Let Your Laptop Overheat and Most Likely Your Video Chip Will be Damaged

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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 when abused.

There are two large chips located beneath a heat sink. One will always be the CPU chip the other the video chip. Both of these chips are extremely sophisticated and produce a lot of heat during use. The graphics chip though generates by far the most heat. You will also note that the CPU is nearly always found in a quick release socket allowing it to be extracted and replaced during an upgrade or repair. Unfortunately, upgrading or changing a faulty graphics chip is impossible or very difficult as it is directly soldered to the motherboard.

Graphic chips are more likely to fail or have a shortened life if they continually operate at a high temperature. So any measures that can be taken to keep this chip cool will extend the lifespan of the laptop.

There are several obvious steps that can be used to keep this chip cool plus some less obvious ones. Always use the laptop on a tray or table, and not on a rug, bed or on your knees since this will probably obstruct the cooling vents. If you notice that the air coming out of the exhaust outlet is slow or hot then you will most likely need to have the fan and vents cleaned by a laptop repair agent. Most users do not realise that certain applications generate considerably more heat from the graphics chip than others. Games tend to make use of a lot of advanced graphics features so will produce far more heat than say a word processing program. You will probably be surprised to find out that playing a DVD film will 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 applications to judder or lock up the laptop. The correct graphics drivers are often not too difficult to locate and can usually be downloaded free from the manufacturer's Internet site.

Upgrading the video chip on a laptop is usually nearly impossible as it is very difficult to remove the old chip from the motherboard. There are though, a few high specification laptops which have the graphics chip mounted on a separate sub assembly circuit board that connects to the main motherboard. This makes it easy, thought quiet pricey, to upgrade or replace the graphics chip as necessary.

If you are fortunate, an overheating graphics chip will cause the laptop to cut out and turn off however more times than not instant permanent damage results that will prevent the laptop from powering up in the future. If you are fortunate, an overheating graphics chip will cause the laptop to cut out and shut down yet more times than not immediate permanent damage results that may stop the laptop from powering up in the future.