Elitebook 8530w gets extremely hot!

[Liquid-Man]

I've got an Elitebook 8530w for a few years now and since a few weeks it gets extremely hot, without the laptop even doing anything, just being idle in windows.

I can stand pretty high levels of heat with my hands, but the temperature of the air that comes out of the exhaust on the left is so hot, that I can't hold my hand in front of it. Today I needed to download some software for my new desktop, so I used one of the USB slots on the left (near that exhaust), since the other 2 were occupied. After like 20 minutes, I removed my USB flash drive and almost immediately let it drop on my table, since the drive was too hot to handle.

This can't be right, last weeks I raise the back of the laptop up in the air a bit so the fan can suck up air much more easily but this doesnt seem to work at all.
Is this normal or is something completely wrong?

[REO51ST · Accepted solution]

Welcome Liquid.

Im installing a new OS on a 8530w.

After just getting Vista installed I could barely touch the laptop.

It was so hot.

But on mine there was little or no airflow coming out at the upper left hand exhaust port.

So I removed the keyboard."Two screws on the bottom and four retainers between esc-f1, f4-f5, f8-f9 and f12 -scroll"

In the upper left hand corner remove the fan connector.

Remove the 3 torque screws for the fan.

Remove the fan and clean between the fan and the fins of the heatsink.

Replace in reverse.

Let me know if you need more help.

[Liquid-Man]

So you are telling me that it's a dust collection that makes my laptop go insanely hot?
That's rather strange since I've happen to use air pressure to clean it a few times in the years that I've got the laptop... Anyway, I'll give it a try!
Thanks

[REO51ST]

This is something that just happened to me today.

If yours is blowing hot air you may have a different problem.

There was almost nothing coming out of my exhaust.

If you used canned air or compressed air to clean the fins then I hate to say you may have a different problem.

Please let me know what you find.

Thanks Liquid.

[Liquid-Man]

Wow! I opened it up and there was indeed a "dust-bunny" against the heatshrink, didnt think that it would be this severe!
Cleaned it up and now I can feel a slight breeze of air again, so I won't even hesitate that this was the cause of my problem!
Many thanks to you REO51ST!

[REO51ST]

Liquid.

Did you find all the screws as described???

Did you find that DAM* dust bunny between the fan and the fins???

Please let me know.

I found this same thing just 5 hours ago.

Just finishing the OS install on that unit now with no over heating.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Thanks again Liquid.

[Liquid-Man]

Yeah they were no problem to find at all, luckily I had a precision flat screw driver that could fit in just perfect, by this I was able to remove the screws.

Since pictures say more than 1000 words:

http://i45.tinypic.com/35id254.jpg

I regularly used air under pressure to blow out dust, but this was done from underneath, so in this case only blowing the dust against the already large dust-bunny, thus making it worse.

A real design-flaw if you'd ask me...

It's running again and I can feel airflow again, while you mentioned it, that was gone before... Now the exhaust temperature feels normal to the touch, again 😄

[REO51ST]

Dude mine was a gerbil compared to that beast.

Thanks for the pic.

Let us know if we can help again.

[Liquid-Man]

Haha!
Even better that I got rid of it!
A friend of mine has the same laptop (laptop project on our school, so many people of my age around here have them) and he has heat problems too, told him about what I did so he's going to check his laptop for dust-beasts (since you named it that way) and remove them.

Still can't believe that I didn't think of this myself though, anyway, thanks again!

[REO51ST]

Please let us know at the forum what your friend finds.

I think this may help others in the future.

Thanks again for your help.