My HP Laptop getting too hot!

DominoDude

Certified photon catcher
Feb 7, 2013
910
2
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I'm inclined to believe that you would get faster and more relevant support if you tried asking HP. State all information from the Service Tag (if it has one of those), or at least give as much information as possible about Product #, Serial #, what OS it's running and so forth.

I don't know what you are running, but it is possible that HP CoolSense could run on your laptop, and give you further information and/or some temporary help. It can be found here -> http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?cc=uk&lc=en&softwareitem=ob-125555-1

Good luck!
 
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Hi, you might be able to isolate the problem through a program like Speccy (https://www.piriform.com/speccy), which essentially tells you the hardware status of your system. Mostly what's installed, but also the temperature for specific components: CPU, GPU and HDD/SDD. I recommend opening it, if you are capable of doing so, and use a dust blower (I use the same that I use for sensor cleaning) to make sure it's not a dust problem. This can have a really significant effect on temperature.
 
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I would agree with everything above. In general, HP has made some real crap in recent years when it comes to laptops. Some models are fine but others are nightmares. It usually comes from a design mistake where they used the same heat sink for both the CPU and the Graphics chips.

Aside from that, I fix a lot of heat problems by simply blowing out the main heatsink with compressed air. If you get a huge cloud of dirt/dust then that is probably the problem. Heat thresholds are pretty slim on most laptops so it doesn't take much to start triggering thermal shutdown.

Let us know how it goes!
 
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It is a relatively common problem with laptops, due most of the time to dust and thermal grease drying out. That is, of course if your fan is still running (it may have simply died).

This is due to the small hot air exhaust ports, and the small capacity of the fan /heat sink to dissipate the heat on laptops, because of the limited space available. The copper heat sink catches dust with time, and kills the ability to evacuate the heat from the laptop. Worsening the problem is the fact that all manufacturers save pennies and use the cheapest thermal paste, that is a critical component in the CPU / heat sink / fan combination.

The problem is even worse in case you have a discrete video card.

I've had the problem occasionally on my Lenovo W500, and one of the reason I loved Lenovo is they are designed to be (relatively) easily disassembled and repaired buy the user.

The cure is to stripe your laptop, remove the heat sink / fan assembly, clean it and replace the thermal grease with a good one (about the size of a grain of rice). I highly recommend the Prolimatech Thermal Compound, that can help reduce the CPU temp by 4 to 5 °C. Reassemble, and everything should be fine for a couple more years.

A good way to test it before is to see if this happens when your laptop shuts down only when plugged on the AC. When running on the battery, the CPU throttles down, and the temperature is much less.
 
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When you are blowing out the fan using compressed air or an air compressor try blowing into one edge of the grill or the other. This will cause the fan to turn, if you try to blow in the middle it might now. Now listen to the sound the fan makes when it spins (if at all) You should get a nice high-pitched buzzing sound. No buzzing at all likely means a seized fan and rattling likely means a broken bearing assembly. Either way a replacement fan might solve your issues.
I can second the re-application of thermal paste as a solution...as long as your laptop is reasonable to access and you feel comfortable doing something like that. I've opened my share of HP laptops and some are really easy but others are darn near impossible.
Edit: Any chance of providing the model number?
 
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