Laptop Overheats Running Ubuntu 14.04

Solution 1:

I'm also using a Toshiba Satellite model and had laptop heating issues recently. I suspected it was due to CPU running at very high speeds. I installed the indicator-cpufreq that allows you to set your CPU profile and almost always kept it in powersave mode (It gives you an indicator in the top ubuntu panel):

sudo apt-get install indicator-cpufreq

Since then, not only was my heating problem solved, but the fan noise also disappeared as a bonus!

Solution 2:

In addition to using ìndicator-cpufreq to switch to a lower performance CPU profile, you can try your luck with thermald, which is a daemon that prevents machines from overheating and was introduced in 14.04. Install by:

sudo apt-get install thermald

After install you either have to start the daemon manually or just reboot. You can find more information on thermald for instance here or there.

I'm using thermald successfully on an i5 Core ThinkPad, which apparently did not use all available fans by default, and was randomly shutting down without thermald due to overheating.

Solution 3:

You can also use tlp, but it is little advanced

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linrunner/tlp
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tlp tlp-rdw

ThinkPads require an additional:

sudo apt-get install tp-smapi-dkms acpi-call-dkms

what you can do with tlp ?

Processor and Frequency Scaling(you can set whether your laptop runs in powersaver or performance or ondemand mode. also you can allow whether your processor uses turbo boost or not)
and much more, visit the official page (link above)