What a disaster...

Decided to repaste my xps 14 today. One of the round capped screw under the battery won't come out due to worn cap, so I had to lift the bottom plate and top cover open to work on the repaste.

Well, it somehow worked, assembled everything up and started up windows. Everything seems fine, temperature seems lower, opened up NBR trying to post how well things went, opps, keyboard not working. Probably didn't connect the wire well I thought.

Then I looked at the temperature, hmmm, that seem to have raised a bit. Opened a movie, temperature kept raising, when it was over 70, I knew something must be wrong, checked the fan, not running..turns out I forgot to connect the fan wire.

Oh well, just gonna reconnect it and repaste if need, I thought.

Opened up everything, turns out I have to remove the fan to get the wire over to the adapter, okay, fine, I'll do that. But...one of the screw magically refused to come out, again. Tried for another 20 minutes, no luck. So again, I had to leave it there and just lift the thing open to get the wire to the other side, and of course that broke the smooth thermal connection, and I can't do anything about it.

Reassembled everything up, things went smooth, except I used a wrong screw on another spot under the battery. It was too late for I to realize, already heard a crack sound. Turned it over, opened the lid, the once so beautiful touch key bar is now popped up next to the power button.

Started up windows, temperature seems to be a few degrees higher than before, though everything else are fine.

What a disaster, I doubt I will ever want to open up another laptop by myself again...

 

Thats why its best to mark where screws go, scotch tape is an old tech trick.

take the screw out try and push it back in.
Did you crack the heat sink?

 

The screw didn't get stuck, but it was too long and went over to the touch key bar, popped it out a bit. It's all good except the look got busted ;<

Heat sink is all fine.

Weird thing is, I just loaded it with a HD video playing, and another video on youtube, and opened up WoW, temperature actually stopped at 60-65. Before it would be over 70. But ideal temperature is around 50s now, few degrees higher than before.

Gonna see how it goes tomorrow, if the temperature does stay lower than before, then I have no complain.

 

what brand and how much paste did you use? Sounds like you either used to much or not enough.

 

Was removing the so call dust screen and guess what, got the wrong screws in at the exact same location as you. Except for me there are 2 screws!
Tried to forced it down but unsuccessful.
Now have 2 small bumps at the touch control.

 

Just a word of advice to those looking to do this. For the top cover, I noticed one longer screw than the rest. Look next to the screw holes, and if it just has a letter (either "B" or "K," I don't remember which for the top panel), then it is the short screws, the long screw should have something like "B M2.5 x 8", where 8 indicates the 8mm thread.

 

Arctic silver 5. I applied quite abit of it using spread method. Just played WoW for 2hours and the temperature never went over 65, before would be slightly over 70. But ideal temperature is still few degrees higher than before, weird.

That sucks ;<

 

For most thermal compound (including as5) its found that the half pea is the best. My bet is that you have way to much on there. Too much thermal paste acts like a insulator and will increase heat.

 

Opened it up again, this time all screws removed, repasted with less AS5, gonna see how it turns out.

Is it normal that the paste is still wet and sticky after 2 days? I was expecting it would have been hardened after 2 days.

 

The paste should not harden... that would be terrible. You want a wet, slippery interface. This is good for thermal conductivity.

 

I see, reason why I thought it would is the original dell paste were all dry and hardened. Guess they just used ones with really poor quality.

 

Most pastes will harden and become dry over time, but ya, the stuff that Dell uses is probably crap I haven't done a repaste on my SXPS 16 yet, but I've done it before many times on desktops that I've had with Arctic Silver 5.

 

RacingGun is right, thats why a lot of people repast there GPUs once temps start going up. Check your vents first to make sure they are not clogged.

When thermal paste turns into thermal pottery its time to repaste

 

As long as you don't separate them, hardened or not shouldn't matter (depending on the paste). I would usually think that the conductive material is solid and the liquid is just for ease of use. Now if you pull it off and its hard you definitely need to repaste.

 

Thanks for the tips. Temperature seem to be normal now, ideal or loaded. I will give it a few days to see how it goes.

 

The purpose of thermal paste is to allow as much thermal transfer possible all while preventing electrical conductivity. That's the reason there is a specific amount of metal in the paste, and why less is usually better. AS5 is a decent paste and I would use it if I had to, but there are better pastes out there. Switching from AS5 to OCZ Freeze lowered my cpu core temps 10c while running LinX. This is on an i7 920 D0 oc'd to 4GHz/core using a MegaNehalem heatsink attached to two 120mm 110cfm fans in push/pull config.

 

I had as5 in my hp business laptop for over 2 years. I went to change the paste and it was still goopy. I took my old gaming desktop's amd CPU off and it was concreted on there.... Its been 7 years sense I last changed it though lol.

On desktops hard thermal paste doesn't seem to effect temps much,if at all, but in a laptop I have noticed a difference.

Thermal paste does need to cure before it is at its peak.