Opening the G50Vt-X1 (surgery)

Ok so like 10 days ago I spilled some wine on my laptop keyboard and a few seconds later it shut itself down. Immedietly after that I unplugged it took out its battery and used a hairdrier to dry it. Didnt start back. 3 Days later I had a hunch and guess what it was back and running 90% (keyboard problems sometimes) 2 days more later everything was back to normal. I even kept it open for another 2 days on end and nothing happened.

Problem now is: I'm not sure what that wine will do to the MB as when it evaporated it most likely left a trace and I would like to CLEAN it.

P2: my right-click is now broken (it doesnt make the same noise and you can fill you're not actually pressing anything underneath it...)I heard this part can be easily found in may places.

P3: I would like to change the thermal paste with Arctic Silver 5 on the CPU and GPU ? Or should I go for something else ?

P4: Cleaning the dust out of it


Now, I found the G50 Disassembly Guide, is there no G50Vt guide ?

Where should I pay more attention ?
What should I do ?
What should I not do ?

Tks in advance

 

Since the G50V and G50Vt are exactly the same chassis, there's no need for a Vt specific guide.

Edit: Since you're probably out of warranty, there's no real problem I can see with changing your paste. The only thing is that if you do replace the paste on the GPU, you'll need a copper shim since it uses a thick thermal pad from the factory. The CPU paste can be replaced without that problem. Just don't use too much...

I don't know about the mouse problem, it may have shorted, if you clean it with some alcohol it may come back to life.

If you are going to clean the board, don't do it with anything but distilled water or a distilled water/alcohol mix. Even still, this can get messy fast, if you don't have problems it might be best to leave it be unless there is a ton of residue stuff on there.

Cleaning the dust is pretty easy, just give it a blast with some compressed air from the inside of the case outwards, and you can use a damp q-tip to clean the individual fins of the fan and any other plastic parts. I'd do this before anything else. Good luck!

 

I have no idea where to find a copper shim, and I am unsure how to use it ? Is it used to spread the paste meaning it will not be left INSIDE the lap after I close it ? or is it used as some sort of pressure evening surface ?

PS: 2 days ago my right click revived now it's dead again... think it's the wine

 

The shim acts like a spacer, because the thermal pad is thicker than you could possibly make a generous application of thermal paste, which is a terrible idea in itself anyway.

 

suppose I don't find such a shim isnt there one from the factory ? what would happen if I would just apply paste ?

 

Hm, put another way: if you replace the thermal pad on the GPU, you will have more space than you can fill with thermal paste. That's why everyone who replaced the factory thermal pad (which is thick) would use a shim to fill the gap between the heatsink block and the GPU.

If you apply a huge amount of paste, it will pop out the sides and make a huge mess, even with the thickest of pastes.

Back in the G50 cooling threads (it will take some searching) you will find a few references and links to places that sell shims.

Edit: These are from G51 threads, but AFAIK it should be the same for the G50 (I repasted my G50 but not my G51):

 

Tried searching for something similar in my country but so far nothing has come up, will keep on looking tho. I am planning on using AS5, isnt the heatsink going to squeeze enough so that it would fit tight ? From what you're telling me it will be rather loose meaning it could chip the GPU or something ? It's not really an emergency but I really wanna make sure the lap is going 2 be ok as I wont be changing it any soon

 

You could try to get away with it, but if you're going to bother to go through the effort, the right way to do it is with a small piece of copper as a shim.

Unless you're overclocking or the paste on your CPU needs replacing, there's little reason to apply thermal paste on the GPU, since the thermal pad will last a few years at worst. If you take off the CPU heatsink you'll probably destroy the pad on the GPU and have to replace it in one way or another (you could also get a replacement thermal pad, but I'm not sure of the size).

