fun with laptops

[Green_Fairy]

long time ago, my dad brought home a brand new laptop for me from work. apparently, it wasn't as new as he thought. as he was reinstalling it with ubuntu, the cooling fan failed and the damned thing over heated and melted the keyboard off. i took it to a place to have it recycled and i decided to have a bit of fun...

Me (faking idiocy): uhm so like...i think my laptop's broken or something? can you guys like...fix it?
Tech guy: Well sure, hun let's take a look at it. (read: omg this girl's an idiot, what'd she do...)
Me: *hands over the half melted laptop* i left it turned on for a month and it did this! *whine*
TG: *blink* what...the...hell...
Me: *snicker* sorry dude...the fan failed when my dad was putting ubuntu on it. i totally don't expect you to fix it. i just need it to be recycled.
TG: *looks at me for a second, then busts up laughing* i'm keeping this. this is epic. i've never seen a laptop melted this bad.

[mattm04]

No pics?

[Green_Fairy]

alas, this was a few years ago. i didn't even think to take pics.

[Hyndis]

Is that even possible?

If the mobo or CPU is overheating badly the machine will automatically and instantly power off as a last ditch safeguard measure.

[Chromatix]

A modern one will, yes. But I bet there were a lot of older ones that didn't.

I can certainly imagine an Athlon or a P3 based laptop not being wired up to the failsafe sensor. Early P4s probably didn't have it either.

Or of course, they could easily screw up the hardware or BIOS so that there wasn't a fnctioning sensor at all...

[Broomjockey]

Alternatively, if the thing shorted out and caught fire, cutting power wouldn't exactly help.

[Apallo]

I've seen this a couple of times. Even the newer lappys can overheat catastrophically if the sensors aren't connected or working correctly. I've even had one catch fire on me.

[crashhelmet]

I had a laptop brought into me once where the whole bottom casing had melted. Thankfully, the manufacturer agreed it was a design flaw and honored the warranty. As for the last few years, manufacturers learned that they they couldn't go faster than 2GHz in laptops without generating enough heat to melt the casing and possibly burn the users.

CH

[Stressball]

As for the last few years, manufacturers learned that they they couldn't go faster than 2GHz in laptops without generating enough heat to melt the casing and possibly burn the users.

Not quite true, but nearly. I'm on a 2.2Ghz laptop at the moment, under load while charging it barely pushes 60 degrees celcius, or 140 fahrenheit. The warmth is evident in the case, but far from dangerously hot. Also, this is in 35 celcius/95 fahrenheit ambient temperature. The biggest contributor to excessive heat, other than poor design architecture, is dust buildup. You would be surprised how much dust gets sucked in and fills the case, reducing the effect of the fans.

Just never buy an LG laptop

[Shalom]

My laptop (an older Toshiba Satellite) has a full desktop P4 in it, not the mobile version, running at 2.3GHz. (Battery life sux, yeah, but damn it's fast, or was for 2005 anyway. My desktop at the time was running an 850MHz P-III in an Abit BH6, so if I had to do any heavy number crunching, like compressing AVIs, I'd offload that to the laptop.)

It's got two CPU fans, side by side, and when it's doing CPU-intensive stuff and they rev up to top speed it feels like a hair dryer at the exhaust at the back of the case. Sounds like one too, come to think of it.

edit: the power supply brick, on the other hand, gets hot enough to burn your hand...

[Calud]

My Laptop was running quite slow so I took the liberty of dusting it. There was barely any dust in the fan, maybe a few crumbs at best, but after I removed those it was running lightning fast again.

[jerrybear]

Oh Yeah- desktop honker P4's

I've got one of the white box 'Uniwill' 15.somethings with a 3.0 P4, 800 mhz FSB, 2 gb of ram. It may run hot and sound like a dust buster at times, but I LOVE it!

[Eric the Grey]

As for the last few years, manufacturers learned that they they couldn't go faster than 2GHz in laptops without generating enough heat to melt the casing and possibly burn the users.

CH

Like others have said, some have managed to exceed this. My MacBook Pro runs at 2.5Ghz and doesn't get as warm as my old 1.2Ghz laptop. A lot of it does depend on what I'm doing on it though.



Eric the Grey

[Chromatix]

My 2.4GHz MBP gets pretty warm when working hard - though I think the GPU makes more heat than the CPU. What I do know is that if the airflow is even slightly restricted, it will reduce speed to keep the heatsink at 100°C. Great fun if the reason it's working hard is because I'm trying to play a game...

[Hyndis]

Laptops are prone for generating massive amounts of heat, particularly if its a laptop that makes an attempt to also be a gaming machine.

Honestly, laptops just aren't suited for being gaming machines. They're awesome for mobile machines for typing, email, or watching movies. But gaming?

That uses a vast amount of processing power to do, which in turn requires massive amounts of electricity, and that produces heat. Trying to cram all of those components in together with such close proximity to each other because the machine has to be portable is just asking for trouble.

Some machines designed to be high end gaming laptops have 30 minutes of battery life and run at 100C.

Thats too high for a GPU, let alone the CPU. Most CPU's begin to cook at around 75C. A GPU can handle higher temps, but at 100C there is a problem. Power consumption is another huge drawback. Most modern CPU's will use 100w alone. Add in a graphics card (or god help you, SLI/crossfire GPU's) and that machine is going to be on the verge of melting if you stress the machine to any degree.

Laptops unfortunately just are just too compact to deal with heat very well. Too small for efficient air circulation and too much heat.