My laptop now runs much cooler and the fix was only $5

I suffered the same fate as many of you and ended up with a laptop that throttled and got really hot even for the most basic tasks. All hope seemed lost, and for a machine that was barely a year old, this seemed quite concerning.

After even undervolting seemed to have no effect, I decided to turn my attention to the laptop's interior. A single thermal paste change just shy of $5 turned out to be the magical key — and made all the difference.

Applying some fresh thermal paste

Cheap and easy

Your first order of business when cleaning up a laptop is to disassemble it. It might seem scary at first, but it is doable, and often a lot easier than you’d think. For my 14-inch ASUS laptop, it was as easy as unscrewing eight screws, which unfortunately happened to not be the standard Phillips screw.

Thankfully, I did have a screwdriver set with the necessary bits. Still, it's a rather annoying quirk with PC hardware in general — there’s no uniform standard for many things.

Prying open the back cover with a guitar pick, I was able to access the innards of the laptop, which weren’t all that dusty. I then diverted my attention to the heatsink (if you’re on a gaming laptop, there may be separate sections for the GPU and CPU), and unscrewed the four screws in order.

After awkwardly moving the heatsink back and forth, I was able to get it loose, and what I saw was worrying. The thermal paste was flaky, dried out, and barely spread. This is exactly why the laptop was overheating, and the CPU cooler just couldn’t keep up with the poor paste.

On to fixing that, then. I poured some rubbing alcohol (99% is preferred) onto a dry, clean cloth and started to clean the old paste off in a circular motion. After removing it from both the CPU die and heatsink, it was time to turn my attention to the fan, for which I used a small brush to lightly brush off any dirt.

With the fans clean, it was time to add some fresh thermal paste.

Choosing the right kind of thermal paste

It’s surprisingly simple

With so many thermal paste options available, choosing the right one might feel like stumbling through a minefield blindfolded. The funny thing is, there is no single correct thermal paste, and just about any kind works.

I’ve used a no-name brand paste for under a dollar, and it has worked fine. As long as there is enough coverage of the die, you should be good. Of course, there’s no denying that higher-quality paste will last you longer.

Cheaper thermal paste dries up faster, and you’re better off buying a decent paste under $5 instead, since the whole point is not to open it up again.

Of course, there are also more exotic alternatives (that promise better heat transfer and cooling!) like Liquid Metal and PTM7950, but those are significantly more expensive, even if they work better.

Putting it all back together

The results were immediately apparent

With the thermal paste applied on the die (make sure to use a modest amount (not too much that it spreads out onto the board!), it was time to screw everything back in together. First came the fans, followed by the heatsink.

I made sure to screw the screws in the exact order listed on top of the heatsink itself, and not screw them in too tightly, which could damage the motherboard.

Everything fit snugly, and I reattached and screwed in the backplate. Connecting it to a charger, I was able to boot back up. The results were immediate, and the first thing I noticed was that my laptop was much quieter.

The fans seemed to kick in less often, and the laptop's body felt much cooler. The effect during games was also appreciable. Games ran more quietly, and I also noticed it was smoother, though it could really be a placebo effect.

What wasn’t a placebo effect were the temperatures, though, which managed to stay well below 80°C.

Maintenance of both hardware and software is necessary

I have a sort of love-hate relationship with laptops. On the one hand, I love how powerful these machines have become over time, even serving as desktop replacements for some.

Still, laptops are inherently compromised by design. Heat is a major limiting factor, and too much of it will inevitably throttle your PC and make your room a literal oven.

Consider that maintenance is much more difficult (and more frequent) on laptops, and you have a recipe for disaster. In fact, most fixes for overheating laptops are often as simple as cleaning out the fans and dusting off any extra gunk on the board.

That’s only one half of the solution, though. Ideally, you’d also want to run some maintenance on the operating system as well.

Linux and Windows both get bloated over time, and you’ll want to clean up junk and make sure there’s no unnecessary background tasks running. A clean reinstallation also helps.

There are still many more tweaks to make — and one of the best ways to do so is through undervolting, which makes your machine run much cooler and quieter.