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I've had my current laptop for about 1 and a half years now. I'm not sure if the fan doesn't work but i do know the cooling on the laptop must have been inadequete or something because i can barely play league of legends at the lowest setting with all the effects turned off now. In fact if i'm being completely honest i can't even do that
I hear the fans running but after about 15 minutes playing any game my FPS goes down to almost nothing, around 30 FPS in LoL on the lowest settings...

If i somehow get the fan's repaired, by sending it to the manufacturer or something, would the laptop's performance return to around half the level of what it was like when i first got the thing? All i want to do is play league really and that would be more than enough.

First try to make sure that you have performance drop due to CPU or GPU throttling down... You can monitor their frequencies and temperatures with tools like CoreTemp and GPU-Z, they are completely free.

I have Core temp installed. How do i check for throttling?

EDIT: my CPU frequently reaches temperatures of around 92+ degrees when i play games. I'm pretty sure 99 degrees isn't uncommon either.

Just a quick bump/update. Right now my gpu has a load of less than 5% according to GPU-z and a temperature of 73 degrees C.

mike941 wrote:

I have Core temp installed. How do i check for throttling?

EDIT: my CPU frequently reaches temperatures of around 92+ degrees when i play games. I'm pretty sure 99 degrees isn't uncommon either.

CoreTemp has "logging" option in its settings... When enabled it will log the temperatures and frequency in a text file in same location as the program's executable file... GPU-Z has same function, though it should ask you about where you want to save this file when enabling it.

Also, are you aware of this thread about problems with latest LoL patch:
http://forums.eune.leagueoflegends.com/ ... p?t=598006 ?
FPS drop seems to be a known problem.

I'm pretty sure i was getting throttled i checked GPU-z and the CPU temp as i was experiencing FPS issues and both were at 92-93 degrees C and never above it when i was experiencing problems. Can i turn off or raise CPU throttling?

EDIT: i'm pretty sure I was having FPS issues before 3.9 and i'm experiencing FPS issues with every game

I have a vid card that tends to throttle every once in a while. I use MSI Afterburner to verify the current core clock speed. for me, Afterburner correctly sees my core clock speed at 400Mhz when it is throttling, while GPU-z still reports the original or overclocked setting of 700Mhz. My version of GPU-z may be out of date so I am not sure if the current version is different.

You can see what options there are available in the BIOS settings of your laptop but I highly doubt that there are any settings to control the throttling or even the fan speeds/profiles...

Anyway, I would suggest starting with obvious and easy things before you send your laptop in for repair - try updating the drivers for your built-in GPU and (depending on GPU) adjust its power-saving options to "highest performance" in the driver's control panel. Same goes for Windows "power plan" - try to set it to "high performance".
If the problem is actually with your CPU/GPU overheating and throttling down - depending on your laptop's model it might be possible to easily clean its heatsink and the fan from the accumulated dust by yourself - just Google the disassembly guides for your specific model (or try to look them up at http://forum.notebookreview.com/ forums). Same might be true for fan replacement (not a very complicated thing to do on many models and spare fans available online for some of them). If it is too complicated for you - then yes, probably better to send it for repair or clean-up.

mike941 wrote:

I have Core temp installed. How do i check for throttling?

EDIT: my CPU frequently reaches temperatures of around 92+ degrees when i play games. I'm pretty sure 99 degrees isn't uncommon either.

Is that Celsius or Fahrenheit, cause 92C is SUPER hot. Grab a can of air an blast it around in the intake and exhaust vents to get the dust out. Prop up the back side of your laptop to increase airflow.

If you want to do a best-case-scenario of temps/throttling, set your laptop on top of a box fan and log temps.

Not a very good idea if the dust is accumulated on the inside portion of heatsink You will just blow the dust all over the interior space, possibly clogging up the fan even further. Need to open it up and remove the debris by hand (especially if the heatsink or fan is very clogged with dust mixed up with tar from cigarettes or some other icky sticky stuff).

@JohnC: While I agree with your statement, I don't think the OP is in the position to be disassembling the laptop themselves judging by the comment:

mike941 wrote:

If i somehow get the fan's repaired, by sending it to the manufacturer or something, would the laptop's performance return to around half the level of what it was like when i first got the thing?

So I was just giving some simple-fix ideas.

