Taking Care of your Laptop

Keep Your Laptop Cool and its Video Chip Should Keep Working for a Long Time

Most laptop video chips are soldered directly on top of the motherboard. It is responsible for generating a display on the screen and is easily damaged and susceptible to early failure particularly if abused.

There are 2 large chips located beneath a heat sink. These are the graphics chip and CPU respectively. Both of these chips are extremely sophisticated and generate plenty of heat during use. The graphics chip though produces by far the most heat. You will also see that the CPU is nearly always contained in a quick release socket allowing it to be removed and replaced during an upgrade or repair. The graphics chip, however, is almost never contained in a socket so cannot be upgraded or changed.

 

As a general rule, the hotter a chip operates at, the shorter its life expectancy, when a failure can be expected. So any measures which might be taken to keep this chip cool will extend the lifespan of the laptop.

 

There are several obvious measures that may be taken to keep this chip cool plus some less obvious ones. Always use the laptop on a tray or table, not on a rug, your bed or on your knees since this may block the cooling vents. If you notice that the air coming out of the exhaust outlet is slow or very hot then you will most likely need to have the fan and vents cleaned by a laptop repair agent.

 

Different types of packages result in different amounts of heat being generated by the graphics chip. Letting the laptop idle on the Internet will not cause the graphics chip to create much heat, however, playing a game where sophisticated graphics are operating will usually make it generate substantial heat. You will most likely a bit surprised to discover that playing a DVD film can cause the graphics chip to run very hot, so potentially reducing the life-span of the laptop particularly if this is done regularly.

 

If the incorrect or an old graphics driver has been installed on the laptop then this may cause the graphics chip to overheat and will likely cause graphics intensive software programs to judder or crash the laptop. The correct graphics drivers are usually relatively easy to find and may usually be downloaded free from the manufacturer's Internet site.

 

Upgrading the graphics chip on a laptop is normally almost impossible because it is very difficult to remove the old chip from the motherboard. There are though, a few high specification laptops which may have the graphics chip installed on a separate sub assembly circuit board that plugs into the main motherboard. This makes it easy, thought quite expensive, to upgrade or replace the graphics chip as required.

 

If you are fortunate, an overheating graphics chip will cause the laptop to cut out and turn off but usually immediate permanent damage results that may prevent the laptop from powering up in the future. Look after your laptop's graphic chip as it is either extremely expensive or impossible to replace.

 

There are technical people experienced at repairing broken and damaged laptops and USB RAM drives. They spent in excess of 30 years inside the electronics industry focusing on electronic design and repair. They published many articles relating to laptop and notebook faults to assist users diagnose and perhaps perform simple laptop repairs by themselves where appropriate. They are always happy to give technical guidance and may be contacted at their internet site for laptop power connector repair or memory stick repair.