A local company brought in one of their Packard bell laptops as it was overheating and and beginning to smell of slight burning? The customers business partner had previously brought his laptop in for a replacement fan assembly and was so impressed with the resulting change in speed that he recommended us to his friend.He knew it would entail a total strip down to gain access to the cooling system and left it with us on Friday teatime to be worked on over the weekend.
PC Workshop is the same as everyone else in wanting to have free time at weekends for family etc but sometimes we have to relax our hours to accommodate special requests and this was the case in this instance.
The probable cause of the cooling system will no doubt be a gradual blocking up of the air vents which allow a continuous stream of cool air being sucked in by the CPU fan and blown out through the exhaust fins. (see photo above)
This is generally down to a build up of fibres and minute dust particles fouling the vents and once it starts to get a grip the apertures soon become blocked placing the cooling fan under pressure so they are working overtime trying to keep the processor temperature down to a working level, resulting in the system running slower and slower until the fan itself packs in and the system shuts down to prevent the CPU burning out.
Once the laptop is stripped down to board level then you can strip the fan assembly down and thoroughly remove all the obstructions blocking the air vents, rebuild the laptop and all is good again. The sigh of relief from the previously overworked fan is almost audible.
We actually had it cleaned out by the Saturday so no interruption to working schedules.
