Ever feel like your laptop will burn right through your thighs? To keep your computer running within safe temperatures is of high importance, especially as the temperature outside rises.
The cooling system of your laptop is no doubt one of the most essential features. Without the cooling system functioning correctly, the delicate electrical components of your laptop wouldn’t be able to function at optimum capacity as overheating will damage the integral parts of what makes your laptop function. The heat has to be dispersed so that to keep everything working within safe operating temperatures.
Why an Overheated Computer Can Be Dangerous
To put it simply, if your laptop becomes too hot, you can destroy and shorten the lifespan of the hardware inside. This can lead to irreparable damage and potential data loss. Besides losing data, heat claws away at your computer’s internal organs, which are the motherboard, CPU and more. The long-term result of this is that you shorten your computers lifespan.
A hot computer also runs slower than a cooler computer. So to stop your computer from slowing down due to heat, make sure that it is running at a moderate or very low temperature.
Is there an optimum temperature for my computer to run?
There are many different types of computer makes and models so the safe temperature range your computer should run at varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. The safe operating range depends widely on processor type, manufacturer, and other various factors that to give an answer that applies to all CPU’s is not possible.
Check The Temperature of Your PC Regularly
Just by putting your hand over your computer’s ventilation system is not an accurate way to tell how hot your computer is running. But, that method can be a good enough gauge to see if it’s progressively getting hotter but not to the point where you pull your hand away due to the extremely high temperature. So if that’s not a good way to do it, then what is? Well, you have a few options.
One way to check the computer’s temperature without additional software, have a look at system BIOS. To test, restart your computer, and on the boot screen, you should see an option to press a key (often Delete) to enter the system BIOS. Once you have entered Setup, navigate the BIOS menu by using the simple on-screen instructions. Without too much trouble, you should be able to find a menu that displays the computer’s hardware monitors and CPU. There should be a section that lists your CPU’s running a temperature.
If you would rather not restart your computer to check the temperature, there are plenty of system monitoring tools that can give you a temperature read-out. One of the most popular ones is a free Windows program HWMonitor. This program displays the temperature of the CPU, the computer’s cores, hard drives, video card, complete with the minimum and maximum values of each temperature.
To Keep Your Computer From Overheating is Easy
These days, computers come with their own cooling systems with plenty of fans, and that is usually more than adequate. But here are some simple steps you can take to ensure that overheating doesn’t become a problem.
Keep it clean
This is such an essential common sense step, but most computer owners are oblivious to it. Make sure that the insides of the computer are kept clean.
So what do you do if you’ve got all that dust? Arm yourself with a Philips screwdriver, an oil dropper and a can of compressed air. Use a slightly damp cloth to clean your fans, but the typical geek procedure says you should use the compressed can of air to blow out the fans, all the inlets, and heat sinks. The critical things to check are the fan on top of your CPU, all the filters over the fans, and not forgetting the fan on the power supply.
If for some reason you are not comfortable opening up your PC and cleaning the inside parts, then at this point you may consider looking for some professional help.