Laptop randomly overheating and shutting down during normal use

[notebooks1]

Hi everyone,

I’m experiencing an issue where my HP notebook starts overheating during normal usage (web browsing, documents, light multitasking) and occasionally shuts down without warning. The fan becomes noticeably loud before this happens, and the laptop feels very warm near the vents.

I haven’t made any recent hardware upgrades, but this started happening more frequently over the past few weeks. I’ve already checked for dust buildup and made sure the vents aren’t blocked. BIOS and drivers appear to be up to date, but the issue persists.

I’m trying to understand whether this could be related to thermal paste degradation, a failing fan, or something else hardware-related. Any guidance on troubleshooting steps or common fixes would be appreciated.

As someone who relies heavily on my laptop for daily work coordination (I manage schedules for a small local black car service : ), unexpected shutdowns are becoming disruptive, so I’d really like to get to the root of this.

Thanks in advance for any advice from the community.

[Venom21]

Open the laptop, then clean the fans by removing the heatsink screws and cleaning the vents from both inside and outside. Next, apply high-quality thermal paste like Arctic MX-6 or PTM7950 to the GPU and CPU chips. If the thermal pads or putty on the VRAMs are worn out or dry, replace them with new, good-quality putty; otherwise, ignore them and don't touch them. Check disassembly videos, thermal paste application guides, etc., on YouTube if you're unsure. That's all.