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The Problem

Does your laptop fan run constantly? does your laptop burn your legs when your using it? if so it looks like you may have a heat issue. Read on to discover how to cool your laptop down and stop that damn fan from running 100%

I purchased my 4th laptop the Acer Travelmate 8103 WLMi around 2 years ago, it was a perfect solution for me. Thin, light, fast, good looking and with the ATI Mobility Radeon X700 plus an Intel Centrino 750M onboard it had enough processor and graphics power to be considered the most portable desktop replacement at the time.

I could play Farcry at medium settings with no lag or framerate issues, plus I could carry it off with me to business meetings without the embarrassment associated with the vulgar Alienware chassis of the time. All in all the Acer Travelmate 8103 was the ideal laptop for me.

Until recently! after 2 years of daily usage I noticed that the fan was continuously running. I tried altering the power management setting and reducing the clock frequency of the CPU from 1.86Ghz to a measly 800Mhz, all to no avail. My life continued to be blighted by the million decibel moan from the fan

The Cure

I have been building PC's for many years but was unsure about breaking open the laptop as my experience with them was limited. However the machine was out of warranty anyway due to a new hardrive and an additional 2GB RAM so I thought bugger it and decided to take a peek inside.

As you can imagine, the sight I was greeted with was not pretty, the amout of dust and debris that can accumulate in a laptop is considerable. I took the hoover out and began to clean the upper surface of the motherboard. The fan was situated underneath the motherboard and to access it you really need to decide if you want to completely dissasemble your laptop or not. Thankfully from my experience with desktops I found the laptop internals to be uncomplicated, so I proceeded.

The first task to be completed is the removal of the outer chassis, flip the laptop over and you will be presented with numerous screws. Carefully unscrew each one and put it safe, its wise to put all the screws in individual bags so that you don't lose or get them mixed up when rebuilding. There's nothing worse than having screws left over so, remember where each one goes.

When you have removed all the screws, gently prise the laptop apart. The Travelmate 8103 came apart easily without the need for any real force. Other models may require a little more pursuasion, be careful though as it's quite easy to break a laptop chassis.

Ooh It's so shiny

So we have the laptop chassis removed, you have come this far but why! well I will get to that now. The reason for doing this is to remove the processor/graphic card heatsink or heat tube and replace the thermal coolant with some Arctic Silver 5.

Arctic Silver is a special thermal compound that contains a high density of Silver. It is aimed at high end CPU's and watercooled desktops, but is ideal for cooling laptops perfectly.

Let's get dirty (well clean actually)

Time to get the vacum cleaner out! the amount of dust that will accumulate in your laptop over the years is considerable. The easiest way to get rid of it is to suck it out, pay particular attention to the fins at the end of the heat pipe and make sure that all of your fans are clean. Fans that are covered in dust are less efficient and because of air resistance they are a damn sight louder to.

When you have removed all of the dust, you will need to clean the old thermal compound from the heat sink/pipe. On my machine the compound had become solid and crumbled off! not a good sign. Excessive heat will reduce the lifetime of your processor, another reason to perform this minor operation.

Once the old compound is removed you may consider lapping the contact surfaces (I will be covering lapping in another article shortly) basically lapping is the procedure of using fine grain abrasive paper and water to give the heat sink contact surface a mirror finish. I did'nt bother lapping the heat sink on my machine as the surfaces were smooth enough for simple cleaning to suffice.

The appliance of science

our heatsink is now clean and the dust has been banished, so it's time to apply the thermal compound. We don't need much as excessive amount will actually cause an insulating effect rather than providing efficient heat transfer. mosimage} For the Pentium M Centrino I used a size similar to a grain of rice. This was then smoothed over the surface of the CPU, GPU etc... with my finger. All thats left to do now is to replace the heatsink, put the laptop back together and get testing the temps with a program such as Mobile Meter.

Using mobile meter I witnessed a reduction in temperature from 53C idle @ 1.89Ghz to 46C, not a bad reduction eh! Under full load using Orthos.exe the temp only goes up to 55C max using the CPU stress test. Overall I am very happy with the outcome of this operation and my laptop fan only comes on now when I am doing something intensice or playing a game. Ahh silence is golden!

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