5 Minute HelpDesk – How to Prevent My Laptop from Overheating

5 Minute HelpDesk – How to Prevent My Laptop from Overheating

Overheating is one of the greatest threats to your laptops. It can damage both the external and internal components. Our IT Helpdesk from Perth will help you understand why your laptop is overheating and how to prevent your laptop from overheating.

How to Know If Your Laptop Is Overheating?

The most common signs indicating your laptop might be overheating are:

  • The laptop fan running the entire time at maximum speed and you can audibly hear it.
  • If it hurts to touch the laptop’s base.
  • Performance is drastically slowed. This is caused by CPU reducing the clock speed to lower heat stress.
  • Unexpected shutdowns. The fail-safe system gets triggered by overheating. It shuts down the system to limit hardware damage.

What are the Causes of overheating?

Some of the common reasons for overheating are:

Faulty Laptop Fan

Laptops generate heat even during normal working, and for the same reason, they’re built with internal fans. The fans will blow out hot air and suck in cooler air. When these fans stop working properly, it leads to overheating.

The fan can get faulty because of dust and dirt clogging, or the air vents are being blocked, restricting airflow.

Incorrect Placement

Another possible reason is the improper placement of your laptop, leading to blocking the airflow through the laptop’s air vent.

Old Battery

Laptop battery are mostly lithium based. As the battery ages, this chemical naturally decays. The older the battery gets it becomes less efficient and produces more heat.


If your laptop is being overcharged, it may also result in increased heat production from your system.


Overheating can be induced by running too many apps and programs in the background. It can overwork your laptop leading to producing heat more than normal.

How to Prevent Your Laptop from Overheating

How to prevent my laptop from overheating | Computing Australia

Laptop overheating can be prevented by following the below methods.

Clean Out the Accumulated Dust

As time passes, the air vents in your laptop get clogged by dust accumulation. This will block airflow leading to overheating. You can remove the accumulated dust using a can of compressed air. Spray the compressed air into the air vents in quick and short blasts. Before doing it, ensure the laptop is switched off and unplugged.

Use a computer vacuum to suck out the dust or a cotton swab to remove any noticeable dust. If you are not very familiar with servicing laptop hardware or your laptop has a guarantee, it’s wise to take your laptop to a professional to clean the air vents.

Use Lap Desk or Stand

Use a lap desk to increase ventilation and maintain constant airflow to keep your laptop temperature under control. If appropriately placed on a flat surface, the small rubber feet on the laptop’s bottom is enough to provide the elevation required to enhance airflow.

However, if they are placed on your laps or bumpy surfaces, the airflow can get restricted, leading to overheating. So, it’s always best to keep your lap on flat surfaces.


Elevate the laptop to prevent overheating due to lack of inadequate ventilation. You can purchase a laptop cooling mat to provide enough ventilation under the device.

Monitor your laptop temperature

Install a program to monitor and control the temperature of your laptop. You can also control the fan speeds with these programs. If you find your laptop overheating, you can adjust the fan based on your system temperatures.

Adjust Your Settings

Check your laptop settings to ensure it is set up to manage a heavy graphics load. Some of the adjustments you can do to settings to decrease your CPU’s workload are reducing the screen’s brightness, closing idle apps, unplugging U.S.B.-powered devices etc. Also, ensure the power-management settings are activated.

Another factor that gives workload to the CPU is video flash in browsers. Use a FlashBlock in your browsers; that way, the flash videos will only be turned on whenever you need it.

Keep Your Laptop Away from Direct Heat

Put your laptop away from direct sunlight or other external heat sources. Excessive exposure to direct sunlight or heat sources can lead to laptop overheating caused by battery damage or of expansion of hard drive.

These are some simple tips on how to prevent your laptop from overheating. If your laptop still shows signs of overheating, you may need professional help. Contact us or email at helpdesk@computingaustralia.group. Our IT HelpDesk in Perth is 24/7 available to help you with all of your IT problems.

Computing Australia is a member of The Computing Australia Group of Companies

Jargon Buster

Central Processing Unit – CPU – The part of a computer that retrieves and processes instructions. It is the system’s brain and consists of an ALU, a control unit, and various registers.
USB Devices – Any external device that plugs into the computer through the USB port. E.g. External hard drives, flash drives etc.