Incredibly rapid overheating

My pc is a laptop, a 6 yr old Compaq Presario 2500. It packs a half gig of ram, a 2.5ghz processor, and a 40 gb hard drive (built in that is). Of the external stuff i have i regularly have 2 hard drives in usb ports for extra storage My problem is that about ten minutes after firing my pc up most of its fans are active to keep it from overheating. I have had to take a ordinary processor heat sink and put it under the ram sticks. Also to assist with cooling the ram i have one of my hard drives enclosures supplying power to a molex fan directed onto the heatsink. The exhaust vent on the left side even with the extra heat sink and fan, still jets out air approaching 150 degrees F. I need help to solve this problem before the laptop dies on me!

 

If its the laptop i think it is try having a look at heatpipe coolers at the back. The ones on my old HP used to fill up with lots of dust and need a decent clean one in a while.

Also if your confident enough, replace the thermal compound on the CPU as mine was almost dry after 4 years of good use!

 

The vents are clean. My problem is that i cannot open the laptop. if i do, my mother will kill me( the laptop technically isnt mine yet :cry ) i have managed to get the thermal issue under control by removing all the access panels and the battery to allow proper airflow. but i have an even bigger issue now. the drives that the fans were originally installed for are now suffering the same problem. Worse i cannot add more fans because the load is too much for the enclosure power supplies. one thermal isssue solved, another comes to life...

 

http://cpc.farnell.com/CS12786/comp....us0?sku=pro-signal-lp-c101&_requestid=175039

 

about the thermal compound possibly being dry: I am posting this after doing a hour-long teardown and rebuild of my laptop and i have made several important discoveries
1. The roach exoskeletons and the cobwebs were almost completely blocking hte vents and the fans
2.The ATI GPU and the processor share a common heat sink
3.The GPU has no thermal grease
4.The processor thermal grease is BONE DRY. It had turned into something like dried glue; when i removed the heat sink, the processor came away with it (one interesting fact though is the slot for the processor can hold a P4 that normally is used inside a dell gx [or whatever the hell it is]270)

The processor as it stands on idle for about 30 min runs at 57 degrees C (measurement courtesy of everest home edition) then running UT 99 for 30 min it rises about 5-8 degrees. My mom and stepdad do not know that i have opened the laptop that far. They dont have the guts to open it that far. so are there any suggestions on how to proceed?

P.S. I have 2 other questions; 1. Is 57 degrees for a 2.6GHZ Celeron during idle ok? And what is the average break in time for any thermal compound?:confused

 

captiosus

breakin time on thermal compounds vary. Most of them (the white goop) usually is instantly. Some of them (like arctic silver 5) takes a few heating/cooling cycles (usually over a 1-2 day period) before it's really good.

The best 2 i've ever used.... can only be gotten from 1 source..... (so far.... an insider friend in the business who has access to NICE stuff).... one of them was a diamond-dust based goop (kept my cpu about 8C cooler than arctic silver, but i was at the extreme range of it's ability. most people in the test group i got in on averaged 4-5c cooler than arctic silver) and the other was a thin strip of a special metal material that turned liquid under high heat, gave even better contact, and dropped my core temp about 10C. But the stuff was as delicate as a butterfly wing. After it was on the CPU, if you even touched it, it powdered... so it wasn't a very easy-to-play-with substance... but well worth it once you figured out how to apply it and the HSF without wiggling it.

For those, the diamond paste took about 5 days before it really dropped my temps more than 2-3C. The butterfly-sensitive metal sheet took about 3 hours. it would only really set once you used something like super-pi to heat your cpu up to the 65c range where it would melt and 'fuse' your hsf to the ihs on the cpu and give the best contact.

 

the thermal compound i used was teh Master Cooler stuff. there was also a tube of some arctic silver in my stepdads toolcase but i couldnt get teh damn tube open. But there is stil one question that is on my mind...... Is 50 - 55 degrees C ok for a 2.6 GHz Celeron (idling)? I know its rated for something like 70+ but is the idle temp just a little too high?

 

what socket type is it? That will tell us a lot.

 

That laptop and mobo will actually hold a P4 processor and 64MB GPU, but it's def not recommended when its overheating already! Get the the GPU and CPU cleaned properly, and apply proper thermal compound to both (REMEMBER NOT TOO MUCH) and give the whole thing a blast of compressed air. Otherwise there's not much you can do. My HP Core 2 Duo dv8396ea laptop runs at about 46 degrees C idle, but the GPU can max out at 87 during gameplay. I would think 57 isn't too bad on an older machine

 

Where can i get the butterfly stuff?! Or is it your insider special? It sounds great!

 

Ok about that old piece of scrap parts, i have acquired a Dell inspiron 630m laptop, also known as a dell XPS M140. This new machine has a gig of Dual channel DDR2 ram (WOOT!), A P4 2.0ghz (ive still only managed to clock it at 1995.002 Mhz), a 160 gb internal IDE 5400 rpm hard drive, and a GPU that puts my old ATI chip to shame. This new toy of mine will play UT 99 at max settings and the P4 rip is up and begs for more. It plays UT 2k4 on low settings without too much trouble. I want to see my old Celeron pull that stunt off! But the two old laptops are history, thier hard drives now storing anime and games and thier processors in a picture frame on my wall with a card saying, "World's S***iest processor class: The Celeron" Thanks for all the help.

P.S. no one would know where i could get a functioning mobile 2.8ghz P4 cheap, would they? i have a sweet processor in my eyes as it is but i crave POWER!!!!

 

This is a 3+ year old review of it... i was in a test-group for Overclockers of the stuff... my results were atypical. I got the best results of anyone in the group. The writer of the article went with group averages

http://www.overclockers.com/articles1268/