Laptop overheating

[dryheat]

I've had this problem that (I think) has killed several laptops.

I'm on my 3rd t480, and I think it's all due to the same overheating problem. Occasionally when I wake my laptop from sleep, the fan isn't functional and the fan speed reads 65535 RPM. I see temps raising and raising and I just have to reboot the laptop for it to start working again. If my laptop is left sitting closed for an extended period of time, I can wake it to find its sitting in the 80 degrees range or worse. I think this keeps killing my laptops.

When I reboot, I get a "NO FAN" error and it just shuts back off. I boot it up after it powers down and it works fine for a period of time.

I just looked at psensor and it's showing max fan speed 65535. The odd thing is this problem has persisted over 3 Thinkpad t480's. I keep moving my home directory over to the new laptop each time so I've wondered if it's a config file thats causing this.

If you guys could help me figure this out, I'd appreciate not buying a new t480 every couple of years

[Qqmike]

Interesting. I don't think I have the answer.
But we just talked about "sleep" in a topic I started.
Fact is, during sleep state, fans do go off, right? That bothers me somewhat,
but the machine in sleep is supposed to be basically "off" (in RAM), no heat generated.

Not the solution you want ... but have you tried simply disallowing sleep, let it run normally for a long time, over night.
What happens then?
(sleep, as you know, is under Settings > Power Mgt > Suspend)
So what if you allow "screen energy saving" for 10 minutes but disable any 'suspend.'
I'm not sure what this will tell you!

[TWPonKubuntu]

My experience, with an HP Latitude laptop, is that the fan pulls in dust which collects in multiple points inside the case. I pulled the cover/bottom plate to expose the motherboard. I used a small vacuum AND a can of Nitrous Oxide (laughing gas) to remove the pockets of dust. This process takes around half an hour. You don't need to use Nitrous Oxide and beware that it is Very flammable. You can use plain compressed air.

Seriously, be aware that Nitrous Oxide is Flammable and can build up an explosive mix in the air... A simple spark can set it off.

TWP

[dryheat]

Interesting. I don't think I have the answer.
But we just talked about "sleep" in a topic I started.
Fact is, during sleep state, fans do go off, right? That bothers me somewhat,
but the machine in sleep is supposed to be basically "off" (in RAM), no heat generated.

Not the solution you want ... but have you tried simply disallowing sleep, let it run normally for a long time, over night.
What happens then?
(sleep, as you know, is under Settings > Power Mgt > Suspend)
So what if you allow "screen energy saving" for 10 minutes but disable any 'suspend.'
I'm not sure what this will tell you!

I haven't tried preventing it from going to sleep, but I'll give it a shot. It's odd because this happens maybe once a week, so I'm assuming it enters a sleep state every night when I'm not using it. I may also just try starting with a fresh install of the newest Kubuntu and be very selective about what data I migrate over (config files and such)