You won't believe what I found inside my laptop...

Sandwiched between the CPU fan and heatsink grid was a thick sheet of something... Initially thought it was an air filter. Turned out to be compacted dust.

Re-applied thermal paste to the CPU. My laptop now runs a few degrees cooler...


When I first saw pics like this, I thought they had been doctored to over-exaggerate the effects. Nah, it's exactly what I saw inside my laptop today:

 

Hi, eatup.

I can easily believe it.

I found almost exactly the same thing in my old Inspiron lappie last year! She's 14 yrs old, and, although I've been using these things for over 30-odd years, I've only got into the 'techie' side of things ( and what makes them tick) for the last 2 or 3.

I did a CPU upgrade, from the old 2.2 GHz 'NetBurst' Celeron it came with, to a 2.6 GHz 'proper' P4. The one advantage of these older laptops, of course, is that, being far deeper & bulkier, they also have lots more room to work in when it does come to 'tear-down' time.

Also plenty more space for crap to build-up in.....as well. Turned out the heat exchanger was clogged blind with a solid wadge of the same stuff you've got in your picture..! That and the fact that these particular laptops were saddled with Dell's famously lousy 'thermal solution', and it was no wonder she was doing a fair approximation of a hot-air paint stripper from the exhaust vent.....

These Inspirons do need a regular 'spring-clean' every six months or so, to prevent them from going into 'melt-down' mode. Those P4s will run as hot as hell without an excuse to do so. Blocking the meagre air-flow, as provided by the existing set-up, is a recipe for disaster..!


Mike.