Asus Gaming Laptop overheats even though its fan is working

[Pink Pony]

I have an ASUS M60J quad core i7 laptop with 64 bit windows 7 and a nvidia graphics card. I bought it used 4 months ago (no warranty) and it has been great until recently. I was palying game and it just shut off on me - I let it sit for a day and it was fine for a day until it shut off on me again. It shut off on me on the same game both times. I thought maybe it was the game so I stopped playing it and it happened again just browsing. Anyway, I can play light games, but when i try to play a heavy game (TF2) it just shuts off on me from overheating. I know its overheating because the temperature of my laptop gets up to 104 degrees celsius before shutting off. Whats weird about this is that the fan is working, but when I go in game it just stops except for very short bursts every 5 minutes that do not do anything to help my computer. It used to have the fan blowing constantly during the whole playthrough, and that worked fine. Whats wrong with my computer? Please help!

(Over the weekend I gamed a lot- more then usual and had it on non stop for 3 days, but that was a while ago, could it just need a rest?)

 

[jaguarskx]

Since it is no longer under warranty you might was well open it up can clean out any dust. Also clean off the thermal paste both CPU and GPU and apply a new layer. I recommend Arctic Silver 5.

 

[Pink Pony]

How does that explain the short bursts in game instead a long constant blow?
Is the dust blocking it somehow?

 

[AntiZig]

it could be dust it could be something else, it could be that the fan motor is dying.

regardless you have to open it up and see what's going on, as jaguarskx said.

 

[morto00x]

I know this might sound like an overkill, but I actually have a small fan on my desk blowing air into the fan exhausts at the back of my ASUS N50V whenever I play video-games (The laptop cooling pad is not enough) which works fine for me.

You should still look into the solutions mentioned before (clean the fans and vents, thermal paste) but having a small external fan helps a lot. Not very portable though.

 

[AntiZig]

I know this might sound like an overkill, but I actually have a small fan on my desk blowing air into the fan exhausts at the back of my ASUS N50V whenever I play video-games (The laptop cooling pad is not enough) which works fine for me.

You should still look into the solutions mentioned before (clean the fans and vents, thermal paste) but having a small external fan helps a lot. Not very portable though.

so you're blowing air in reverse of what the cooling system is doing. That's not a great idea because you're creating back pressure and the fan motors see increased load