AlienwareM15X Cooling Concerns

[ethanwdp]

I have an Alienware M15X with 6GB ram, intel i5, and Nvidia GTX 260M, Windows 7 64bit Home edition

I have it set up so that it's on a hard cover book that's the size of the laptop, with a smaller hard cover book on top of that book to tilt it upwards and allow the two bottom fans to disperse heat without it being blocked by anything and thus retained.

So far, when playing graphics intensive games such as Skyrim, the battery heats to an almost skin burning hot temperature. Strangely enough, the left side of the battery and it's fan is a much cooler temperature than the right side on touch. I swiped my hands underneath the laptop while it was still hot and the bottom fans were admitting cool air.
It's been happening for a while, but only on high demand games. (GTA IV actually overheated my battery and rendered my laptop useless for a day when I played it for a while)

Is it just dust or something? If so, which way do I blow the compressed air so that I don't accidentally break a fan by turning it the wrong way?
Sorry about the stupid questions, but I literally got the laptop for 350$ with nothing wrong with it because the clerk thought that the battery life was down (turns out it had normal battery life) and can't afford a new one.

 

[cdburner5911]

The best way (imo) for blowing out a laptop is to get a ziptie (or, less ideally a small wire, or twist tie) and put it in the fan grill to stop fan from spinning (while off), and blow air from the back first, then through the fan, a couple of times, until dust stops coming out
If you use like, a can of air, and you use short bursts, you probably dont have to worry too much about over speeding the fan, but if you use an air compressor or a vacuum it would be best to mechanically stop the fan.

And the reason it only is hot on one side, is because the CPU and GPU heatsinks are separate
But you may also consider a laptop cooling pad, if cleaning dust out doesn't help.

good luck!
-Connor

Edit, does your laptop work if it is plugged into power, but battery removed? if so, that would probably be the thing to do when gaming (well, only if the power cord has a solid connection) because LIon batteries will degrade with excessive heat, over time

 

[Prostar Computer]

Have you used or are you currently using any temperature monitoring utilities? As long as you're within 90 C you're generally safe.

 

[ethanwdp]

Have you used or are you currently using any temperature monitoring utilities? As long as you're within 90 C you're generally safe.

Where can I get one?

 

[Prostar Computer]

There are quite a few free utilities you can use. I'm partial to HWiNFO. It's a free application you can download for either 32-bit or 64-bit Windows.