Dell Inspiron 1764 dusting

chuffedas

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I had need of retrieving my old back up laptop from the loft as I had internet issues on my PC.

It got put away in its box, but it was retired due to its constant wanting to overheat.
I never had the time to look into it.

So, today, I thought it was time to sort it out.
I found a good guide grew a pair and set about it.
http://www.insidemylaptop.com/disassemble-dell-inspiron-1764-laptop/

Was pretty straight forward actually.
I also replaced the thermal paste while i was in there.

Man, the fan exhaust was blocked pretty solidly.
The fan has been turned over there, so the blockage on the fan matches with the clearer side of the vent.
It is running WAY happier now you will be surprised to know.



It is pretty handy having a backup laptop.
I guess the next decision is whether to keep this one or sell it and buy something that cools better or is easier to clean.
Might have to do some research.
 
Use compressed air (not too many psi) to blow the dust out. I would take the whole cooler and fan off to blow the dust out the easiest. Most laptops suffer from the same issue after a could of years.
You could buy a passively cooled laptop with no fan for dust to build up on, although these laptops tend to be very low powered and weak hardware wise.
 

chuffedas

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Yes, I took the whole thing out.
Gave it a thorough clean with air and alcohol.

Removed the 'heatsink' and replaced the thermal paste.
Man they had done a rubbish job and shoved half a bucket of stuff in there.
I was surprised it was working.
The paste was all overflowed and touching other metal parts on the cpu.
I enjoyed doing it though.
Been on my list for ages.


Didn't know such a thing as passively cooled existed.
Interesting.
I shall have a good old ponder now I have a bit of time to consider it.
Something a bit more robust would be a nice thing.
 
A good strategy with CPUs like the above, is to clean it off thoroughly, and mask-off the non-die areas with Kapton tape, trimming tape overage as necessary, and making certain that you have good adhesion in the area immediately adjacent to the die wafers.

That way, if you use a tad too much thermal paste--especially the conductive formulations--you'll do no damage.
 
Usually, a modern paste is not capacitive so too much will do no harm unless you dip your entire motherboard in the stuff. Quality paste (not the stuff OEMs use) such as artic silver is more greasy and stays goey so it is easy to remove years after it is applied.
Yes passively cooled laptops do exist, however, they are mostly using Atoms, Celerons, Pentiums, or core m series CPUs. Here is a rather upscale passively cooled laptop using a Skylake Core M7 CPU with 2 cores and 4 threads. It turbos to like 3.6ghz so it is only usefull for web browsing and youtube playback. https://www.ultrabookreview.com/14114-acer-spin-7-review/
I have a passively cooled netbook from 2017 with a 2c2t Celeron N3060 @1.6-2.3ghz. It is Incredibly slow running Windows 10, but also efficient with a mere 6-watt TDP meaning it uses a small aluminum plate sitting overtop the soldered CPU+IGPU, LpDDR3 ram, and EMMC storage. There are no fans and mainly your lap acts as a heat sync. It only gets to about 70-75c when "Gaming."
 
Usually, a modern paste is not capacitive so too much will do no harm unless you dip your entire motherboard in the stuff. Quality paste (not the stuff OEMs use) such as artic silver is more greasy and stays goey so it is easy to remove years after it is applied.
I must be going by old info....IIRC, Arctic Silver was mildly conductive at one time, if not still?

I don't think I have any to poke my meter prods into to test that hypothesis with respect to the stuff that's currently sold....unless it's in the garage, but I'm not going in there today.
o_O

[EDIT]
OK...there was a tube at the back of the desk drawer.....

Arctic Silver 5 is not electrically conductive.
Capacitive effects are unknown, but are likely inconsequential.
Same is true for standard silicone heatsink compound, which probably performs just as well as Artic Silver, and is a heck of a lot cheaper by the cc.
 
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You ARE going off of old info.
https://www.quietpc.com/as5
Artics site says this: "Not Electrically Conductive. Arctic Silver 5 was formulated to conduct heat, not electricity." However, It does say to not put the paste all over electrical pins or traces, like the ones on your CPUs bottom. I would assume this is because it has some conductivity, but as I said, unless you put a ton of it where it doesn't belong, you won't have issues.
Looking back at a forum post from 2002, yes artic silver 2 and 3 were conductive, but most modern pastes including AC5 are not concidered electrically conductive.
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/arctic-silver-3-conductive.950130/
 
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chuffedas

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Wow. Interesting info.
It never crossed my mind that it could be heat but not electrically conductive.
That makes for somewhat more leeway doesn't it?
I have AS5.
 
Yeah it does but, still, you really don't want greasy gunk getting everywhere either. Mind you, I wasn't talking about gooping-up silicon dies and letting everything squish out everywhere, LOL. Just a bit of a barrier to keep the small amount that might seep out off the ceramic or PC board substrate and caps.

It just makes cleaning up easier and, since I now know that AS5 isn't conductive--like the old stuff was--it's probably less of an action item for me.
 
I still feel pretty pleased with myself. :)
I always thought laptops were trickier than they are.

Depends on the model. Lenovo T models are generally solid and easy to work on. The new Dell systems, I had to take it apart to bare metal to replace the keyboard. Many are not too hard to take apart, but like cars, they all vary in how easy it is to get the parts you need.
 

chuffedas

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Good to hear.
Kind of what I was thinking.
Nice to hear my thinking backed up.
I was going to sell this and get something better and more upgradeable and more popular. (So more parts available)