Question Laptop cooling system malfunction?

[deltadawn37]

I have a samsung notebook 9 pro (with AMD GPU) that was purchased in late 2017 (so it is a few months out of warranty). I have used it quite heavily for gaming, art, and general internet use, and it normally performs quite reliably. However, it has always had a tended to overheat when I run graphics-intensive programs unless I keep it cool with external airflow. About 8 months ago, after overheating (about 85*c GPU temperature) a few times and crashing, it stopped being able to read the GPU temperature. It still worked fine, though, and I didn't get around to fixing it.

Last night, though, I was gaming when the computer bluescreened twice in a row with an error code I hadn't seen before for a graphics driver error. It restarted normally, but I suddenly smelled something burning inside the laptop. I immediately shut it off and opened it, and the burning dust/plastic smell seemed to be localized to one of the fans, which was fairly dusty. The surrounding parts of the motherboard also smelled acrid, but not as strongly.

A few questions:
One, could a faulty or dirty fan cause this sort of crash or do you think something else is broken as well?
Two, the computer was relatively cool to the touch when the burning started (when it overheats, the slim build makes it easy to feel through the keyboard and case). Do you think this suggests an electrical fault rather than overheating?
And three, would you recommend just replacing the fan or taking the computer to a professional for more diagnostics?

Thank you in advance for your input!

 

[maziech]

One, could a faulty or dirty fan cause this sort of crash or do you think something else is broken as well?
Two, the computer was relatively cool to the touch when the burning started (when it overheats, the slim build makes it easy to feel through the keyboard and case). Do you think this suggests an electrical fault rather than overheating?
And three, would you recommend just replacing the fan or taking the computer to a professional for more diagnostics?

1) Damn, of course YASSS. If it overheats, it crashes. Yu should clean the fans and radiators from dust at least once/6 months.

2) Noone will tell You that here. Requiers inspection of hardware. If You are lucky some plastic might overheat and stink.

3) Hard to tell. If it was mine, I would precisely clean up the radiators, mobo, fans from dust. I'd also inspect, if all fans work. By occasion, it would be also good to exchange thermal paste. You can check on Youtube how to do that.

If everything went fine, i'd put it all together and check if it works.

BUT: If You're not feeling comfortable with those basic activities, You never did that before and are afraid of breaking something - just don't do it and take it to comp service.
Laptops are hard to handle and You can break something if You don't know what You do and don't have a good step by step tutorial.

 

[deltadawn37]

Thanks for your reply! I don't really have the tools to do much to a laptop this dense other than change fans or memory, so I'll probably take it to a shop that does. If it was just heat causing a GPU malfunction (which is what the error code was), I'm hoping that there's no permanent damage since it's soldered onto the mb.