portable, Acer Aspire 3003NLMi overheating

I am the owner of an Acer Aspire 3003NLMi laptop which I purchased
brand new in late 2005. I am relatively pleased with my laptop in most
aspects. I do however have one problem.

My laptop seems to be running at a high temperature most of the time.
Generally the CPU temperature is in the region of 60. This
temperature is achieved when I use CPU scaling function of the Sempron
3000+ processor to reduce the clock speed to 800MHz. But even when the
sensors indicate this temperature, the bottom of the laptop is too hot
to touch with bare hands. If I run a CPU intensive program and the
frequency raises to 1800MHz, the CPU temperature rises quickly and to
dangerous levels. I have even seen the temperature rise as high as
90. This I am sure is not at all good for the hardware. This
prevents me from using my laptop to its full potential.

Please advise me as to what I may do in order to solve this problem.
May I mention that the laptop is kept on a table/hard surface hence the
ventilation slots are not obstructed. Also, I bought this laptop
because it came with Linux as the default operating system which I am
still using. I have installed Ubuntu 6.06, so I would appreciate if
your assistance/help would consider this fact.

Thanking you and awaiting you response,

Try a bit of cleaning..............

I have an Acer Aspire 5002 WLMi which is pretty much the same as yours and I
only see a the CPU temperature is in the region of 60-65C when I'm doing
some CPU intensive operation like building a kernel. The normal temperature
range is around 44-48C when running at the 800MHz speed.

The air flow is very important, the exhaust on the side should be cleaned
with some canned air every two or three weeks (dust and other airborn
matter can restrict the flow and increase temperature). Keep the area above
the keyboard by the Acer logo (an air intake area) free of junk like
post-it notes. The bottom air intake should be cleaned at the same time the
exhaust is cleaned for the same reason.

If possible get and use one the laptop coolers, it will raise the laptop
around a half inch and allow more air flow to the bottom air intake areas.
The front of both the laptop and cooler should pretty much match, this will
help keep the unit 2-4C cooler.

If the laptop is still in the 60-65C after cleaning consider opening the
laptop and clean and apply some new thermal grease on the CPU/Heat exchange
unit. If you do not feel comfortable in doing this take it to a service
center and ask them to.

FYI: 90C is hot but is not quite a dangerous level for the CPU see;

$ cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/trip_points
critical (S5): 97 C
passive: 93 C: tc1=2 tc2=3 tsp=40 devices=0xffff810037ee8a00



--
"A personal computer is called a personal computer because it's yours,
Anything that runs on that computer, you should have control over."
Andrew Moss, Microsoft's senior director of technical policy, 2005

enard wrote:

just because it's called a laptop doesn't mean it's suitable for the top
of your lap. Yes, notebooks generally do get warm, part of it is due to
poor design choices (the Dell C640 P4 uses a desktop processor, rather
than a mobile - the things burn 70W /idle/ as opposed to the mobile
burning 50 or 60 at full pelt!), part of it is what you choose to rest
the unit on (ie carpet is no good, you're guaranteed to fry the thing. A
hard table or better yet, a cooling mat [basically a sheet of aluminium
with grilles and fans mounted underneath]) will help your laptop live
longer.


--
When all else fails...
Use a hammer.

http://dotware.co.uk

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