My laptop (E6400) is starting to get pretty hot and the fan is staying on

Should I just replace the thermal paste and clean out any dust i see (not that there's much there...)?

Thanks guys!

 

If you haven't already done the above, it's definitely worth a shot. Usually the dust is stuck between the fan and the heatsink, so you've at least got to take that out to see anything.

 

just to add to above, simply blowing air through the fans does not do a good job removing any dust bunnies - it's a temp fix at best, and sometimes can damage the fans..

Removing the fans and heat pipe assemblies and cleaning them out is the best way.

While open the re-pasting of the CPU / GPU is a good ideal.

 

Thanks for the advice! How can air damage the fans (don't have any but figured i'd ask!)?

If I have the E6400 with no nvidia gpu, I just need to put thermal paste on the CPU, right?

Thanks again!

Bonus question: any idea if I can add the nvidia video card to this laptop?

 

If you are replacing thermal paste, you only need to paste the CPU. Get rid of the existing paste first.

You will need to replace the motherboard and the heatsink to change the GPU. You could also get an M2400 motherboard with the FX whatever it is.

 

Appreciate the info!

Any idea what the thing in this first picture is, covered by this thing in the second picture? Photo Album - Imgur

 

That is your northbridge (Intel calls it the MCH for core 2 CPUs), it needs the thermal pad to stay cool. It is responsible for communicating with the RAM as well as handling the PCI-E lanes for graphics if you have a dedicated GPU.

 

Ah, thanks! Would it be better to remove that and add some good thermal paste, or would the connection not be solid enough?

 

If they used a pad, then the gap is likely too wide for paste and besides, the northbridge doesn't generate a lot of heat so, it's not a concern as long as there is something there to cool it, even a pad, it will be fine.

 

Wow, very glad I cleaned out the dust (had to disconnect the fan from the metal support--all the dust was right behind the intake on the computer side of the fan) and added the AS5! Huge difference. Now I feel cold air when the fan blows, which comes on way less frequently, and the temps are much more stable and wayyyyyyyyyy lower (they had gotten up to the high 80'sC eek iirc over the last few days)!

I'm not sure if adding the paste was what did it or removing the dust, but I wish I wouldve done this ages ago. Hopefully the temps will lower even more as the paste settles.