Overheating laptop, should I try a lighweight distro - which one?

Honestly the best thing you can do is to remove and reapply thermal paste to the CPU / GPU. Go for something with a high thermal conductivity. There are plenty of videos online on reapplying thermal paste and that will definitely cool off your laptop when done correctly as it increases heat transfer to your heat sinks and fans.

The operating system in use shouldn't be a factor. Consider opening your laptop to perform a thorough cleaning, and also consider replacing the thermal paste as well. If you're not comfortable doing this yourself, taking it to a repair shop is a viable option. Investing in a cooling stand for the laptop would also be beneficial....

Have you tried cleaning the vents/fans first?

Those specs should be fine. Have you tried cleaning it and replacing the thermal paste?

I have almost the same laptop (PS63 8M, without any nVidia dGPU).

One of the issues I had to solve was the touchpad spamming interrupts after waking up from sleep. It would keep one core at 100% indefinitely, keeping CPU frequency (and temps) quite high and burning through the battery.

Here's the fix: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1865745#p1865745

This behavior seems fixed on modern kernels since I've installed Fedora recently and didn't have to do this workaround, but you can still check if this still applies to you.

You might also check if you can disable the dGPU in the BIOS (can't check since I don't have one), and/or play with power profiles either through Gnome or tlp (lower power profiles will make your laptop very sluggish though).

Maybe check if both your fans are running. I had to replace one of mine that was starting to fail a year ago.

Other than that, I've never had any overheating issues with this laptop.

Have you tried running themald?

I sounds like you have to apply new cooling paste. This might be a pain to do on a laptop but certainly worth it. Another distro probably won't do the trick, whether it's minimal or not.

What you need to do is clean the dust off of your fans and ventilation filters (check guides or figure it as you go, but make sure to disconnect the battery and the fans from the mobo as soon as you open it). Then, repaste it with good thermal paste or some . I have liquid metal (thermal grizzly condoctonaut) on both of my laptops, and one of them which had overheated since day one, doesn't anymore.

A laptop of that age should not have any trouble with the kinds of things you're doing, so it's probably more of a hardware issue than a software one, unless some rogue process is eating up your CPU. You probably don't need a lightweight distro (unless you prefer to keep things extra-light) and if it's a hardware issue installing one may not help. So, as others have said here, first check the running processes for anything odd, then repaste it and blow out the dust.

The issue isn't with Linux directly so any distro you use will do the same.

It could be a hardware issue that the machine is not dissipating heat.

Or it could be that you need some kind of driver/controller software for fan. It sounds like the system isn't properly controlling the fan. It leaves it low when it doesn't defect usage but when it does, instead of increasing the fan a little bit at a time, it just goes full tilt to be safe. It probably cannot read the temperature sensors and so has no idea whether your need cooling or not.

I don't know the answer but do some googling around system temperature reading on that model and see if there is a module you need to install.

Lots of cleaning advice, but let me add this bit: If you crack it open and use a can of air on it, unplug the CPU fan first. Super easy if you've gone that far.

How do you mean that its overheating? My GF says the same about her laptop, but its just cooling itself off. Does yours freeze or start slowing down a lot? Are you monitoring temps and see that they're beyond your CPU acceptable range (usually 90C, IIRC)?

In addition to the basic hardware care (checking for dust, reapplying thermal compound if necessary) you can run powertop to check what is keeping your CPU awake when it shouldn't and take steps to purge unneeded services or resource-heavy applications.

Keep an eye on thermals with s-tui. You could down-throttle the processor with tlp. At some point you'll probably have to deal with the thermal-transfer pad being bad or whatever, that is never a fun job on a laptop.

Depending on your skill level, it might be worth opening it and checking the internals. Cooling system works, airflow not obstructed, etc. Probably also worth checking the thermal compound of the processor. But that's not something a beginner would be happy to try. Maybe take it to a repair cafe, if there's one near you?

I have a Gigabyte Clevo thingy, so take what I say with a grain of salt. My laptop has a i5 11 gen intel cup, and it doesn’t have the cooling for my cpu. I don’t know if this is a bug in Linux, or a fault in the pc (probably both). So when I play games it spikes to 80-90C then throttles.

So what I did was look into software that lets me control the CPU frequency, which led me to Slimbook Battery. This software is amazing and lets me tune the power usage of my cpu to manage the thermals.

I believe Open Build has a package of Slimbook Battery for Opensuse Tumbleweed, but I’ve had no luck running it. On my Manjaro install it works excellently.

WDYM by "overheat"?

Cant you cramp up the fancourve? Best is in the BIOS as it mostly works best. Also have a look at using liquid metal for cooling, costs nearly nothing. Or simply new good heatpaste, costs like 8€

In my experience with them, MSI laptops tend to run quite hot in general, your OS probably isn't going to fix it. You can try one of those laptop cooling plates, basically a mesh platform with fans, ensuring cool air is always available to the laptop intakes, but it isn't exactly a perfect solution.

Really it just needs more cooling capacity - they seem to cut razor close to the amount needed in their designs so when eventually cooling becomes less efficient either through fans getting tired/clogged or thermal paste/pads breaking down, it will not keep up.

The fan in my Toshiba laptop once died... Make sure that isn't your problem and replace it if it is