How To Take Care Of Your Laptop's Graphic Chip

A laptop's video chip can be found within the laptop soldered directly to the motherboard as well as other components

. It is responsible for generating a display on the screen and is easily damaged and prone to early failure especially if mistreated.

If you disassemble an average laptop you will usually notice a heat sink with fan covering two large chips. One will always be the CPU chip the other the graphics chip. Both of these chips are very sophisticated and produce plenty of heat during use. The graphics chip though generates by far the most heat. The CPU is nearly always found in a socket that allows it to be rapidly removed and replaced should it fail or require upgrading. The graphics chip, however, is almost never contained in a socket so cannot be upgraded or changed.

As a general rule, the hotter a chip operates at, the shorter its life-span, when a failure can be expected. If the laptop and especially its graphics chip are kept as cool as possible then this should help increase the life expectancy of the laptop.

There are a few obvious measures that may be taken to keep this chip cool and a few less obvious ones. Make sure that you do not block the air intake and air outlet being especially careful not to use the laptop on a fluffy surface like a bed or rug. Have the vents and fan cleaned if there appears to be a reduction in airflow or you hear the fan operating quite often. Most users do not realise that certain software programs generate much more heat from the graphics chip than others. Games tend to make use of plenty of advanced graphics features so will create much more heat than say a word processing program. You may a bit surprised to discover that playing a DVD film may cause the graphics chip to run very hot, so potentially decreasing the life span of the laptop especially if this is done regularly.

You might discover that the graphics software driver is damaged, out of date or just missing. This will usually result in the graphics chip overheating along with the laptop locking up or crashing. 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 graphics chip on a laptop is usually nearly impossible as it is very difficult to remove the old chip from the motherboard. There are though, some high specification laptops which may have the graphics chip attached to a separate sub assembly circuit board that plugs into the main motherboard. This makes it easy, thought quiet expensive, to upgrade or replace the graphics chip as required.

Look after your laptop's graphic chip as it is either very expensive or impossible to replace. You may notice that your laptop is putting out very hot air or maybe the case is getting too hot to touch then it is most likely that the graphics chip will be about to fail.

by: Laptop Repair Man

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