[Thermodyne]

Originally posted by deccan:
Hmm, I have a Compaq Presario 2700 laptop with the following specs:

1.12 GHz Pentium 3-M
512 MB RAM
30 Hz HD
Win XP Home Edition
32 MB ATI Radeon Mobility M6

It ran fine for the year-and-a-half that I've had it (I've played and finished such games as Morrowind, Jedi Knight 2 and Splinter Cell on it).

The thing is, I have been having some major heat problems with this machine lately. A couple of weeks ago, it overheated so much that it shut itself down.

Now, some kind of heat management system seems to have kicked in, so that the laptop runs with SpeedStep permanently enabled. Now, it runs for 733 MHz for maybe half an hour, until the temperature gets too bad, and then it drops to 384 MHz. At least, it doesn't shut down by itself now. This is enough to play SEIV but not for other stuff.

I know that I really ought to bring it to a Compaq Service Centre but I can't where I live, at least until the end of the year.

I'm considering either:

1) Buying a new desktop-replacement Dell Inspiron.

2) Buying the spanking new Dell Dimension 8300 but then I'll have to arrange for it to be shipped specially for me from Singapore to where I live.

I'd prefer buying the laptop but I'm worried about persistent heat problems, especially since I keep my computer running for long periods of time.

Anyone have any experience with heat problems in laptops that they'd like to share?

Sounds like you have a dead fan, could also be an air port plugged with lint and such. Any computer shop could fix that for you.

I have a Prostar laptop with a 2.4GHz northwood chip. It runs real hot. The heat venting out the side of it is about 120f when its working hard. But when it is running on battery, I can set the speed to 25% (about 500MHz) and there is almost no heat at all.