Laptop heat and longevity

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I have a HP Elitebook 8560w that’s about 6 or 7 years old...the specs are great and it still works quite well despite issues with temperature control every now and again when overly taxed. When running a full project in fl studio, temps will often reach 65-78 degrees, 80-85 when using something like Omnisphere in multimode. Is this a cause for concern?

How long have you all been using your laptop specifically for music production? Has its performance diminished dramatically over time? Does it run hot, and if so, what are your temp readings?

I’m in a bit of a dilemma myself as to whether to upgrade to a new laptop altogether. While it runs fine, it’s longevity is a concern and it’s also not as future proof as I may have liked..for example HP have dropped all support for that specific range and will not be developing BIOS upgrades for Windows 10 and beyond.

I recently made an extravagent purchase for a Synthstrom Deluge, which is a really good sampler, but it i haven’t dug too deep into it as I’m considering raising funds for a new pc or laptop

Ideally I would like to keep both and get another 7 years out of this laptop!

I’d be grateful for a little advice and perspective...
Last edited by frank1985 on Thu May 23, 2019 12:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Those temps definitely seem high for a laptop... if you feel like you're capable, try figuring out where the fan is, and where the laptop has the ventilation holes, and try to blow in there as hard as you can. If there are temperature issues, there's surely a lot of dust in there, which needs to be removed.

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Those temps definitely seem high for a laptop... if you feel like you're capable, try figuring out where the fan is, and where the laptop has the ventilation holes, and try to blow in there as hard as you can (of course in the right direction, out of the casing). If there are temperature issues, there's surely a lot of dust in there, which needs to be removed.

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I regularly blow compressed air directly onto the fan after removing the back plate..obv when switched off. The fan itself was replaced a few years ago. I’ve tried the usual stuff like closing bg processes, increasing ram, switching to SSD, disabling startup programs, defragmenting, running anti virus software, changing power options etc.

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Do you have the i5-2540m CPU in that notebook? It's listed as 100°C max temperature, so, there's a bit of "headroom" left. Maybe those temperatures are OK, i don't know. Nowadays, especially the mobile CPU's have a very low energy intake. I had laptops with Core2Duo's and a Intel Atom which got very hot, though.

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I've got an 8570w (similar build ) and if I would really have to push it to the extreme to get as high as 85 (I'm talking stress testing the CPU -i7-3740- to 100% with Heavy Load!). Sounds like as above you've got a ventilation issue.

Luckily these machines are old business class workstations so it's easy to get in and clean them. I''d say do this at your own risk of course, but I take the battery out and back off mine around one every two months and spray all the vents with electrical contact cleaner (standard stuff from car shops/electrical supply places). I also hold the fan still with a screwdriver and spray some on it to clean the blades. When it's all evaporated then put it back together and Bob's yer uncle, good as new. Takes about 15 minutes all in.

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It’s i7- 8760qm

The temperature readings are actually quite unpredictable...I just ran another session featuring 6 instruments playing at once in Kontakt and the reading was 55 degrees Celsius on average. I’ve tried contact cleaner...never considered holding the fan still though...sounds like that may help clean more thoroughly so I’ll give it a go

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Also have stuck 4 of these to the bottom of the machine to give a bit more clearance. Inelegant, but effective!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Self-Adhesive- ... -1-catcorr

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What is considered a good average temperature?

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I'm not a pro when it comes to laptops, but generally a (good) gaming laptop is fine with making music too. Those things are made for punishing.

But about your situation, there's laptop cooler pads that MIGHT help. Also opening your laptop and remove that nasty small dust is a nice thing to do.

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Thanks DH - I have actually tried several cooler pads, and find them to have very minimal effect - maybe 2 or 3 degrees of reduction but that's about it.

I opened up my laptop earlier and actually found a load of dust wedged under the plastic cover on the motherboard. Apparently i shouldn't remove this as it acts as a heatsink and protection against spillages. I'm gonna have to find a way to clean that out without taking it to the tech as he will end up ripping me off for £50 labour and and another 50 for the clean up. There's no way of getting in there with compressed air without having to actually take the mother board out

Btw, here are my current readings https://i.postimg.cc/bvVtZZHj/Capture.jpg

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Similar HP Workstation. It rarely ever starts to really blow away heat. I never checked the actual CPU temerature though. As soon as it start really blowing, something is wrong as far as I'm concerned. And it should never reach structural high (above half) CPU loads.

The HP Workstations are designed to bear heavy (and continuous) loads. But physically speaking it's inevitable that heat will eventually create problems. I trust the HP Workstations (which consists of high quality components) have all sorts of heat protection circuitry. But I would/will never push the machine to its limits.

Anyway...

It's very much about the load YOU create with your usage. Workarounds like bouncing to disk can avoid some (and sometimes a lot of) CPU struggling. Also, check your GUI. Try to avoid too many "useless" irrelevant GUI elements on your screen (like dancing realtime graphs with spectrum and/or waveforms) to avoid unnecesary CPU/GPU loads (and resulting heat).

And indeed, it may be as simple as keeping (internal) components clean and the flow of air unobstructed.

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One thing of course.. If your machine is 7 years old, the thermal paste may have dried out. It happened to my pc, and squeezing new one in, dropped the heat a bit.

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Keeping any computer cool is key to its longevity.
Heat can be a serious issue for all components.

I always add some extra fans, they are cheep.

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AudioAlien wrote: Fri May 24, 2019 7:49 am Keeping any computer cool is key to its longevity.
Heat can be a serious issue for all components.

I always add some extra fans, they are cheep.
How do you add (cheap) fans to a laptop?
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