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I'm having problems with my fan which went from being annoyingly loud to sometimes completely stopping and failing to dissipate the heat form my laptop.
I'm in the process of replacing it, however, I was wondering if I could continue using my laptop normally.
I've been monitoring the CPU temperatures, and when there is some load on the CPU, it goes up to 98 celsius degrees.
Considering I have my system (Windows, which can sometimes have its antimalware service or other processes put randomly a lot of load on the CPU) and a VM running alongside, I know that my CPU may be under a lot of charge for long period of times.
My question is, if I continue using my laptop as is, waiting for the replacement fan, what's the worst that I can expect: only spontaneous emergency shutdowns over a certain temperature (which could be annoying but not that much of a big deal, and has not happened yet), or actually overheating and breaking one of my components?
You can periodically blow in through the grills where the air from a laptop extractor fan would come out, and watch the cpu temp go down. Perhaps slight risk with that is that the air from your mouth may be a bit humid and you don't want water in your laptop, but I cooled a laptop manually like that for a while without an issue. You can also get various laptop coolers eg some will plug into usb and do its thing (blow or suck) – barlop – 2018-12-18T07:28:41.163
its definitely not good for your CPU to let it overheat. A question is, would it break the CPU completely in one fell swoop, and beyond that, e.g. if the CPU cuts out, then the next question is . is it a fire hazard.. .And if it's not a fire hazard, then granted , it's not good for the CPU but is it bad for other components too. Hopefully some can chip in (and based on their experience rather than guess work). – barlop – 2018-12-18T07:34:02.487
2I would say avoid using your laptop until your fan is fixed. That is, if you're not prepared to buy a whole new laptop. I had a similar issue with my laptop until one day it stopped booting at all. I bought a new one. For me it was an easy decision as my laptop already served for ~5 years. – HamZa – 2018-12-18T12:11:55.927
10Years ago I was swapping parts in a desktop machine, and I forgot to attach the cpu heatsink before I turned it on. It was pretty much instantly fried. Not quite the same situation as here, I just thought I'd share my pain. – Jerrad – 2018-12-18T14:07:24.137
If possible I would go into your BIOS and disable some of your cores. 98C is crazy hot for a CPU. – cybernard – 2018-12-18T19:20:16.700
2Do you have a valid current backup of data on the device, elsewhere ? – Criggie – 2018-12-19T02:35:02.207
7Please don't use the laptop on a plane if I'm on the same plane. – jcaron – 2018-12-19T17:28:21.330
1@cybernard Wouldn't disabling cores put more strain on the remaining ones? – Feathercrown – 2018-12-19T18:25:17.677
1@Feathercrown Yes, but it has a limited effect say you have 8 cores. The TDP considers all 8 at max. So even if 1 core runs at 100% it uses 1/8 the TDP. – cybernard – 2018-12-19T18:27:39.500
298°C (roughly 205°F) is nearly hot enough to boil water! I wouldn't recommend using it as a lap top. I wouldn't put it on anything else that I was concerned about either! – FreeMan – 2018-12-19T20:46:26.920
I think it's pretty safe: it's rather unlikely it will catch fire, unless the battery overheats and explodes. – Nobody – 2018-12-19T22:13:35.810
@Jerrad years ago (about 5) I forgot to plug in the CPU cooler. I only noticed it when I launched Counter Strike and encountered extremely low performance - the CPU was throttled. – Džuris – 2018-12-19T22:21:40.853
Simple solution: Get a small external fan and have it blow through (or pull from) the laptop exhaust grill. Use some paper and tape to direct all the air through the grill. You can harvest one from an old computer (look on Craigslist if you don't have one you can take a fan from). Use an old USB wire, and cut off the end to power the fan (red to red and black to black). – Ariel – 2018-12-20T07:35:39.117
As others are saying, I had a laptop with shocking cooling. Hit temps of ~ 90 degrees. Got a 'Cooling Pad' which is basically a laptop stand with like 6 fans on the bottom. It was really quiet actually and did a really good job. Was sitting at like 50-60 degrees which was a big decrease. – Kyle Wardle – 2018-12-20T11:10:33.990