is your laptop too hot? you can fix it easily

After switching to Linux as my daily driver OS on my laptop, I started to notice the temperature readings every now and then.

Everything was good until the fan seemed to become more annoying than usual

My fan started to stay on more often and I was not sure why

At first I thought that it's just because Linux is not like Windows, and it just keeps the fan on because it is on high performance mode at all times.

But then, I'd installed tlp and autocpu-freq (utilities for power management) which are supposed to make things better and keep the fan quiet when it doesn't need to be on.


I started doing more research (on YouTube 😂) and decided to open up my laptop and clean the dust that must have gotten accumulated over the fan

I opened my laptop and couldn't find any dust near the fan, nothing significant :/

Then after a few days of worrying about the fan and temperatures on my CPU that averaged around 75°C and sometimes reaching 90°C on my 4 year old awesome dell Laptop I decided to do a bit more googling.

Alas I had another suspect the thermal paste might need to be replaced.

Till now I had never thought about thermal paste and had never replaced it on any of my computers.

I watched a few videos and felt pretty confident about doing it by myself.


It really easy actually most often you can just remove the thermal paste with a tissue and that's what I did.


I called up a computer store nearby and asked if they sold thermal paste. They did, I went and bought this for NZ$6.50.



Then I applied the new paste and closed the laptop back with all the screws.

Now for the tests


Before I was easily seeing temperatures rising to 90°C

I tested by Opening 4 tabs of 4k YouTube videos playing simultaneously.
Then I started screen recording to increase the load

Then I also turned on the camera 

This was enough to make the CPU work as hard as it could.

But temperatures did not rise above 75°C


I'll really happy to have done this and feel great with a quieter and not efficient laptops again.
And it only took me 1 hr to do all this.


You can do it too!
Don't be shy and save yourself money. Be careful though and watch some YouTube videos before attempting this.

Until next time

-Lakshay


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