How to Cool Down Your Laptop From Overheating – 9 Ways

If you have ever played games on your laptop for long hours, then the chances are that you know how hot it can get. It’s an unavoidable problem for these devices, and it is not just inconvenient but also damaging to the hardware.

The heat generated by a laptop can be reduced to keep your machine in top shape. Keeping the internal components cool not only ensures that they last longer; it also keeps them running at their best and most efficient speeds. The proximity of the laptop’s components makes overheating especially dangerous. If one component heats up, there is a high likelihood of an increased risk of overheating other parts.

Cooling the laptop is not easier sometimes, and it takes some tools and tricks to do the process. Compared to a desktop PC, the laptop has closely assembled parts with smaller cooling fans. Don’t worry if you are looking for how to cool down your laptop, as we will guide you through various methods to prevent heat buildup and cool down the laptop. Let’s get started with the guide.

9 Possible Ways to Cool Down Your Laptop

There are several ways to cool down the heating laptop or to keep their temperature under control. Here, we are listing the 9 best ways to cool down your laptop to enjoy maximum gaming and working performance.

Method 1: Use Your Laptop On A Flat Surface

Razer laptop placed on a table

It is essential for those who are laptop users to know the best way to position their devices. For example, when lounging on an incline in bed (especially a soft surface like blankets), placing your laptop, there may not be such a great idea.

It is likely to build up the heat inside the laptop due to poor ventilation. Instead, try keeping it atop something solid that allows uniform air circulation beneath it and avoid using the soft surface.

Related: Best gaming laptops for competitive gaming

When possible, use a table or desk for your laptop. The hard surface will help maintain airflow under the device to cool down properly while working on it. Floors are not suitable locations because there is more dust floating about where people walk. These particles could interfere with cooling and cause damage over time if they get into vents in your laptop’s case

If you use your laptop as a gaming system, it’s best to use them on computer desks or tables set up in nice cool rooms. This is because the heat from these tasks can cause damage if they aren’t properly cooled off. Having an excellent and flat surface help with tasks that require processing power from your CPU and GPU.

Method 2: Use a Laptop Cooler Fan

The design of laptops can make them overheat. This is because the small size limits how much cooling they have access to, so adding more fans will help cool your laptop down and keep it from overheating when you are using it for hours at a time.

Laptop placed on a cooling pad having two fans

Laptops can get hot, which makes them hard to use. Luckily there are plenty of laptop cooling pads on the market that cool your machine down simply by hooking up a fan underneath it and blowing air onto the bottom side so you don’t have to feel like you might start melting into your keyboard.

You may buy a laptop cooling pad at a cheaper price from Amazon. Spending a few bucks on the cooling pad can save you hundreds of dollars in laptops and prevent any heating issues.

With the recent surge in the popularity of gaming, it’s no surprise that cooling pads are becoming more and more popular. These accessories help keep your laptop cool during those hours-long gaming sessions with their added fan to create good airflow.

But if you don’t have the money for a cooling pad, there are plenty of other alternatives. You can always invest in a regular stand to provide your laptop with more space and let air flow freely beneath it. Some stands even help cool down the machine by using aluminum that acts as a heat sink.

Investing in an external GPU is an excellent solution for older laptops that need more power. External GPUs are safer than having the heat generated from your laptop’s components near other vital parts. These devices will provide you with better graphics than what you can get on integrated/onboard graphics, and they’re usually cheaper too.

Method 3: Clean the Laptop

Cleaning laptop from inside

When your laptop gets clogged up with dust, the exhaust fans can’t do their jobs. No matter where you live, dirt or other particles are everywhere and eventually find a way to get into everything, including laptops.

If you don’t keep your home clean, especially if it’s full of pets that can track dust in from outside to inside the house, then soon enough, there will be dust everywhere. The dirt buildup can cost you more than hygiene issues as it can enter the laptop via vents. Dust clogs are a common problem with laptops because they have small films on their vent holes to prevent stuff like hair from getting caught when running air out.

Rather than struggling with your laptop’s overheating, you could always take off the backplate and give its interior a thorough cleaning. The plastic that is inside of laptops can get caked in dust over time which builds up heat. Blowing compressed air into vents can help in some cases; otherwise, taking off the backplate and thorough cleaning is the only solution.

The best way to clean your laptop is by turning it off, taking it outside, and spraying short bursts of compressed air into the vents. Alternatively, you can take off panels from your laptop for better access but be careful not to damage any components inside with too much force or be overly aggressive using a canned air duster.

