9 Possible Causes of Overheating Laptop – Your Best Chance to Trace the Fault

Possible Causes Of Overheating Laptop

Overheating is one of the biggest challenges a laptop user may face which can affect the normal operation of the laptop and can also result in damage to the vital components of the laptop. Read on to know the Causes of Overheating Laptops

Some Possible Causes of Overheating Laptop

  1. Faulty Laptop Fan:
    Fans are built into the laptop along with a heat sink to help drive away heat produced by the laptop in the course of its operation. In the case whereby the fan is dead or doesnโ€™t work properly as intended, the heat built up inside the laptop will accumulate and makes the system heat up. Sometimes, dust or other materials clogged around the fan can cause it not to work properly.
  2. Incompatible Operating System:
    Installing a new or upgrading to a newer version of your operating system can make it start heating up. This mostly occurs if the system does not meet the basic requirements to run the operating system.
  3. Degraded Heat Paste:
    Overtime the heat paste that is applied between the processor and the heat sink can lose quality, this can contribute to overheating of the laptop
  4. Overcharging:
    Overcharging your laptop may cause the battery to heat up. When this happens, heat can spread from the battery to other components and can make the laptop overheat.
  5. Wrong Laptop Placement:
    Placing the laptop on some surfaces like lap, pillow, bed and blanket can block the inlet that draws in fresh air into the laptop and outlets provided for heat to exit the laptop. This will cause heat to build up and in turn cause overheating.
  6. Blockage of PC Exhaust Vents:
    Exhaust vents are inlets for air and outlets for hot air that play an important role in keeping the laptop cool. They can be found by the sides or under the laptops.
    Blockage of these air vents by accumulated dust or dirt can prevent the heat generated not to conducted away nor letting in fresh air, this will definitely make your laptop overheat.
  7. Leaving Your Laptop Running in Your Bag or Carry Case:
    Obviously, leaving a laptop inside your bag or case while it is running is never a good idea, as there is limited circulation of air to cool it down. The best option is to hibernate or shut it down.
  8. Malfunctioning Hardware or Installation of New Hardware:
    Overheating may be a symptom of chip level degradation and imminent failure caused by low quality components.
    Also, the cause of laptop overheating can be traced to newly installed or upgraded hardware which triggers your laptop to make use of more resources and in turn start heating up.
  9. Temperature Around the Laptop:
    Sometimes when your laptop overheats, it does not necessarily mean that the components are malfunctioning. This may be as a result of the temperature of the vicinity where the laptop is being operated.

Also read:

7 Proven Tips to Prevent Your Laptop from Overheating

Conclusion.

I believe with these few causes of overheating laptop, you can trace why your laptop is overheating and when you know the cause, you are already a step ahead from preventing or finding a solution to overheating laptop even without taking PC maintenance Shop.

You can follow this guide here by Dell Technologies to resolve thermal related issues on your Dell laptop.