Question

My laptop keeps overheating and turning itself off. Underneath it gets really hot.

Even playing 3D online poker is impossible, it just overheats. If it is on my lap, I try and balance it so it's sitting just on my legs and has loads of free space under it. This seems to help a bit (it's never turned itself off in this position) but even being on a desk can result in it overheating.

There is a lot of dust, etc that I've cleaned it out (as much as I can easily take apart anyway), but it never used to happen. Any ideas?

The laptop is a Lenovo 3000 n200.

Answer 1

consider a laptop cooling pad

sorry, but i couln't resist :)

Answer 2

I had this problem a lot with my Toshiba laptop. I tried blowing out the dust and that didn't work. I tried a cooling pad, but it gets really annoying and severely limits portability.

What I did was to take it apart, replace the fan (which I think may have been faulty, it certainly had a lot of dust in it), remove the CPU, remove the old, dried up thermal grease, and apply new, high-quality, silver-based thermal grease.

Since then, I have not really had any problems with it. It only overheats after many hours of intense usage, compared to about five minutes before.

Answer 3

Check out this article in the lenovo forums. It gives some suggestions based on your model. As Molly recommends, get a cooling pad so you don't burn your lap.

Answer 4

You could try Undervolting your laptop.

Undervolting is a corollary of overclocking. Overclocking involves running a chip faster - and possibly with higher voltages - than specified to get more performance. Undervolting is running a chip at the same speed but at lower voltage which means less heat and longer battery life.

I'd had success using RMClock to do this. I followed this guide.