Ashamed of myself.

I thought it was time to change all my thermal paste on my gpu's and cpu today so I tore down my baby and was SHOCKED at the amount of dust/hair/nastiness that was on the backside of the heat sink fins. I am really good about spraying it out with air once every week or two so needless to say the fact that I had that much crap on the fins is very surprising. So the moral of the story is break down your beast every so often to clean the fins.

 

I think everybody does it,no?
If not than i say it's a must once in a while.

 

Wow! Thanks for the note. I will make it a new habit. I'm still a learner when it comes to the repasting stuff too, so I'll put these tasks on the periodic list.

 

I got brave enought to tear down my baby and clean (barely) the card, i got lot of dust too:

http://i51.tinypic.com/24e75i0.jpg

The worse part in the tear down, is the touch panels, when the machine is new, is really hard to take this off, so, that keep me away from it, but this time i did it, this is the pannel:

http://i53.tinypic.com/35bicz9.jpg

But, there is something which i hate, afte finish the work, when i tried to put all in the place the right side of the panel dont fit like the left side, let me show you a couple of pictures:

http://i56.tinypic.com/2zzrfcz.jpg

also, as you know, to take off the pannel (on the second picture), you need to unscrew two screws, one of them, the one of the right side, for some reason, is not screwing at all.

 

I warn you, Do not open the system frequently. Use a Blower or Vaccum Cleaner to do so. If you still did the frequent opening thing, then you will one day find your laptop locked from the inside. Forcing the Techs to break open.

(Happened with me)

 

What do you mean lol.
I open mine every 2 weeks or so, I'm a maniac when it comes to dust.
For the touchstrip just reseat it, it's a little tricky the first couple of times.

 

It must have been the little gremlins that battened down the hatches. I hate them dang gremlins. Always into mischief. Next time, suck 'em out with the vacuum cleaner in overdrive and then you can get the case open without breaking anything.

 

No vacuums. They build static which is bad for electronics. Just stick with compressed air.

 

Yep the dust as extremely annoying.
I had an overheating problem due to the blocked airflow.

I called Dell because i did not want to void the warranty or anything. They told me that cleaning with compressed air can be dangerous (fans spinning etc). The vacuum cleaner was not powerful enough to suck this stuff out of the fins.

And so they sent me tech to rip the machine apart and clean it! Top customer service! While doing that the tech replaced my 4870x2 with 5870x2. So it was a nice surprise for me.

Gonna stick to alienware for sure. but i wish the fins were more accessible so that i can actually clean it properly myself....

 

It's a laptop and it's pretty fun taking it appart,just needs patiance.
Vacum and air can is a lazy idea, sorry but the vacum will never suck everything thru those small holes and with a air can you just send the dust a little further into the machine that eventually will be sent back on the blades.

 

I had a similar issue. Mine were clogged to so I started to clean more efficiently with compressed air and the month later when I took it apart to clean My vents had a negligible amount of dust in them. If you do it right and often enough an air can should be enough. But you should at least dissemble occasionally to check.

 

Do you have to follow all those steps in the video or is there a "shortcut" to the fans ?

I made an attempt to open mine some time ago but I remember I stumbled on some hex screws and had no screwdriver for those

 

Never saw a hex screw in my R1.....to get to the video cards it is pretty easy:

1. Take out battery
2. Take off bottom cover
3. Remove 2 screws at the back of the bottom of the notebook
4. Remove the touchstrip
5. Remove keyboard
6. Remove the stupid black metal plates above GPUs

You now have access to the GPUs and if you remove them (easy) access to the fans as well. I can do all of the above in about 2 minutes now.....I have moved GPUs around alot haha

 

I think he's talking about the torx screws on the back but you don't need to remove those to take it apart unless you want to anodise the aluminium to another colour

 

Ya that had occurred to me.

 

Well I took the plunge and opened mine after about a year, the heatsinks were so clogged that I'm amazed anything was getting out. After the operation, the temps went down about 10 (!!) degrees.

However, I'm still puzzled by one fact: in idle the temp difference between the 2 cards is about 4-5 degrees, but in games (WOW) the difference goes to 7-11C (left side hotter).

I don't know much about SLI but it seems like a lot to me. Is this normal or does someone have a theory ?

I'm running Verde 267.76 with PCIE2 off.

 

It is pretty normal to see a difference. I would not fret over it