My Thermal Pasting Story

tl;dr at the bottom if you're not interested in the story and just want to see the results.

Hello Forumgoers,

I just thought I might share a little story on my first thermal pasting ever on my M14x and the storm of almost heartattacks while taking it apart that happened along the way

I was toying with the idea of redoing my thermal pasting for quiet awhile after reading topics after topics about how, "Dell does !#$@ jobs on thermal pasting." My main concern was how I would be able to get there to attempt the thermal pasting on my own. So I did research, read the horror storys, watched disassembly guides, and held onto my philips screwdriver while I scrolled through the forums trying to build up the nerve to take a crack at completely disassembling my computer.

My laptop was running fairly hot, approximatly 97-99c while playing games like SC2 or Skyrim. I was getting extremely worried with these numbers and how it would effect the life of my computer, I didn't want to be the guy on the forums going on about I have a $1500 paperweight.

Finally, one day I said, "$#@! it!" Broke out my thermal pasting, all the necessary tools, my guitar picks, Q-tips and was on my way to redoing the thermal pasting.

It was a fairly long process, with some snags along the way. For one, I broke the lock for my Optic Drive, that was my first problem and oh em gee was I freaking out when that happened. After pacing back and forth around the house trying to think of ways to call dell and come up with an excuse I decided to continue with the disassembly because I was pretty much in the hole as it was.

The screws were all on way tight, like someone put a drill to them instead of baby gripping for tightening them. It was extremely tough to get someone of the wires out of the sockets, they felt as if they were going to break from the connectors instead of just coming out nicely. It was extremely stressful going through with this for the first time, but I kept pushing on.

Finally, I got to the motherboard itself, and there sat the fan, heatsink, and underneath, CPU and GPU. I was so happy to reach this point, all I could think to myself was, "Finally, I'm halfway done with this!" It wasn't the end of the problems by a longshot. When attempting to unscrew the fan from the motherboard, 2 of the screws were on so tight that I would have stripped them if I continued. Thankfully the ONLY SCREW that was attached to the heatsink was able to come out. At that time I didn't realize I could just detach the heatsink from the fan via peeling the adhesive tape connecting the two so I was disheartened till this bit of light was revealed.

As I took off the heatsink, I sow the GPU and CPU, the 2 pieces that made this little 14 inch computer the powerhouse that it is, WAS CAKED IN WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE WAS TOOTHPASTE. The stuff was everywhere, gunks of it were on the plastic, it came off in chunks almost none of it was actually on the dice at all! I was disgusted, the only thing I thought to myself was, "Even if I do this thermal pasting a little wrong, it couldn't possibly be worse then what Dell did." So I applied the techniques I read up on for applying thermal paste to the CPU and GPU. If I had only took a picture of what it looked like to show you guys I would have.

Pretty much relieved at this point that I actually made it to where I needed to be, I was ready to put the laptop back together again. Putting the mother back into the frame was a pain, the spacer wouldn't stay where it needed to be so I had to take it out and put it back in 5 times over till it stayed.

At this point we're skipping ahead to where I'm back at the optic drive, pretty much the bane of me at this point. I looked at it then looked at the little broken plastic piece, then looked back at it. I thought to myself, " How could I make this work..." Then it hit me, "Well, only one of these legs are broken maybe it'll still work." Low and behold it held the Optic cable, I WAS SO HAPPY , I still had a optic drive! Happily putting the computer back together I set it down on the table and relish in my hard work.

As I was turning on the computer to see if all was said and done it did something very funny. It turned on, then turned off, then turned back on and beeped...7....times... $#@!ING FREAKING OUT, I ran to my desktop and googled " WHAT DOES 7 BEEPS MEAN!?" The results were not what I wanted to see. The sign was that your CPU/Motherboard was faulty and won't run.

I was traumatized, all that hard work, my first time, my $1500 laptop, all gone. I slumped over and walked to my laptop, I just stared at it for 10 mins, disgusted at my failure. Then, something shot through my mind, don't know if it was denial or something, but I told myself, "Maybe, I was just imagining it and it never really did that." So I hit the power button again.



HOLY $#@! IT TURNED ON! I was never so happy in my life, all my adrenaline was rushing, I was never so happy to see the Windows logo to pop up ever in my life. I danced and ran around the house, took a swig of whiskey and screamed and laughed. That week I went to church for the first time in over a decade. It was only the right thing to do seeing how things went right then in there. When I went to church, it was boring. So I broke out my laptop and played a little Skyrim. ^^

Because I could.




tl;dr
Before doing the thermal pasting I was getting ~97c for my CPU and ~80c for my GPU

After applying Arctic Silver 5 my CPU was getting ~85c and ~65c while playing Skyrim and SC2

It is now 2 weeks later and after the breaking period I have not seen a change in temps.

I'd recommend doing a thermal pasting if you're having heat troubles, my thermal pasting was caked with toothpaste and really sloppily done.

Thanks for reading ^^ Hope you all enjoy your M14x's I'm happy with mine!

-Owner of M14x since September 2011-

 

Moral of the story : Get a service manual before open up your laptops.

Have Fun

 

I had it up on my desktop when I was doing it. ^^

 

hmmm... OK, here is my take 2 : don't trust the service manual
or take 3 : Reading comprehensions is required for opening laptops .

Just j/k ~~

 

"took a swig of whiskey and screamed and laughed. That week I went to church for the first time in over a decade."


AWESOME DUDE. +rep

 

I had no problem opening it up at all, just some of the minor things in the manual they don't talk about, like screws being to tight, or plugs being difficult to take out.

I had the screw layout mapped out on paper so I didn't miss anything at all. It wasn't difficult overall, just some bumps along the way that made it the problem that it was.

I was mainly using the guide in this section of the forums that didn't exactly mention the option of just peeling the adhesive tape.