I own an Acer Aspire 5672WLMi, a replacement for a previous, unrecoverable Acer notebook that service assistance sent me in April 2006.
It's one of first dual core notebooks (Core Duo T2300, not Core 2 Duo) with an Ati X1400 discrete graphics, 2 GB of ram, hdd 120 GB and other optionals: a really expensive computer at the time.
My notebook's temp has gradually risen in last months, despite my decision to undervolt the cpu and to keep the graphic chip always on battery mode (reduced clock and voltage, so it heat a lot less): last week it turned idling at about 52 C / 126 F and it reached 77 C / 171 F under stress testing, running both Prime95 and Glxgears (openGl software emulation using MesaGL libraries under Cygwin) at the same time.
Now is spring, here air temp is about 15 C / 60 F at noon but in summer it peaks up to 40 C / 104 F with specific humidity well over 80%: a living hell.
Fearing for its life, yesterday I put it into maintentance: removed all screws and components, I was astonished by its heatsink.
Dust didn't clogged the heatsink, but stopped on radiator fins (1): this is even worse because I was unable to blow air into fins with an air can and dust acted as a filter, killing both ventilation and heat transfer.
Moreover, I realized that Acer didn't put any thermal compond on cpu becuase the heatsink was clean (2) and the few paste on the Ati chip was dry
: no doubt temps were high, there was no way to effectively cool them. After cleaning the heatsink, I put some silver compound on both chips and reassembled the notebook: now is better than new, idling at about 45-50 C (113-122 F) and peaking at about 57 C (135 F). Idle temps are as high as before because the thermocontrolled fan will spin only above 50 C, but load one is a lot lower: success gained 
Screw you Acer and your stinginess: is sparing few cents, the cost of thermal compound on large scale, good enough or is better to avoid a lot of failure due to overheating? I'm not joking, this model (and others from Acer Folio generation) is nicknamed stove because it heats so much I began to be worried since beginning. Till yeasterday I couldn't understand why: the cpu is a lot cooler than previous Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 with their noisy fans spinning everytime, the graphic chip is a low class one and it's almost always in idle ...
Now the answer is stinginess: a cent spared is a cent saved, hundred of thousand cents are thousand dollars. True, but I won't save anything if the computer burns after warranty expires
Sorry for my rant.
Zandrax
It's one of first dual core notebooks (Core Duo T2300, not Core 2 Duo) with an Ati X1400 discrete graphics, 2 GB of ram, hdd 120 GB and other optionals: a really expensive computer at the time.
My notebook's temp has gradually risen in last months, despite my decision to undervolt the cpu and to keep the graphic chip always on battery mode (reduced clock and voltage, so it heat a lot less): last week it turned idling at about 52 C / 126 F and it reached 77 C / 171 F under stress testing, running both Prime95 and Glxgears (openGl software emulation using MesaGL libraries under Cygwin) at the same time.
Now is spring, here air temp is about 15 C / 60 F at noon but in summer it peaks up to 40 C / 104 F with specific humidity well over 80%: a living hell.
Fearing for its life, yesterday I put it into maintentance: removed all screws and components, I was astonished by its heatsink.
Dust didn't clogged the heatsink, but stopped on radiator fins (1): this is even worse because I was unable to blow air into fins with an air can and dust acted as a filter, killing both ventilation and heat transfer.
Moreover, I realized that Acer didn't put any thermal compond on cpu becuase the heatsink was clean (2) and the few paste on the Ati chip was dry
: no doubt temps were high, there was no way to effectively cool them. After cleaning the heatsink, I put some silver compound on both chips and reassembled the notebook: now is better than new, idling at about 45-50 C (113-122 F) and peaking at about 57 C (135 F). Idle temps are as high as before because the thermocontrolled fan will spin only above 50 C, but load one is a lot lower: success gained Screw you Acer and your stinginess: is sparing few cents, the cost of thermal compound on large scale, good enough or is better to avoid a lot of failure due to overheating? I'm not joking, this model (and others from Acer Folio generation) is nicknamed stove because it heats so much I began to be worried since beginning. Till yeasterday I couldn't understand why: the cpu is a lot cooler than previous Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 with their noisy fans spinning everytime, the graphic chip is a low class one and it's almost always in idle ...
Now the answer is stinginess: a cent spared is a cent saved, hundred of thousand cents are thousand dollars. True, but I won't save anything if the computer burns after warranty expires
Sorry for my rant.
Zandrax
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