Computer maintenance

If you own a laptop and the fan starts to make a loud noise, it would be a signal to clean the laptop. When I mean you need to clean your laptop, it is not physically cleaning the unit but rather to tear the laptop apart and to clean the surrounding fan and heatsink.

I was quite annoyed with the fact that the laptop which I am using would just shut down after five minutes of playing Crysis. I then tore the laptop apart and found out that there was a big lump of dust circulating the vent deep inside the laptop! I was really happy to have flushed out the dust by spraying the vent, the fan and the heatsink with a high pressure air canister.

After that, I had to reassemble the laptop piece by piece until I have everything in place. Firing up the laptop was a breeze! I have no complaints as the fan is keeping very quiet now. I then fire up Hardware Moniter to check on the cpu temperature. Before tearing the laptop apart and cleaning it, I have a registered temperature of 68c on idle (cpu). After cleaning the laptop, Hardware Moniter gave me a reading of 40c on idle (cpu).

I could not stress the importance of ensuring that your laptop fan/heatsink and the surrounding area is free of dust. Even though it took me 30 minutes to disassemble/clean/reassemble, it is worth the time.