Hey everyone,
I have been routinely coming here with Z71V overheating problems. I couldnt quite figure out why I was hitting 100+C temps for no reason. I had no pets, no dusty environment, no nothing. In the end though, it was dust that caused the overheating.

Ive turned to this community for alot of assistance and so I am just writing this thread so hopefully I can pay it forward.



If your laptop is overheating, it can very well be because of dust buildup (big surprise). I would have sworn that there was no dust buildup in my laptop but pictures from ISTNC showed clearly otherwise. It looked like a lint catcher in a drying machine.
The fix for this is (another big surprise) using a can of good ol' compressed air on your laptop.
The trick to this is spray the air through the rear vertical slits where you can see the copper heatsink. First, use a toothpick or something to block your fans from spinning when you blast your laptop with air (not doing so will likely damage the fan ball bearing). Then, from the rear of the laptop blast air through the heatsink port and the dust should come out the fan port. Its important not to do it the other way around!!
Do this once a week for good health.

Call this a testimonial to compressed air or whatever but, in the end, it really does do the trick as long as you know where to use it.

Thanks for everything notebookforums community!

WHat? Once a week for good health. Thats overkill. Once a half year is ok unless you live in a vacum cleaner or ground zero for demolition sites. Then again if you live in a city and its on 24/7 it can get clogged up in months. With normal usage even after 1 year it should be ok. The only reason your asus would overheat aside from clogged heatsinks is a microfracture on the heatpipe. Its rare but i ve seen it a few times. If you touch the copper base over the cpu it will feel very hot where the radiator will feel pretty much cool. If that is your case then the actual radiator needs replacement.

I had my laptop since August and it was matted with lint. Honestly the heatsink looked like a lint catcher in a clothes dryer. I never used compressed air but thats not even a half year. This is without pets and in a fairly below-average environment for dust.

The part about the radiator is interestnig tho. Is there any way to feel these things without taking apart the laptop?

It takes about 40 seconds to take the lid of the z71v. There are no warranty stickers unless your vendor put em there. The only sticker you will find is ont he actual cpu. If you take the lid off you can feel it.

Dude, I have my Z71v since it first came out...

Not once did I spray it or clean it yet. Still going strong and good temp.

1) Under voltage method
2) Apply AC5 to between the heatsink and cpu
3) you could try this heatsink improvement method...
http://www.z71forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=16
http://www.z71forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=27