Windows 7 - Dust and CPU Temperature correlation

Hi all,

Well to be honest i am not a good maintainer of my laptop and you would find lots of smudge marks and stuff on my laptop unless i don't feel lazy enough to clean it all lol.

So my laptop was getting heated a bit even while playing this latest HTML game on IE9 Cut the Rope and CPU usage was nearing to almost 30%-40 %.Even playing low graphic intensive games which take a bit of CPU usage was making my laptop get heated and core temp were nearing 70 ˚C-80 ˚C.I analysed for few days and noticed high usage RAM applications didn't heat up my laptop only high CPU usage applications heated temp up.I mean normally if i browsing with chrome and 5-6 tabs are open plus few other apps,RAM usage was almost 35%-40 % and CPU usage hovered around 5-10 %.

Well what i mean to say is yesterday i got this instantaneous idea and decided to blow some air around the fan vents on bottom and side of my laptop and voila the temperature now hardly exceeds 40-50 ˚C when using low CPU usage apps and never goes beyond 60-65 ˚C while using high CPU usage apps.

The question i want to ask is how much correlation is there between dust accumulation inside the laptop and higher core temperature??and is there any safe way to open laptop back case and clean all dust?

My laptop is almost one year old and i use it extensively.

Thanks all

Thanks Dwarf for the information.Will surely check DELL site for the same.The warranty on my laptop has expired so i am hesitant to open laptop back case on my own and i generally don't have any idea how much it would cost for a technician to clean it for me.

In this dusty Indian environment the maintenance of laptops surely is a PITA.Anyhow i was wondering for a while what is the normal core temp of a laptop with and without load so i can have a reference point for future.

Thanks

What is the full model number of the laptop?

Its DELL N4010.System specs are listed in my profile

Here you go: Documentation

Have a read through of these. They should give you the information required. One thing that I would do if you do decide to clean the dust (and associated matter) from your laptop yourself, is to take the opportunity to replace the coin-cell battery at the same time.

Thanks a bunch Dwarf.Quickly glancing through the documentation i realized i am electronically impaired and might well do more harm than good to my laptop.

Ok guys bad news.Today in morning as usual i opened my laptop and after few minutes of browsing noticed my fan was not rotating and obviously temperature had shot up.Took my laptop to DELL service center and they refused to replace fan or whatever part was faulty unless i extend my warranty (already expired few days ago) and were charging me Rs.6220 (120 $ approx) for one year extended warranty.

I mean i was willing to pay service charges plus part replacement price but they are adamant on this warranty thingy.

Anyway guys is there a chance i can buy heatsink/fan whole package from reputed retail store and ask any technician to replace it for me??

One more thing last night the fan was working as normal without any temp jump and i shut down my laptop normally.I can use my laptop normally today except its heating up obviously.Is there any chance fan has stopped working because of dust or loose socket connection??

Thanks guys in advance

Bump anyone???

Are there any other computer specialist stores in your area you could take your laptop to, other than Dell's service centre?