was already a bad/free laptop. lol I Just yanked the ram and put it on my other laptop. LOL But again thank you for bringing that to my attention. I always keep my desktop clean, but never my laptop. maybe i will try it.
I bearly ever use my laptop its soo bad

pentium: celery (celeron) 700mhz
10gig HD
128megs of ram
14in lcd
shitty battery, must have plugged in the wall all the time. LOL

But the thing is, it still works when i use it once and a blue moon

solid advice... notebooks get really clogged up... think about where you use them... outside, on the bed, on the rug, and places with high dust/bug ratios... LOL

A friend of mine from college once brought over a notebook for me to work on. They actually broke off the bottom fan cover and stuck a piece of cardboard in the fan to stop it from spinning. It turns out the fan was making noise and it was annoying, so they made it stop.

The reason they brought it to me was because it would BSOD when running an app... Hard to cool without a fan (Overheating)

lol, jeez, really smart ; personally, I don't care if my machine sounds like a F-16 coming out of Mach 2, the fans will run at all times, lol. As a matter of fact, with the case fans I plan on putting in my system (Evercool 120mm, aluminum), it WILL sound like a jet coming out of Mach 2, lol. What can I say, I just don't leave my computer on all night, the lights bother me more than the noise

Well, for some reason the good ol' Sandra Burn-In Wizard won't work, so if there are any other programs, let me know.

I got around to playing WoW tonight and I gotta say just that... wow! My CPU got to 60* and my fans were at MEDIUM speeds!!! I no longer have to listen to a jumbo jet while I try to play a game. That's what my desktop PC is for!

no need to really burn in a laptop IMO. Run F@H (Team #38296) and it will get your system running 100%

Well, it was more to set the paste, but I'm not going to worry about it. WoW will do a good enough of a job with that.

Thanks for the heads up on cleaning the laptop, i keep my other system realitivly dust free but never thought to clean the laptop. man alot of dog hair thanks again