Jtdylktuy

I'm having problems with my fan which went from being annoyingly loud to sometimes completely stopping and failing to dissipate the heat form my laptop.

I'm in the process of replacing it, however, I was wondering if I could continue using my laptop normally.

I've been monitoring the CPU temperatures, and when there is some load on the CPU, it goes up to 98 celsius degrees.

Considering I have my system (Windows, which can sometimes have its antimalware service or other processes put randomly a lot of load on the CPU) and a VM running alongside, I know that my CPU may be under a lot of charge for long period of times.

My question is, if I continue using my laptop as is, waiting for the replacement fan, what's the worst that I can expect: only spontaneous emergency shutdowns over a certain temperature (which could be annoying but not that much of a big deal, and has not happened yet), or actually overheating and breaking one of my components?

Will it work? Sure. Is it "safe"? Maybe

Modern CPUs, especially mobile ones, feature thermal throttling in order to protect them from extreme temperatures. What this means is that if a fan fails while the system is in operation then the CPU will limit itself in order to prevent damage caused by overheating. Your system performance can be severely hampered by this throttling.

While this can ensure that a system is likely to be protected from a failure you shouldn't count on it as a permanent saviour. Electronic components don't like being at their maximum limits for extended periods. Extreme hot/cold cycles can cause mechanical stress and lead to components breaking prematurely.

The fan heatsink may be connected to the CPU, but by keeping the CPU cool it also allows other components (such as power converters and interface chips) to shed heat easier.

I would only use such a system lightly and with caution. It will not be working at peak performance and will be at risk of further damage due to high temperatures around sensitive components.

No, this is not safe. Stop using your computer right now.

Maybe, just maybe, the CPU will protect itself from immediate death by thermal throttling or emergency shutdown.

However, the fan in a laptop does not only cool the CPU, it also cools other components in the system. Anything in your system may break including irreparable damages to main board, memory, or your disk and thus permanent loss of data. Even a emergency thermal shutdown can easily corrupt your data or file system.

If you value your hardware or data, you should not use the system until it is properly cooled again.

You're taking a risk, but I don't think it's as clear cut as other people are saying.

I have a 12yo Core 1 Duo laptop that I've been torturing with distributed computing just to see how long it'll last (from a perf/watt standpoint it's well past when it should've been retired). This basically consists of running at 100% load 24/7/365.

During that time I've killed its fan several times. And generally only discovered that I had done so after it began spontaneously shutting down due to overheating and after it happened several times I took a closer look and discovered the fan wasn't running (and IIRC the CPU was running well below normal speed). Since it wasn't shutting down immediately after the restarts prior to my discovering the bad fan's it has been running at max CPU temperature for a number of cumulative days/weeks.

You might not have as much luck as I have; and would be taking a risk but you've got a solid chance of coming out of it with nothing more than a few unexpected crashes.

If you want to do this, I'd recommend running a CPU temperature monitor to make sure your temps aren't hitting limits; and if you can't afford to replace the system if your luck does fail you probably should take the advice of the other answers and not tempt fate.

If you do this, I'd also suggest seeing if you can find a faster delivering source for the fan. In my experience, the cheapest Ebay/Amazon fan sellers have always been several week shipping direct from China vendors; but for a few extra dollars I could always find a seller in the US/UK that could get something to me in a fraction of the time.

No, at least not in the way that you describe.

You can in principle, and temporarily continue using your laptop "reasonably safe" because the overwhelming majority of things one does at a computer leaves it at 3-5% or less CPU usage. Which, luckily, means that the CPU isn't getting all that hot and the cooler fan is barely needed.

So, if you are aware that you need to replace the fan (and you will do it eventually, soon-ish) but you still need to write a few letters, or take notes for uni, or whatever, and you just don't have another computer... you will most probably be fine. The risk that bad things will happen is quite low.

However, running malware scans and virtual machines are not things that play in the "3-5% CPU" ballpark. Running such heavy tasks with a failing/failed cooler fan is outright insane. In the best case, you will greatly reduce the lifetime of your processor. In the worst case it will fail catastrophically.

As others have said, I would avoid using it to prevent long-term damage.

However, there are also external coolers that clip onto the side of your laptop that can be used to pull air through your laptop vents in case of an under-performing internal cooling system. I have one on my laptop, and it works well to keep the cpu from shutting down from overheating. (note that my cooling issue is due to poor heat transfer from the CPU to its heat sink, but I haven't gotten around to tearing it apart and putting new thermal grease on the joint).

If you set the cooling policy to passive you should be able to use it but it will not be able to run at full performance and may be too hot to touch

If the computer is on but the system fan is not spinning, you should visit your computer's BIOS settings to make sure the fan is set to turn. If that fails, you may have a defective fan. The last sign of problems is the sound or the sound codes. These will alert you to various faults at the board level, including memory and video failures. You should consult the service manual of your computer to match the sound codes with the error message.