The plastic toothpicks that have a point on one end and a tiny bristly plastic brush on the other end. The brush side does a great job at grabbing and pulling dust bunnies from heat sinks and fan blades.

If you insert the brush end into the sink or fan and give a tiny 1/4 turn twist and remove it covered in dense caked dust then you know it needs to be cleaned and a fan possible replaced.

quick update guys. I took the bottom off the laptop and used an aerosal can to blow dust out of the fan's and off the motherboard. There was a lot of dust! Since I did that the laptop cools off very fast and it kind of plays like how it used to. I'm not sure but i think i'm satisfied with it's performance.

What are the system specs?

SAMSUNG Series 7 700Z5A-S03 Notebook Intel Core i7 2675QM(2.20GHz) 15.6" Non-Gloss, 16:9, 300 nits 8GB Memory DDR3 750GB w/ EC 8GB HDD 7200rpm Slot-Load DVD AMD Radeon HD 6750M

That.

**Disclaimer: I apologize to all the Tomshardware haters out there. I don't like them either, but they've got the info I need for this one.

@Mike: I'm not sure what "..kind of plays like it used to. I'm not sure but I think I'm satisfied with it's performance" means, but considering your 6750M is roughly equivalent to the 6670 in this Benchmark, you should be able to run LoL maxed out on your laptop. If you cannot, I suspect there is still something fishy going on in there.

1) Make sure you have the latest driver for your GPU installed

2) It's probably better to watch clock speeds on your CPU and GPU than to watch temps. Laptops always run hot (not 92C, but hotter than desktops). Your 6750M should run at 600MHz / 900MHz Core and Memory respectively. GPUz should be able to log this for you. AFAIK, throttling temp is a fixed value to protect the chip from damage. Even if you could, you wouldn't want to change it.

3) The best way I know of to test CPU temps/clocks is to run Prime95 with CPUz open (HWMonitor for temps). Make sure you're getting 2.2GHz with all cores and around 3GHz using only 1 core(thread). I recently had a friend whose Asus laptop power options were all messed up to the point where the CPU could never go over 33% of the base clock speed (700MHz saves a lot of power and heat, but it's not great for productivity). I had to uninstall the Asus bloatware power profiles to get the thing to return to default clocks. Simply selecting the Windows "Balanced" profile didn't override the Asus setting.

Go to wallmart, spend $10 on a cooling pad, say goodbye to temp issues.

Newtotechnology wrote:

Looking for some advice from the pros here

Is it a good idea to clean the fan yourself when you don't know much about computers? My laptop has been heating up an awful lot recently and I've got a feeling it's time to clean the fan from all the dust it's gathered...but I have no idea how to do it! And I don't really want to ruin my laptop

Maybe there are some good guides or videos that I could follow? What would you recommend?

Can you give us a pic of the underside of you laptop? If it's an easily disassembled one, then I don't see much risk in you opening it up to clean it and possible repaste your heatsinks.

1) Follow the recommendations and discussions that have taken place for Mike941. I assume you've already done this if you're posting here.

2) As discussed earlier, you can get a large majority of the dust out of your heatsink with a blast from a can-o-air. This method is nearly fool-proof and should always be attempted before disassembly. The severity of the buildup somewhat dictates the best approach. For light dust, just point the air nozzle into the fan (intake). Short bursts so the fan doesn't spin too fast. Better that the fan doesn't spin at all, but you can't always get something in there to keep it stationary. After that, you could do a shot into the exhaust vent to loosen things up, followed by a shot in the intake to push the remainder out. For medium-heavy dust buildup you may need to insert toothpicks/etc to get things completely loose. If it's really plugged up and sticky, you'd probably have to resort to disassembly. Again, that's last resort.

3) A person that knows very little about computers but is skilled at tinkering/taking things apart/fixing things should still be able top open up a laptop to get at the cooling fan (if needed, see #2). There are many "disassembly" videos on YouTube. You can look up a video for your specific model or a smilar one. Just make sure you keep track of where all the little screws belong and don't force anything unless you know you're doing it right (top and bottom halves are held by plastic clips around the perimeter after all necessary screws are removed for example). Refer to youtube videos and TR forums for help if you run into a "snag."

4) Re-applying TIM is not worthwhile in most cases (IMO).

5) It's best to periodically clear the dust from your heatsink/fan using step 2 rather than letting things build up to the point of step 3. Keeps your laptop cool, quiet, and happy.