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So I have a 2011 Asus i7 ROG gaming laptop. This is the model that has the big exhaust vents with separate heatsinks+fans for CPU and GPU.

It's entering its seventh year now now and has spent quite some time with the fans blowing the heat out. The culprit is usually IE, Firefox, or some rogue updater task that I might not see (or hear, as the case may be) for a few days.

It's still a great laptop; runs Windows 10 just fine. Is it time to pull the heatsinks and fans from this unit, give everything a good cleaning, and reapply the thermal paste? The TIM on my desktop's H80i waterblock can get quite crispy-crunchy-hard after just 24 months, and this laptop has been in service nearly 24/7 for most of its lifespan.

And while I'm in there, should I consider swapping out the fans for newer ones? Normally, I'd wait for noise or some other problem to present itself before replacing fans. But since this is a laptop, maybe it would be wiser for me to capitalize on time spent, since I'll be opening the case anyway.

Opinions?

I did exactly this with a 2011 Thinkpad T420 and it was a huge success, gave the laptop a whole new lease on life.

I didn't replace the HS+F assembly, because it's not the sort of part you can just get cheaply off the shelf. Fan itself was and is still running very well.

As long as you know what you're doing, I say give it a go.

Laptops around two to three years of age should have new thermal paste applied.

The only exception would be a Clevo/Sager model where you opted/paid extra for IC Diamond.

You may find the OE TIM was not paste, but was one of those adhesive-like substances that's designed to bake to the CPU surface and form a semi-permanent bond.  You can remove it from both surfaces the usual way and apply new TIM, but the benefit may be less than hoped.

What can be brutal, though, is a thin layer of dust, pet dander, etc. accumulating on the fins at the intake, and cleaning it will help muchly.

Thank you all. I'll probably do this in a few weeks.