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I've a 4 year old laptop that is consistently running 60-70 degrees Celsius. I cleaned the heatsink and replaced the fan as it was previously running at 90 - 100 degrees and although it was clearly overheating, the machine was not shutting down to protect from this.

Once I replaced the fan and cleaned the heatsink, the temperature dropped to 60/70 and I then applied new thermal cooling paste to the cpu and gpu which at first brought the laptop down to the comfortable temperature of 40.

A week later and it's back to running high and I'm not sure what else there is I can do for it. It sits in a well ventilated area and I've tried using a stand to improve air intake.

Could it be that my laptop is just worn out?

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    This is quite a broad question, but you can buy USB fans which the laptop sits ontop of and it aids air flow, but based upon the heats you describe, it may not help. Does the same issue persist when the computer is idle or in safe mode? – Dave Apr 25 '14 at 10:38
  • Are these idle temperatures, where CPU usage is close to 0%? No rogue processes running in the background using a lot of CPU? – Adam Apr 25 '14 at 15:38
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    related: Laptop Overheating. Is there a way to cool it? & How to determine root cause of poor laptop cooling? – Sathyajith Bhat♦ Apr 25 '14 at 19:36
  • Hi Dave and Adam, it does occasionally persist when idol and my computer is clean from any spyware or viruses. And since I've went through the options I thought would help cool it, i'm not sure why it persists. Thanks Sathya, I'll have a look at them! – fraserky Apr 26 '14 at 19:49
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Make shure you only applied the necessary amount of thermal compound to the processor, a little too much and it may spread out and isolate the heat instead of transferring it to the heat sink; it may seem to work just right at the beginning but as the compound starts to "settle" down after a week or so, the problems arise. Also check that background processes and apps; did you say that you replaced the fan? make shure it is spinning in the right direction too, the total heat dissipated also depends on where the air flows (outwards is the most common direction, check if you feel the air blowing at all).

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