 

damn you might be right with that, I did replace on 2 acers 2 years ago but I didnt need copper shims or stuff like that... guess I'll skip the repasting for now

Gonna try and open it for the right click button and some cleaning tho.


tks for the advice

 

Opened the lappy, cleaned it all up, things went pretty well, wasn't that much of a mess inside as I expect BUT I did notice some coffee which I dunno who or when spilled it, anyway the coffee didnt reach the MB.

I did not manage fixing the right click button of the pad I still get the same crappy sound I did before. I could use a Bluetooth from a HP I have, are there only certain models that work ? from the pictures I've seen here with Asus BT chips they look pretty much the same and have the same nr of wires

I ditched the cooling paste thingy at least for now as I did not manage to purchas, nor could I find copper shimms.

 

Here's my experience with my overheating G50V-A1 (9800-m GS).

My gpu started to get hotter and hotter over some months and occasionally it would throttle and sometimes my video driver would repeatedly crash. I checked out the temps and I saw it was at 107C while gaming. It idles at 75C. I turned down my quality settings and that helped for a while, until it started reaching these high temps again even with the quality down. Even playing dragonage, after 10 min it would reach these heights and throttle and cause chaos. So I opened up my system.

I found relatively little dust but cleaned what I could off the fan. That didn't help any so I decided to check out the situation of the thermal pads. I found they were completely hard and brittle. I cleaned the pads off the heatsink and the chip die from the CPU and GPU. I applied my own thermal paste (not too much) and did some more testing. My GPU hit 110C after about 30 min of gaming... If anything it got worse!

So I came here and read up about this copper shim. I ordered one from a UK site and got it yesterday. I removed the plastic seals on the sides, cleaned off the paste from the GPU again and applied some more paste on the GPU die. I put the shim on it and then applied more paste on the shim, then put the heatsink back on.

It was looking good for about 20 min of gaming after sandwiching the copper shim between the gpu and the heatsink but then the temperature started creeping up again... I hit 110C again This is still with quality settings on low (world of warcraft x2 windows) and the nvidia driver settings on performance (less quality).

I'm really disappointed with the overheating on this laptop. I'm thinking of ordering a G73 because the anandtech review said it had substantially better cooling.

 

That's not normal at all. Are you sure your fan is working OK, and that your vents aren't clogged?

Even with the shim you must not have good contact. Since the heatpipe is shared between the CPU also make sure that has good contact.

 

Back again unfortunately.
All problems solved expect the touch pad with had a small circuit broken that had to be replaced. It was cheap as I expected but the guy that did that even tho I asked him NOT to check the GPU or CPU (as I was pretty sure the thermal pads would be broken) did it and broke them. Everything was alright for 2 weeks but now the temp is up by like 6 degrees more.

I am thinking of removing the shimms and putting just AS5 instead. Will it work without the shims ? I cant find something like that here in my country so I am pretty much forced to do so, I'm thinking of applying a few times paste then cleaning again so I know when I got the exact ammount of paste before putting it all back together

What do you think ? will it work ?

 

You can try it if you have no other option, but I would recommend replacing the GPU thermal pad instead.

 

I know you would so would i , its a bigger gap that I'm trying to fill just with a fluid but because I can't find something like thermal pads/copper shims.

Mixing the pads with thermal paste would be any better ? (assuming they are not totally torn to pieces)

 

Mixing thermal pads and paste is a really really bad idea.

You can try it without the shims, but keep a finger on the power button for when it overheats. It probably won't fill the gap.

 

well I'm guessing if it's thick (and viscous so to say) enough and I try 1-2 times before to see how much I need to apply to get an even surface thick enough it should be ok I'm guessing it won't "go" anywhere else. Hopefully it will be more than just theory.

 

any other ideas / opinions?

 

help plox ?

 

Just get some thick paste and hope for the best, or find thermal pads. When you put the heatsink on make sure to tighten it down firmly (but not overtighten, or you can damage the board) and align it properly so that it makes full contact. If you still have a gap you need to realign the placement of the heatsink, or get thicker paste, thermal pads, or a shim.