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    Toshiba X500 - fixing shutdowns/overheating

    Discussion in 'Toshiba' started by Ss604, May 9, 2016.

  1. Ss604

    Ss604 Newbie

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    OK... got an old one here... if you checked out the X500 owners lounge, you would have noticed a posting I made a few years back that got me taking apart this beast and dusting it out.

    Well, turns out I didn't do a good enough job !

    So fast forward - 2yrs later... I decide to take on a heftier project with this beast to get a few more years out of it before I replace it.

    Using coretemps temp monitoring, the unit was averaging well into the 90s ( degrees C) at high load. high load could be youtube or world of warcraft. and you could feel the seering volcanic heat from above the keyboard area.

    Sooo... the other day, my sister abandoned her L300 laptop to me because the typical Toshiba power connector gets so loose it breaks off and gets pushed into the laptop so you couldn't plug in your ac cord. I took it apart and crazy glued the connector back to the frame and voila - fixed.

    The above fix got me motivated to attack the X500 again and so it began... this time, the plan was complete disassembly with airing it again AND redo the thermal paste on the CPU.

    So off I went... youtube provided pretty decent instructions on complete disassembly although I'm a pretty tech savvy guy already.

    Got the guts off and removed the heatsink off the CPU. dabbed some Arctic Silver paste and put it all back together. Temps dropped significantly...BUT... the moment I loaded the NVidia driver in win10, the system shuts down completely! ARRGHHH!!!!

    So... off I go and disassemble it again...this time, get to the GPU and re-applied some fresh thermal paste onto the GPU...and reassembled.

    Rebooted..and BAM, no more shutdowns at high load. according to CORETEMPS app, during high load the system got up to 76 degrees C. maxed. loaded World of Warcraft and ran it for 30mins, no issues at all.

    I definitely think I salvaged more life out of this unit now and am glad I took it completely apart as I know a lot more about it than ever in case I needed to go at it again. Although my plan was to keep it for another 2yrs and replace in 2018.

    The unit model is X500- 01400N
    i7 720 - 1.6ghz
    8gigs DDR3
    1 TB - 2 x 500gig 5400rpm
    Nvidia GTS250M

    PIX:

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    Ss604, May 9, 2016
    #1