Avoiding "WARNING: system temperature too high, shutting down soon!"?

[Alexandre "Sunny" Kovalenko]

On Fri, 2006-09-22 at 07:08 -0700, David Wolfskill wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 16, 2006 at 04:46:42PM -0700, David Wolfskill wrote:
> > I could use some help:  I seem to overheat my laptop; I'd like to get
> > some idea of how to avoid the overheating, preferably while still
> > getting the work done.
> > ...
> 
> I received several useful suggestions, and I have the problem mitigated
> while I await word from places that advertise that they will do laptop
> repairs.
<snip>
> One thing I found that I thought was a bit odd:  I ran a script to poll
> the current CPU frequency & the temperature every 10 seconds (& report
> the same, along with the date) to stdout.  I started running that while
> I ran "make buildworld" and found that the temperature consistently ran
> about 10C lower with the lid closed.  (I have the BIOS set for the
> machine to remain active when the lid is closed so I can start a "make
> buildworld," then put the machine in the car, commute to work, and have
> it do productive work during that time.
That might be a hint that source of your thermal troubles is graphics
chipset or northbridge. On some systems they would have their own fan.
I am assuming that you have LCD turned off when lid is closed, though.

-- 
Alexandre "Sunny" Kovalenko