My laptop has had a constant uptime of about 250 days without cleaning over this couple of year period, but now it seems to be taking it's toll and has turned off a few times randomly now after being under load for a while. Time to clean it a bit (After the 6th time of trying to install Gentoo and it just turning off randomly through compiling I decided to give up, heh).
no disassembly, but am i correct in assuming you opened the case up
No, I didn't open anything up. I just blew air both ways across the vent openings. A lot of air, a lot of pressure. It worked just fine, and I could see the junk comming out the vent holes.
You should use a paper clip or some other object to hold the fan still. You do NOT want to spin the fan with the air compressor.
For my two cents, this thread made me wary so I dissasembled my Dell Inspiron 1100 (there's a pretty good guide <a href="http://www.danandsherree.com/2005/04/02/our_dell_inspiron_11.php">here</a>) and popped out the heatsink to find...nothing. It was completely clean. I'm not complaining, but still...weird.
Well, I bit the bullet and risked popping off my CPU from the heatsink.
It turns out that the silicone thermal paste baked on and dry out from the initial overheating issues, "gluing" the CPU to the heatsink.
In the first picture, it shows the excess thermal paste that oozed out. I chipped it off and the second picture shows the chipped off thermal paste. If i crumble a piece, it turns into a powder. That's how dry the thermal paste got .
Next, I popped the CPU and heatsink into the freezer for a good 15 minutes. With a good sized slotted screwdriver and a folded piece of paper on the CPU's PCB, I lightly pried against the heatsink and the CPU popped off.
The third and forth picture just shows the residual thermal paste residue.
Yup, I was having problems on my Dell Inspiron 600m, and I encountered the same problem: Gobs of dust caked into the small heatsink. I cracked the HS off of the CPU and applied Arctic Silver and threw the HS in the dishwasher. Now it runs even cooler than factory new, and even when folding, if the ambient temp in the room is good the fan doesn't even come on! I have achieved passive cooling on a folding laptop! :woowoo:
i have a 600m as well and im fed up with the fan being CONSTANTLY ON. could you give me some quick procedures on how to clean the heatsink in the 600m specifically? thank!
Comments
not really
No, I didn't open anything up. I just blew air both ways across the vent openings. A lot of air, a lot of pressure. It worked just fine, and I could see the junk comming out the vent holes.
You should use a paper clip or some other object to hold the fan still. You do NOT want to spin the fan with the air compressor.
It turns out that the silicone thermal paste baked on and dry out from the initial overheating issues, "gluing" the CPU to the heatsink.
In the first picture, it shows the excess thermal paste that oozed out. I chipped it off and the second picture shows the chipped off thermal paste. If i crumble a piece, it turns into a powder. That's how dry the thermal paste got
Next, I popped the CPU and heatsink into the freezer for a good 15 minutes. With a good sized slotted screwdriver and a folded piece of paper on the CPU's PCB, I lightly pried against the heatsink and the CPU popped off.
The third and forth picture just shows the residual thermal paste residue.