StarChaser wrote:H&H seized up, I couldn't swap windows to complain about it on IRC. I moved my mouse to the side bar that scrolled out from the right of the screen.
The CPU temp read 89C... I immediately hit Alt+F4 20 times and ran to the freezer to shove my laptop inside. It dropped 30C in 20 seconds.
Technically speaking, 89° C isn't really that much for solid state electronics. My old computer (with an Athlon XP CPU, yeah, you know...) commonly ran at that temperature, and it showed no sign of decay of the course of a couple of years -- and neither should it, it's silicon after all. That said, it isn't normal for a
laptop to do that, but mostly because a) it's designed not to become that hot for reasons of comfort and b) they usually draw a lot less power than a desktop system in order to preserve power on battery (and also because Li-Ion batteries can actually decrease a lot in lifespan because of high temperatures). My observations are threefold:
1: Even though laptops aren't supposed to get that hot, it shouldn't be a problem for the electronics themselves. In fact, ACPI monitors the system temperature and should shut the system down if it exceeds threshold conditions. If your system really becomes unstable, as you state, in spite of that, there may be something else wrong with it.
2: It may be an indication of faulty cooling. Laptop fans can easily become clogged with dust in my experience, so you may want to check its air duct(s).
3: If you've got one of those gaming laptops, it may actually be normal for it to reach those temperatures while it's running on low power preservation. When I've run my graphics card to the max, even my (non-gaming) laptop has reached temperatures not far from it.
by StarChaser » Sat Dec 05, 2009 7:57 am 
