Noob re-pasting thermal compound questions

Hello everybody! So my can of air and artic silver arrived today. I want to re-paste the R1 but was just asking how to go about it. I've searched YouTube for a tear down but it didn't specifically show the heat sink removal. It's not the pasting I'm worried about as I have prior experience of that it's how to go about it. Does everything need to be stripped in order to get to motherboard and heatsink or is there a quicker way to do this.

Any info is greatly appreciated, Tom.

 

I have not done this yet, don't want to tear my baby R3 apart but might be taking the R1 apart soon for a checkup and repaste as i dunno how the previous owners have treated it. I have seen the dis-assembly video a few times and watched a Dell tech do a mobo replacement so i'm just running this off memory...

Fairly certain the motherboard has to be taken out of the chassis to be repasted. I had to do this for my G73 which has a surprisingly small motherboard for having such a huge chassis (which btw is all plastics and air bubbles).

Should be just some spring-mounted screws possibly with numbers indicating the order in which to do (or in reverse for undo) them. I am not 100% but i think you MAY need some thermal pads, as i'm not sure if they are adhered on just one or both sides and will thus tear upon removal of the heatsink and require replacing. Just runt hrough the video again and have a look out for them or try and find one specifically for repasting (or try Dell tech documentation for heatsink removal?).

 

The CPU/GPU Core is pretty deep. So you have to teardown pretty much everything

 

Let me tell you this, it's going to be very messy. The hardest part was cleaning the crap that was on there originally. I used sooo many coffee filters.

 

Coffee filters?! I've always just used an old rags and some meths.

 

I thought as much. Can anyone clarify whether there's pad or simply remove heatsink and old compound and apply new compound.