Vostro 1400 -- New Heatsink Needed?

NOTE: I should have said microprocessing cooling unit, not heatsink!

My Dell Vostro 1400 laptop has been running hotter with age (it's two years old). About 5 minutes after startup the core temp hits 50-60C, the fan kicks in, the core goes down to 30C, the fan kicks off. This cycle occurs about every 5 minutes or so. I've cleaned the fan area thoroughly and am using i8kfanGUI. I'm wondering if replacing the microprocessing cooling unit will help keep the core temp down. They're pretty cheap, about £15 on eBay. Here's what I'm looking at:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180461071492&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

What do you guys think? Will a new microprocessing cooling unit make a significant difference in keeping down my core temp?

Thanks in advance for your exceedingly sage advice!

 

Heat sinks don't go bad. Maybe you need to reapply thermal compound.

 

Agree, to a point.

Your heatsink fan (and system fan if it has a separate one) may also be clogged with dust. If you've not checked that pop open your system and take a look.

And, as millermagic said, reapplicatin of thermal compound may go a long way, as long as other cooling components are working. The old thermal PAD on your HSF was crappy to start with and gets worse with age. Scrape that junk off there and apply some Artic Silver or like compound. That alone made a decent difference on my former M1330 CPU temps.

 

^
all the above.

My 2 years old Vostro 1400 with T5270 (1.4GHz) reached > 80C
Opened it up, dust everywhere.. cleaned it, changed the paste (using Tuniq TX-2) and undervolt..
now with a T9300 (2.5GHz) I'm running idle @25-27C and on load at no more than 50C

 

Thanks guys, great advice. I've bought a tube of Arctic Silver 5 and will give it a try.

 

Whatever you do, don't spend too much money if you have discrete graphics. My Vostro 1400 is thoroughly dead at this point due to nvidia graphics failure, and a lot of others are reporting similar issues.

 

Not thoroughly dead, try to bake it and hopefully it will stay alive for long time.

 

My 1400 has a fan separate from the heatsink, but I've seen fans with attached heatsinks, apparently for 1400s with Nividia. They're not expensive -- would it be worth getting one? Would it make a SIGNIFICANT amount of difference in cooling the laptop?

 

I think undervolt will be more effective than changing the fan
I'm also not sure if you can use that fan model.
Do you set fan setting in i8kfanGUI ?
maybe you should change the setting so it runs slow instead of stop and kicking often.