WHOA! check this out!

Here is the the heatsink on my 9100 with the fan off look at how much crap was built up, after cleaning it the preshott hasn't gotten over 68C so rule of thumb keep those fans clean, to my fellow 9100 owners heres a link on how to remove the fans. http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/insxps/sm/fan.htm#1000550

 

Oh gosh, that is really bad! Glad you took care of that, your lappy will really appreciate it!

 

I've seen worse but thats still pretty bad, you should reapply some good thermal compound while your at it

AS5 works wonders

 

GUESS WHAT I JUST BOUGHT A 3.2GHZ NORTHWOOD to replace my prescott should run much cooler and has a more effecient 20 stage pipeline vs preshotts 31, I do plan to put artic sliver on it though, my only question would be whats the best way to apply it on a laptop I looked at the as5 instructions but not sure how when you apply and smuch the heatsink down on it how you would turn the heatsink as the instructions say, oh well. the highest I het so far was 68C with the preshott so iam right at the TDP limit. after 70C it will throttle, on a side note my old 9400 with a 1.83 duo got up to 77C on the CPU.

 

I vacuum my fan/cooling vent every 6 month. I clean the heatsink and reapply the thermal paste every two years.

I had a HP with a Pentium 4. And If I do not vacuum it every 6 month, it'll overheat and give me random shutdowns lol.

The cooling system on my XPS m1210 is much better so that i never have to vacuum my machine, but still, I just feel uncomfortable when there's cotton like dust in my laptop, so I still do it ^_^

 

The way I apply it, whether it be on a CPU, GPU, SB, or NB, is to apply it on the chip only and not the heatsink. I usually apply it with a piece of plastic like a credit card or something. And you want to apply as thin and smooth of a coat as you can. Remember, AS5 is only filling in any voids, air pockets, or impurities between the chip/heatsink interface.

Oh wait, look at the guide in my sig, I forgot I wrote it. This was the first time I did it, and I put AS5 on the heatsinks and chips, but it still worked great. It should give you an idea of what you should be doing.