No matter how hard you try, dust will always find its way back into your laptop. Luckily it’s easy to kill the dirt by using a can of compressed air (get it from Amazon) or cotton swabs and some rubbing alcohol on those tough spots.

Method 4: Install Updated Drivers

Do you know the best way to keep your laptop running well? Believe it or not, there are many settings on your machine that affect its performance and usability. Aside from making sure you purchase a laptop with enough power for whatever games you want to play, make sure that drivers are updated regularly so they can work at their maximum capacity.

Updated drivers ensure better performance and run the PC components at their optimal level. Always check for the latest updates from the manufacturer. The latest driver patches usually fix any heating and performance issues of the laptop. Here is a Microsoft Guide on Updating Drivers in Windows 10.

Method 5: Playing Around with Laptop Settings

PC settings option

Make sure that you’re not using your laptop to its capacity, or it might shut off. Try lowering the screen’s brightness and also making sure nothing is plugged in unnecessarily. Double-check your power management settings for more options like preprogrammed configurations that maximize saved energy.

Related: Best budget laptops under $400.

If you want to make sure your changes are helping, it is always good to download free software and utilities like SpeedFan that actively monitors the fan activity. This will show the temperature and read out other factors like fan speed and hardware usage, giving clues about what might be causing higher heat levels in general or specific issues with one component over another.

Method 6: Update the BIOS

You may not need a BIOS update to keep your PC running cool, but you’ll want one if it’s overheating. The bios are the software that controls all of the functions on your computer. There are settings in this menu that tell fans when to turn on, so newer versions might have adjusted temp read settings based on the cooling-off at different rates after playing games from recent years.

Updating these firmware updates can help with regulating fan speeds and keeping temps down overall. Here is HowtoGeek’s guide on checking and updating the BIOS in Windows.

Method 7: Do Regular Maintenance Of Laptop

You should perform routine maintenance on your laptop to keep it running smoothly. You can do this by cleaning out the inside of your computer regularly and checking for any external damage that might be going unnoticed. Checking these things will help make sure everything in your laptop lasts as long as possible while keeping both its internal components cool and protecting them from getting damaged externally very soon.

internal view of laptop fan

Like all electronic devices, laptops aren’t built with a limited lifespan. So, there’s nothing about their build quality preventing us from performing regular maintenance tasks such as clearing away debris or making sure that no outside forces have caused undue wear and tear in various parts of our laptop.

If you observe that your laptop has recently developed a heating issue, it may be due to a faulty or clogged fan. You can observe the fan for the noises and identify that fan is the real issue for heating the laptop. Replacing the fan is more accessible, and you can get one at a cheaper and affordable price. You can get a laptop internal fan from Amazon, depending upon your system requirements.

Method 8: Ensure Proper Battery Management

One of the hardest things to do is keep your laptop charged and running throughout its lifespan. You can take some precautions, such as not overcharging it or letting it run out entirely without charging at all. You’ll also want to make sure that you don’t abuse your laptop’s battery for both overcharging and not charging at all.

The increased heat of your laptop when it is charging can be detrimental to its performance. One way that you may have heard about for avoiding this issue, and also saving energy costs, is by only recharging the battery while it is not in use or charging at night.

Some people prefer not to charge their laptops continuously because doing so could increase how hot it runs and reduce battery life span. However, you cannot avoid charging when working or gaming on the laptop. The possible, albeit unavoidable, solution, in this case, is charging and using the laptop simultaneously. As soon as you observe the battery is fully charged, unplug the charger, and recharge it again only if the battery level drops below 20 percent.

Related: How to connect your laptop to a TV? Explained

Method 9: Don’t Overload the Laptop with Programs

It is a common mistake that most people make that they open unnecessary programs on their laptops. Certain programs run in the background too, which can also affect the laptop’s temperature. To avoid this situation, only open the applications you are working on and close the rest of the applications from the task manager or manually kill their operation.

In this way, you can get rid of heating issues on your laptop due to the unnecessary programs running and using computer resources.

Conclusion

This is all about how to cool down your laptop under different conditions. If you are facing a heating issue on your laptop, you can use these 9 methods to keep the heat under control and analyze the reason for the heating. Getting an upgrade for an old laptop can also solve the heating issue, which is easier when you follow our top laptop recommendations.