How to fix laptop overheating, based on what worked for me

When you buy one of the top laptops, you can usually rest assured that it’ll work fine for the next few years.

Except sometimes, it doesn’t.

When ‘hot’ gets ‘too hot’

The first step toward fixing an overheating problem is to find out whether your laptop actually has an overheating problem.

It sounds strange, but I learned that one the hard way years ago. I haven’t had the best luck with laptops. In retrospect, I know that it’s because I bought some of them without doing the necessary research and on the cheap. As a result, out of the close to 10 laptops I’ve owned so far, most ended up underperforming in one way or another, but heat wasn’t always the root cause of the problem.

When I first dealt with poor laptop performance and felt it running hot, some surface-level Googling led me to buy the cheapest cooling pad I could find. Some sort of placebo effect convinced teenage me that it helped for a couple of days, but it didn’t. It didn’t take long before the laptop refused to boot and I found out that the problem lay with the CPU, not the heat. I’m not saying that’s the case with your laptop, but it’s definitely worth checking first.

Two things usually lead laptop users to start troubleshooting their PC: poor performance and crashes, or a laptop that’s hot to the touch with fans running at full speed. It’s important to remember that neither necessarily means you have to run to a repair shop. Laptops pack a lot of power into a small form factor, so some warmth can be expected.

Now, let’s get digging. Start by checking your CPU temperatures in various situations. My favorite program for this is HWMonitor, which will also report on some of the other key sensors in your PC, such as voltages and fan speeds, unless you have a thin and light fanless laptop.

What counts as too hot depends on the processor and the laptop’s cooling design. Compare its temperatures while idle and while running something taxing, such as a game, then check the limits specified by the manufacturer. Brief temperature spikes aren’t necessarily alarming. Sustained heat accompanied by thermal throttling, crashes, unexpected shutdowns, or fans running at full speed during light use is more concerning. Even high-end gaming laptops can run hot under load, but they shouldn’t constantly struggle to keep themselves cool.

Letting your laptop run hot once or twice is unlikely to cause a problem, but repeated overheating can affect it in ways that range from annoying to disastrous. Excessive heat causes thermal throttling, which means your laptop might run games in slideshow mode instead of delivering the smooth performance you’re used to, or take forever to open a browser. In the worst cases, it might shut down and refuse to power back on due to hardware damage.

Most laptops I’ve owned have had some sort of issue with heat, so I’ve been in your shoes. Fortunately, I’ve learned how to deal with it without paying for professional repairs. Here are some tricks to try before you take your laptop to a repair store.

Break the habit and improve airflow

If you’ve been taking the “lap” in “laptop” quite literally, it might be time to break that habit if the computer is prone to overheating. Laptops, for all their portability and convenience, aren’t much different from desktops in one regard. They thrive in environments with lots of airflow. Needless to say, keeping one in your lap isn’t ideal, as some of my poor, struggling laptops would tell you if they were still functioning.

It’s one thing if you’re just using it to quickly read your emails, but if you do this regularly, especially while gaming, the laptop may struggle to keep itself cool. This is why, very early in my laptop journey, I learned that it’s best to keep laptops on a flat, hard surface.

A simple way to give your laptop some breathing room is to prop it up so that air can circulate around the chassis. Just make sure your makeshift solution is stable enough to support it, such as a thick piece of cardboard or a wine cork sliced in half. I used to think propping mine up on books would help, but that didn’t make sense either since the airflow gains were nonexistent. You want the underside of the laptop to be as exposed as possible.

For something more permanent, consider getting a laptop stand or desk so you can still use the PC comfortably without it coming into contact with body heat. Amazon is filled with options ranging from $10 to well over $100. This laptop stand, for instance, raises the laptop while leaving most of its underside exposed.

A laptop stand is one thing, but some users may see a more tangible improvement with a cooling pad. I’ve had several for each one of my laptops. Some of them barely worked without one, and for one particularly pesky model, I had to use a hair dryer running on a low-temperature setting at all times. I don’t recommend copying that desperate solution. Honestly, HP should have bundled that model with noise-canceling headphones for those of us who resorted to fans and hair dryers to keep the laptop alive against all odds.

