What to do when laptop overheat and black out?

Derrick's 1.5 year old laptop always been hot, ie overheating. But in recent days, even after he just reformatted it, it actually blacked out from the overheating while playing starcraft 2. ok, he was only playing in medium resolution. So what did we decide to do?

To open up the laptop and see if there's anything wrong with the fan or heatsink.

Here's Derrick and his disassembled laptop. Yep, it seems it takes 22 steps to reach the fan and heatsink. It's a delicate task as anytime, you can break a wire and spoil the laptop altogether. And yes, whoever designed this laptop ought to rethink the design. Nobody wants to remove the keyboard just to reach the heatsink which is at the back.


Does this look weird to you? It's a super thick layer of dirt or should i say 'carpet-like dust' that's clogging the heatsink. No wonder the laptop heats up so quickly.


Here's a second look at the thick layer of dust.

Now it would seem that that laptop would need a yearly dust cleanup from now on.