I'm currently using a Vostro 1500 which I will have to be sticking by for another few months. Although it does run very hot easily reaching 90 degrees on both cores. I figured part of the reason is the dust that's accumulated in the 2 and a bit years of usage, especially that it is turned on a lot, lets say an average of 12h a day over that time. I was thinking of taking the back cover off and using a compressor on low pressure to blow the dust out. I heard that using a hoover would create static so I guess that's not an option. Any other ideas how I should go about this?
take the back off. there should be a heatpipe from the cpu (and possibly gpu) to a heatsink near the fan. the fan blows air through the heatsink and out of the case. all you will need to do is take off this heatpipe (its attached to the heatsink) and blow the dust off that. you might also want to re-apply the thermal paste to the cpu.
i've seen real tatami's of dust in laptops. so yes, maybe that is a good idea. i don't think it is really necessairy to remove the cooler from its position. usually, if the back is gone, you can remove the dust without any problem. also, if the back doesn't come off, sometimes there are screws under the keyboard that need to be removed.
Sometimes its easier just to take out the fan than remove the whole heatsink, as if you do this you'll have to reapply the thermal paste.
We use hoovers on (desktop) computers at work, when they're mucky. No worries. It shouldn't be too hard (hopefully) to access the fan and make sure it isn't clogged up with dust. Also, use the laptop on a hard surface e.g. a desk, rather than a bed or your lap, as the laptop sinks into soft surfaces and block the air intake.
Raise your laptop. I've had so many overheating issues in the past and after I raised the back end of my laptop I've found my temperatures to drop quite a bit. If that still doesn't solve the issue then I suggest trying out a laptop cooler.
Aye a bit of a clean and raising it will help. My GFs ancient laptop used to overheat and shut down even just watching a video, just had it to bits, cleaned it out, removed the crappy thermal pad and put some arctic silver on and now the fan doesn't try to launch the laptop into the stratosphere.
I have had quite a few laptops over the years, the main heating problem that I found with them is the fan not being able to get rid of the hot air because its so close to the surface of whatever it is on. This also doesn't help when you put it on a bed, as I have done many times before (and yes they got very hot indeed). Laptops are a lot tricker to try and clean from my experience, if you take the back cover off, some laptops you are able to see everything others not so much. But if you are able to get at the heatsink do remove all the dust, as they will be a lot most likely. In future try and raise it or someway to allow the fan to have a greater distance to blow the air, or get a laptop cooler, which I have never used before, but I am sure they will work
