[ale] laptop overheats before install completes

Wed Apr 4 16:18:50 EDT 2012

Be careful when using a vacuum or canned air.  It will spin the fan
which turns it into a small generator which could feedback voltage
into the motherboard.  If possible, use a small straw or something to
prevent the fan from spinning when you clean it like this.

❧ Brian Mathis

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 3:19 PM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have set a laptop intake on top of a shop vac hose with the vac running
> and blasted canned air in the laptop exhaust vent. What came out was a cloud
> of crud that was hung on the fan blades.
>
> I have a passive cooling pad that is nothing more than a swivel pad with
> adjustable "bumps". Good airflow and less than $15.
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 3:12 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE)
> <atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Jim,
>>
>> Your computer SHOULD be able to run at 100 percent capacity for an
>> extended period of time without overheating.  I'll second the advice
>> that Brian Mathis gave to clean the unit.  Here are some details you
>> want to check.
>>
>> a) Make sure the fan is working at all.  It may not be on when the
>> computer is cool, but should definitely come on when the computer gets
>> hot.
>> b) Make sure the fan intake, which is often on the bottom, is not
>> blocked and that the machine is not sitting on a soft surface, or even a
>> hard surface with no air gap.
>> c) Clean any dust out of the fan intake.  I've had these intakes to get
>> clogged before.  You can put a piece of wedding ribbon or other fine
>> mesh over the intake to help prevent dust accumulation inside the
>> machine.  Not too fine though or you'll reduce airflow too much.  Window
>> screen, however is too course.  You'll have to check this intake
>> periodically and clean it.
>> d) Get into the bios and make sure all cooling settings are maxed out,
>> set the fans to run at 100 % all the time (at least until you solve this
>> problem).
>> e) You may wish to get a laptop cooler pad, which has a fan, which blows
>> air up toward the laptop from the base.  I have a nice unit made by
>> Cooler Master, for two of my laptops that sit on a desk, that I bought
>> from Frys.  It has a very large and quiet fan that blows air upward.
>> Don't get a dirt cheap unit.  They have fans that are rated for less
>> than a year.  Get a nice unit, like the one I mentioned, with a fan with
>> BALL BEARINGS and not sleeve bearings.  Note that these don't provide
>> cooling in reality, just air flow, but that might be what you need.
>> f) If you open the computer up, look for the heat exchanger, which the
>> fan blows through, which may be attached to a heat pipe.  Very
>> carefully, clean dust out of the heat exchanger.  Note, on one of my
>> machines, it had a little bitty 1" heat exchanger, with all the air
>> flowing through that.  I found a glob of dust covering 3/4 of it from
>> the INSIDE.  Once I cleaned that, I found that the PC would stay within
>> it's thermal limits even under full load.
>> g) If you remove any heat exchangers or heat pipes, make absolutely sure
>> that all surfaces have a good thermal contact and seal when you put it
>> back together.  You may need to add / replace thermal paste as Brian
>> mentioned.  It only takes a tiny drop.
>> h) Once you get the OS running, install a temperature monitoring
>> software package.  This may be hard to get working depending on which
>> sensors are in the PC and which drivers are in the kernel.  On Windows,
>> you could use something like SpeedFan.
>> i) Set the cooling settings in the OS to maximum or active cooling.  I'm
>> not sure where this is in Ubuntu.  In Windows, it's in the power
>> settings.  These settings won't necessarily run the fan all the time.
>> However, if the system starts getting too hot, it will ramp up the fan
>> prior to throttling the CPU frequency.
>> j) Find out your CPU's maximum operating temperature.  This can be a
>> challenge.  Let me know if you need help and I'll dig through some old
>> bookmarks on the subject  Every CPU is different.  You have to find the
>> data sheet for your particular model.  All my laptops have Intel chips
>> and they can take around 100 degrees C.  More modern chips will
>> generally throttle their speed before shutting down, but only to a
>> point.  My 4 core AMD chip in my desktop can only take 62 degrees C.  I
>> had to go to liquid cooling to keep it from overheating under full CPU
>> load.  GPU temperature is a whole other matter.  Your laptop's cooling
>> system probably is attached to both the CPU and the GPU.
>> k) After you get the problem fixed and get your monitoring working, you
>> may (or may not) want to stress test the system.  If you want to, get
>> the Prime95 software from here:
>>      http://www.mersenne.org/     This software is designed to
>> calculate world record prime numbers that are important to
>> mathematicians.  However, it is also a great way to stress test the
>> system since it runs the CPU and memory to the max.  It doesn't do much
>> with the GPU.  You should be able to run the cpu flat out at 100 percent
>> without a problem overheating.  However, I wouldn't do this all the time
>> because it probably shortens the life of the system.  30 minutes to 1
>> hour for testing should not be a problem.
>>
>> Hope this helps.  If you need any assistance and I can help, I'd be glad
>> to try.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>> On 4/4/2012 1:22 PM, Jim Philips wrote:
>> > Just trolling for possible solutions: My laptop has an ATI Radeon
>> > video card. Unless the Catalyst driver is installed, it quickly starts
>> > to overheat. I messed up my Ubuntu install, so now I want to
>> > reinstall. But when I try, about 50% of the files get copied to disk
>> > and then it slows down and finally shuts off due to overheating. This
>> > wasn't a problem earlier, but I think with each thermal shutdown, the
>> > laptop gets a little more susceptible to overheating. Once Catalyst is
>> > installed, everything works fine. But I can only install Catalyst if I
>> > complete the install of Ubuntu. Any workarounds anybody can think of?
>> >
>> >
>>
>> --
>>
>> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
>> call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
>> mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new messages very quickly.)
>>
>> Ron Frazier
>>
>> 770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
>> linuxdude AT techstarship.com
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> --
> James P. Kinney III
>
> As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to
> consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they
> please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.
> - 2011 Noam Chomsky
>
> http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
>
>
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