If you’ve had your laptop for a year or two, it may be full of dust. Dust clogs fans, vents, and heat sinks, preventing your PC from cooling down properly. You can remove a good amount of this dust, even if you can’t open your laptop.
Dust build-up can prevent a PC from cooling down properly, and that heat can even cause hardware damage. Your laptop’s fans may also run at full blast, draining your battery. Your laptop may even reduce its performance to stay cool.
If You Can Open Your Laptop
Most laptops, especially newer ones, aren’t designed to be opened by their users. This presents a serious problem. On a desktop PC, you’d power down your PC, open the case, blow it out with a can of compressed air, and close the case. You could dust out a laptop in a similar way– if only there was a way to open it up and get inside.
Your laptop may have a bottom panel (or several bottom panels) you can unscrew to access the internals. Check your laptop’s manual, or look up a special “service manual” for your specific model of laptop online. Power down the laptop, remove the battery, and unscrew the panel to get at the laptop’s insides. If a service manual is available for your laptop, it will walk you through the process. Depending on your laptop, opening the panel may or may not void your warranty.
After it’s open, take the laptop somewhere you don’t mind getting dusty — like your garage, or even outside. Use a can of compressed air to blow out the internals of your laptop. Ensure you’re blowing the dust out of the laptop’s case, not just moving it around inside. For example, you could blow more toward your laptop’s vents so the dust would be blasted through the vents and out of the laptop. Be careful when blowing air at the fans in the laptop — if you make the fans spin too quickly, they could be damaged. Blow at the fans from many different angles, using short blasts of air.
We recommend compressed air — also known as canned air — for a reason. Don’t use a vacuum, and be extra careful if you opt to use an air compressor instead of a can of compressed air.
