Treat a repeated shutdown as urgent
A Switch that switches itself off is not being dramatic — it has already reached a temperature it does not want to run at, and it is protecting itself. Cooling faults are inexpensive to fix and expensive to ignore, because the heat keeps working on the battery and the board while you live with it.
- Heat is one of the main ways a battery loses its capacity permanently
- A fan that has stopped is one of the cheapest repairs on this site
- We will tell you when it is dust rather than a part — that is the smaller bill
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2 business days
Typical turnaround
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Free assessment
Including the temperature log
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3-month warranty
Parts and labour
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C$70–C$140
Depending on the cause
What the heat is costing you
Fitted prices including the part and the labour. The first row is what most consoles actually need.
| Fault | Fitted price |
|---|---|
| Cleaning and fresh thermal paste Vents, heatsink and renewed paste — often all it needs | C$70 |
| Fan replacement The fan has stopped, grinds, or runs at full speed constantly | C$95 |
| Board-level thermal fault Fan and paste are both sound, and it still overheats | C$140 |
If the fan and the paste are both fine we will say so, and the answer is usually cheaper than the third row. There is no reason to replace a fan that is working in order to reach a higher price.
How we diagnose it
Overheating has three causes that feel identical from the outside, and the measurements — not the description — decide which one you have.
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Step 1:Check the airflow
The vents are inspected and the fan watched. A console whose fan never speeds up and whose vents stay cold is not cooling, whatever the temperature display suggests.
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Step 2:Log the temperatures
The console is run under load and its temperatures and fan speeds recorded over time. That turns "it gets hot" into a number we can compare against a healthy console.
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Step 3:Clean, paste or replace
Dust and dried paste are cleaned and renewed; a fan that has failed is replaced. Only if both are sound do we look at the board, because that is the expensive row.
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Step 4:Run it hot again
The console is run under load a second time, long enough for a fault that only appears after twenty minutes to show itself. A short test proves very little here.
Hot in the dock is not always a fault
Docked play runs the console at higher clock speeds in a smaller space, so it is genuinely warmer and the fan is genuinely louder. Before booking anything, check the dock is not pushed against a wall and that the intake at the back is clear. If the fan is calm and the vents are clean, ventilation may be the whole answer.
- Docked consoles run hotter by design, not by fault
- Dust in the dock intake ends up inside the console
- A quiet fan with cold vents is a real fault; a loud fan with hot air is often just a hard workout
Overheating questions
My fan is loud, but the console does not feel hot. Is that a problem?
A fan at full speed is the console asking for more cooling than it is getting, which is the first stage of the same fault. It is worth checking now, while the fix is a clean and a paste rather than a shutdown.
Can I sort this out myself with compressed air?
You can clear the outside of the vents and it is worth doing. The problem is that the dust which matters is packed into the heatsink inside the console, where air from outside cannot reach it. If blowing through the grille has not helped, it needs opening.
Will a clean fix it permanently?
No, because the cooling path draws dust in by design. A clean lasts as long as it takes for the dust to build up again, which depends on where the console is used. Fresh thermal paste lasts years, so a console that is being opened anyway gets both.
Is overheating why my battery drains so quickly?
Partly. Heat permanently reduces a battery, and a hot console also runs its fan harder, which uses more of the charge. If the battery has already lost capacity then replacing it is a separate job, and a cheaper one than this.
It only overheats in the dock. Does that need repairing?
Often not. Check the intake is clear and the dock is not boxed in against a wall first — that solves more of these than any part does. If the vents are clean and the fan is quiet, bring it in and the temperature log will settle it.
Can overheating damage the console for good?
Repeatedly, yes. Sustained heat is how a Switch loses a battery and, in the worst cases, how a board fails. That is why we treat repeated shutdowns as worth fixing rather than something to live with.
Describe what it does and when it does it
Does it shut down after ten minutes or after an hour? Is the fan loud from the moment it wakes up? Those details tell us a lot before the console has even been opened, and the assessment is free.
No Fix, No Fee. Walk in at our Oakville workshop during opening hours, or send it to us.