Cooling pads are designed to direct more air toward a laptop’s intake vents, although the results depend heavily on the laptop’s cooling design. They plug into a USB port and usually feature a couple of fans and adjustable height settings. Some also come with extra bling in the form of RGB. Prices range from around $10 to more than $100, but choosing one isn’t as straightforward as buying the model with the best reviews or the most fans. You need one that works with your particular laptop.

First, figure out whether the vents at the bottom of your laptop are used for intake or exhaust. A cooling pad is most useful when it can push air toward the intake vents. If the fans don’t align with those vents, the pad may do very little or even disrupt the laptop’s intended airflow. Make sure the cooler also matches your laptop’s size. Some models come with fans that can be repositioned, which may help with unusual vent layouts.

Once you’ve done all that, look for something with good reviews and enough airflow for your laptop. In my experience, budget cooling fans may not last all that long, but that doesn’t mean you need to buy a wildly expensive one from the start. Try it out, monitor the temperatures, and see whether it actually helps.

Thorough cleaning

If your laptop is new, it shouldn’t be overheating right out of the box. However, if you’ve had it for a while, it’s time to get into the habit of cleaning your laptop’s fans a few times per year.

We have a handy guide on how to clean a laptop fan that’ll show you how to do this step by step.

Laptop maintenance doesn’t stop there, though. To achieve optimal cooling, you should also consider cleaning the inside of the device once every year or two and reapplying the thermal paste when necessary. Opening a laptop is more involved, so check the manufacturer’s service instructions and warranty terms first. If you’re not comfortable working around its internal components, leave this part to a professional.

Doing repairs yourself is cheaper — and even easier sometimes.

Once I developed an interest in PC building and got a little braver when it came to opening up my electronics, I started doing this to all my laptops, with good results.

I’m not saying that my $500 laptop back in 2010 suddenly became a beast, but at least it managed to stay alive long enough for me to get through college.

Simply put, keeping your laptop clean should contribute to stability and reduce thermal throttling. Doing the maintenance yourself can be cheaper, and sometimes easier, if you know what you’re doing. Most people don’t tinker with this kind of next-level maintenance, but giving your notebook a good cleaning can bring down the temperatures.

Is it even a hardware problem?

If your laptop is being a nuisance like mine was and keeps underperforming even though you’ve jumped through all the hoops, the cause might be something other than straight-up overheating. Here are a few more things to look at.

Power plans. Your laptop might be underperforming because it’s running on a balanced or power-saver plan, in which case switching to high performance might help at the cost of battery life. On the other hand, if heat is the problem, stepping down from high performance to a balanced plan in Windows can help a bunch.

Next, drivers. Keeping your drivers up to date can help with random crashes or drops in frame rates. I’d steer clear of beta drivers, though, because you could end up with worse performance than you’re getting now unless you’re trying to address a specific issue.

Lastly, there’s the workload. Depending on your laptop’s specs, putting it through something far too taxing may cause it to overheat or even shut down entirely. It’s a good idea to close unnecessary background processes and avoid running too many programs at once. Budget laptops may especially struggle with games or resource-heavy workloads such as video editing.

Some laptops simply run hot, and there’s no way around it.

That’s another lesson I learned the hard way circa 2007, as I tried to put my cheap Lenovo laptop with integrated graphics through hours of World of Warcraft in the middle of the summer. Many years later, budget laptops can do a lot more than they could back then, but the demands of games and various software have skyrocketed. Not much has changed.

Assuming you’ve done everything I outlined above and still have a laptop that runs far too hot, consider sacrificing some performance for reliability if your PC is older. Tone down demanding settings, close programs you don’t need, or consider whether you’re comfortable enough to undervolt your CPU or GPU. Undervolting is an advanced fix and isn’t supported by every laptop, so follow hardware-specific guidance rather than experimenting blindly. Otherwise, let your laptop live out its retirement years in relative peace or take it to a repair store for more serious troubleshooting.

If you’ve got a laptop that’s still new and it’s already overheating, applying new thermal paste shouldn’t be necessary, and cleaning it out may only help a little. Unfortunately, some laptops simply run hot and there’s no way around it. Consider taking advantage of the warranty and having it looked at if you’re unhappy with its temperatures or performance.