I decided on a whim to clean the fan on my laptop for the first time and now I’ve noticed my laptop seems to have gotten noisier, as in, the fan seems to start up more often than before.
I had no trouble accessing the fan and followed advice found online to clean the fan; I used compressed air and a very small artists paint brush to gently remove all the dust. I haven’t replaced the thermal paste because I hadn’t any. I intend to do that if someone would be so good as to advise me on which to buy and how much of it I should use?
But the issue of the extra noise first…
I don’t know if my laptop is overheating or not. I downloaded a program called SpeedFan and ran that and the results I got back are:
HD0: 37C
Temp1: 56C
Core 0: 50C
Core 1: 50C
Thermal compound must be in a very thin layer to work best so often when the heat sink is removed, it does not look like much. As mentioned, look up the proper method and reinstall it correctly. Under normal use, there is little difference between a base brand and something expensive that is supposed to be a ‘super’ compound as long as it is applied correctly.
I do not recommend using the machine without the thermal compound properly reapplied, but in theory, as long as the temperature is within the CPU’s normal range, it should be safe and a heating CPU will throttle back or shut down if it gets hot enough. Consider also that you are overworking your fan and that probably will shorten it’s life as well.
You have to be a little bit crazy to keep you from going insane.