Laptop running really hot?

Factual Questions
1

There’s a whole gang of stuff going on with my computer, but what I’m most worried about is the running hot issue. I’m running SpeedFan, and looking at my CPU temp. It often stays at around 50-55C, just from casual internet browsing, which is more than it used to, definitely. When doing things that are more processor-intensive (like playing old computer games or watching a movie), the temperature quickly skyrockets into the low 70s. I’ve watched the RightMark CPU utility and my computer automatically throttles the CPU down when it gets that hot to 50%, so I’m not worried about lighting myself on fire.

Here are the specs:
It’s a 3-year old Inspiron 5100
2.8 ghz P4
768 megs of RAM

Here’s what it’s not:
Hot environment - the hotel rooms we’ve been in are freezing, and the bus isn’t hot either.
Blocked fan - the fan is still running unimpeded

But here’s another problem - the battery is on its last leg, in that I only get 45min-1 hour of life out of it (it’s 3 years old also)

So I was thinking maybe the thermal paste is shot or something? I cracked the case about 2 months ago (for the first time since I got it) and everything seemed clean.

Help!

2

Well that was my first thought. Just for kicks try blowing into one of the fan ports and see if dust comes flying out the other end.

Other then that, I would suggest a laptop cooler and help take some of the load off the heatsinks.

3

IANA computer guy, but it is my experience that many laptop cases are simply not capable of properly dissipating heat when running resource-intensive programs. It may not be a “problem” in the sense of something amiss other than poor engineering.

4

I have a Toshiba, which has a known bug of the heatsink getting dusty, and then overheating and shutting down. It happens about every year and a quarter. It got fixed once, and is in the shop again. They symptoms is shutting down after shorter and shorter intervals.

You might try googling your model and seeing if you can find the problem.

5

If I’m running my lappy for long stints and lots of number crunching, it can get too hot to hold in my lap.

I purchased one of those lap top stand thingys which holds the machine up off of the surface you are using it on … seems to help a lot.

6

My Dell laptop had similar symptoms. I got a can of canned air and shot it in the few vent openings as well as opened the cover over the heat sink (where it gets really hot) and blew in there.

I didn’t think it would do much, but it solved the problem. The laptop barely heats up, runs a lot faster, and the battery life has bounced back.

7

That’s why they started calling them notebooks instead of laptops.