A lot of us use a laptop for work, but what when your main work tool starts acting out? And when we say acting out, we mean it starts overheating.
That is definitely not an ideal situation you want to find yourself in. Not only it can slowly decrease the lifespan of your laptop, but it’s not pleasant to feel your laptop getting hot when you’re traveling or using a laptop on a go.
..the temperature is nothing you should be worrying about, as long as you know what to do…
However, the temperature is nothing you should be worrying about, as long as you know what to do. In this post, you’ll find everything from the way to determine the temperature of both your processor and laptop in whole to lowering the temperature and understanding the temperature limits.
It’s most likely your temperature problems will be sorted out after reading this post since we offer a lot of value that you can take action on straight away.
How to Check Laptop Temperature in Windows?
Since there are about 400 million active Windows 10 users (and a lot more of users of other Windows operating systems), we’ll start by taking care of people who use Windows operating system, but it’s very similar on other operating systems too.
Even though there is no integrated feature just yet in Windows OS, the best piece of software to check laptop temperature is called Open Hardware Monitor.
Source: Tech Advisor
It’s a very small software that is free and can be downloaded & installed in just minutes, yet it won’t only show you the overall temperature of your laptop, but also the temperature of your processor and graphics card, along with the speed of your fans, and even the voltages being used in your laptop.
How to Test Your Computer’s CPU Temperature and Check if It’s Too High?
It’s easy to notice the increased temperature of your laptop, but how do you exactly know what’s causing the increase?
..In most cases, CPU is the one who causes an increase in temperature…
It’s always good to start by testing the computer’s CPU temperature and checking if it’s too high. In most cases, CPU is the one who causes an increase in temperature. That’s due to the fact that CPU is taking care of 70-80% of operation and tasks while graphics card (GPU) takes care of less.
The easiest way to test the computer’s CPU is to use any of the free & small software available such as Core Temp. It’s a piece of software that will give you a detailed temperature of each processor core (no matter how many cores your processor has).
Now, once you have the right tool to let you know the temperature, how will you know if the temperature of your CPU is high or within its limits?
The idle temperature of your CPU should be somewhere between 77 and 95 Fahrenheit. However, when gaming or doing some heavy processing tasks, the core temperature will be somewhere around 120 to 140 Fahrenheit.
What you never want to happen is for your processor temperature to go over 167 F.
What Can I Do to Keep My Laptop’s CPU Temperature Below 45 C?
45 C is 113 Fahrenheit and as mentioned earlier, you might pass this temperature when doing some heavy duty tasks or gaming – but ideally, you’d want your temperature to always be below it.
The first thing people think of in order to reduce the CPU temperature is to get a cooling pad which is basically extra fans that blow fresh air in the back of the laptop.
However, the best thing to do is to head to Task Manager and end processes you aren’t sure about, or the processes that take most of the CPU power. Also, closing down every process you don’t need is a great choice.
This will help CPU work easier and therefore, won’t get as hot and won’t require such heating.
There’s even a feature that does exactly this. If you’ve noticed the laptop freezing when your CPU is running almost up to its full power, what Windows does is reduces the tasks and power to slowly but surely let CPU work more efficient.
What is Normal Laptop Temperature?
..the ideal “normal” temperature is anywhere from 75 to 95 Fahrenheit….
The normal laptop temperature can be categorized in two ways – an idle time and heavy use. For a laptop that’s in idle where it’s not doing much other than a few programs, and browsing, watching videos or movies, listening to music, and such use – the ideal “normal” temperature is anywhere from 75 to 95 Fahrenheit.
However, when you’re doing some heavy use such as gaming, video rendering, using a lot of visual software, and such tasks – the temperature will be higher but the ideal temperature for such use is somewhere between 120 to 140 Fahrenheit.
Where 140 Fahrenheit is the limit and anything over it is going to be potentially dangerous for your laptop. We would never recommend you to let your laptop’s temperature to go higher than 167 Fahrenheit as that would be the final limit which means “do not cross”.
How to Lower My Laptop’s Temperature?
Now when you know how to check laptop temperature and which temperature is okay and which one is not, it’s the time to learn the fun stuff – how to lower your laptop’s temperature.
There are two different ways to approach it, where the first one is virtual and the second one is physical. Remember how we said that cutting down processes that use the most processing power out of your laptop will help?
That’s exactly how it’s done through the virtual way. On the other hand, if you really can’t close some processes down and you need additional help to just push your laptop through some moments of high temperature – physical way is a good choice too.
By the physical way, we think of the laptop stand fans that lets you place your laptop on top, connect it simply through a USB cable and yet have two big or a few smaller fans blowing cold air directly in the back of your laptop.
Source: Carousell
While this is not an ideal way to cool down your laptop for longer uses, it’s ideal for that hot summer moments when you just need to get through that gaming match or video rendering.
At What Temperature Should You Turn Off Your Laptop?
Almost all laptops are programmed directly from the motherboard’s BIOS to turn off once they overheat and reach potentially dangerous temperature, we also recommend everyone to pay attention to their temperature themselves...we’d recommend you to turn it off whenever it exceeds 167 Fahrenheit…
There are plenty of gadgets you can place on your desktop that will show precisely your laptop’s temperature. While you can’t be for sure at what temperature will the laptop turn itself off, we’d recommend you to turn it off whenever it exceeds 167 Fahrenheit.
It’s a limit where your laptop will be drastically slowed down, you will be able to feel the heat on the bottom of your laptop, and it’s just not worth having a risk of waiting for the laptop to recover itself.
Conclusion
Once you know how to correctly measure your laptop’s temperature, it’s fairly easy to keep an eye on it and make sure your laptop never exceeds the dangerous temperature levels.If you follow our recommendations:
- Idle temperature – from 75 to 95 Fahrenheit
- Heavy use temperature – from 120 to 140 Fahrenheit
- Never exceed temperature – 167 Fahrenheit
we are sure you will never have any troubles. However, if you do, resolving them by improving the cooling system or paying attention to your processes is a wise way to do it.
However, we’ve also written a long post on 4 ways to fix an overheating laptop without taking it apart, which can be useful in case you still can’t keep your laptop’s temperature in a reasonable range.
Dario is a writer at NetbookNews.com. He is at the same time an avid technology addict that loves reviewing gadgets & devices, and then writing useful reviews.