Or will it simply blow up and kill me?

Roughly 4 year old Dell Inspiron running an Intel Celeron CPU. Apparently these are supposed to run at between 67-85C, but mine seems roasting hot all the time. It’s been switched on for around 2 hours today and the fan’s been whirring away almost the whole time trying to calm things down.

Typically, it’s the machine I’m using for coursework – so it’ll inevitably die at the worst possible moment!

All I have open at the moment is Chrome, Live Mail, Work, Excel and Itunes.

Diagnosis/Prognosis?

Yes, it will kill it, that’s really hot for a CPU I reckon.

You probably have two issues I reckon.

1) blocked cooling ducts or knackered fan

2) a process is running constantly thrashing your CPU making it really hot. Fan should not be running all the time, or if it is it should be on really low.

1 – Looks clear from the outside (both inlet and outlet), but may whip the casing off at some point to be certain.

2 – Looking in the task manager there’s no process that really sticks out. Chrome is the only obvious one as it appears twice for whatever reason using 100,000k and 85,000k of memory. Still not wild numbers 😕

Laptop CPU’s typically tend to run a bit hotter, but thats possibly excessive.

As it’s 4 years old I’d have a good, find out how to remove the casing and give it a good clean with an air duster.. make sure the fan is running smooth etc.

Buy one of those cooling stands for it if you really can’t do with it failing…

Oh, and take a back-up of your important coursework stuff in case it does!

And probably worth avoiding putting it on your lap. 😀

No chance of putting in on me lap, it burns the boys 😯

Submission date is tomorrow so just need it to last through tonight…….

Posh(ish) USB stick being utilised frequently for backups!

Have you restarted it since it has been running hot? Seriously.

And is it Windows 7? If so, in Task Manager, Performance tab, click on the Resource Monitor button. This gives you a better breakdown of what is using resources. The CPU tab is the one you want.

Yup Windows 7. Looking in Resource Monitor it’s Itunes that’s using 45% of the power……. by doing **** all except playing some music……

Might as well do a wee restart nowt to lose (unless it doesn’t switch back on)

Looking in the task manager there’s no process that really sticks out

Not everything it’s doing is in there. Also, by default it only shows you your processes not system ones – select ‘show processes from all users’.

And the green graph on the ‘performance’ tab might be more useful – you could have lots of smaller processes all taking a bit of the cpu.

EDIT Oh.. iTunes! Nuff said! It’s shite, end of.

No matter how much procrastination tempts you, don’t take it apart tonight. We don’t know if it’ll die, just that statistically it has a reduced lifespan. Seeing as it’s already old… When the CPU gets hotter than its threshold, it’ll throttle down its frequency. If it’s too hot, it’ll turn off. I’ve had pentium 4s last three cycles of “Why is it turning itself off?” “Oh, the heatsink isn’t on right” and carry on working (this was at a netburst tastic 4.12GHz) I saw 115*C in the bios!
😀

Most laptops gradually accumulate dust covering the vents on the inside that causes the CPU to overheat…

Just had this with my daughter’s. Kept thinking, ‘must sort that fan out’. Never did, until it crashed badly. Not a rogue process, just physically filthy inside. Now switch off iTunes and get on with your work!

FFS! Switched off iTunes 5mins ago (if that), temp’s now down to 67C. What. The. ****?!?

This is probably when I start the “What alternative to iTunes?” thread…..

Thanks for the tips folks

Now switch off iTunes and get on with your work!

I’m a music when I work type of person. Very quiet in here now 🙁

If you have iTunes, I presume you have an iPod/iPhone/iPad. Couldnt you just use that in the mean time?