Why do Laptops slowdown over the years ?

[insider]

I have an 8 year old Sony Vaio, my friends also have Acer, Lenovo, MSI laptops, etc.
The thing I have noticed is that their responsiveness decreases almost by 50% once they are 5+ years old.
Reinstalling OS doesn't help at all may at most make it 5-10% faster.
I have noticed the same with old desktops too but is more common with laptops.
So what's the root cause, heat ( due to the cooling fan clogged by dust / other factors) , dust, or do processors age ?

[Klaim]

Maybe the cooling system works less well and there is a mechanism to slow down the processor to avoid heat?

[Zonder]

Yes they do the more they are used they lose performance. Especially with high clock rate systems. The artical is talking about SoC designs but it does apply to all circuits.

http://electronicdesign.com/products/ci ... oc-designs

Also dust build up in laptops is bad as it has little room for heat dissipation and the cpu will get clocked down due to the heat.

[Kojack]

The thermal compound on heatsinks (cpu, gpu, etc) could have deteriorated too, making the cooling much less effective.

[Zonder]

The thermal compound on heatsinks (cpu, gpu, etc) could have deteriorated too, making the cooling much less effective.

Very good point

[iblues1976]

Watch this talk from Intel Scientist.
It can tell you a bit more about cpu and the reason that cpu frequency gets affected over time. I was at this talk, so when I sow this thread I remember the talk...

http://netcast.cs.fiu.edu/Mediasite/Pla ... 056dcb0f00

here is the site of the presenter
http://mondirapant.com

[EricB]

I still use Pentium 3's for web browsing, and my main Dev box is pushing 8 years old. So I know a bit about old hardware.

In the case of a laptop, I'd say your spiny discs are aging. Laptops are known to use slower RPM drives to save power. As the electric motors wear, they'll spin the platters slower.

Go buy a ssd, slap it in, and it'll be a totally new machine.



As for frequency loss. In most cases, you shouldn't notice this unless your pushing the machine to the limits. I mean seriously, outside of benchmark scores, it's almost impossible to tell the difference between 2ghz and 1.9ghz...

Heating issues can also be an issue. Specially on laptops as most of them will step voltage based on heat to save power.