SOLVED How hot is "too hot"?

[Nibiru2012]

You probably loosened some dust bunnies deep inside that didn't make their way out with the canned air. Plus moving and jostling the notebook will loosen more bunnies too.

Take the notebook apart as far as possible that you're comfortable with and go to blasting it again. Be sure to try and loosen from one direction as much as possible and then the other.

Sometimes the notebook makers use a paraffin based TIM which will crack and dry out with age. It would be advisable to reapply some new TIM, especially if the notebook is over 4-5 years old.

Use one of the newer TIMs such as Tuniq 3 or a nanotherm paste. Arctic Silver is still good, it just take a few days and shutdown cycles to get it to break-in properly. If the CPU heatsink is stuck to the CPU then that's a real good sign the thermal compound is old and needs replacing. Be gentle and nudge that heatsink off, then take the heatsink and wash it thoroughly and then let it dry. Use a good solvent to remove all traces of old compound on both the CPU and heatsink. Believe it or not but B-12 Chemtool works great for this purpose.

 

[catilley1092]

Thanks, I'll do the cleaning job again. First, I'll remove the keyboard, and find a different angle to blow through. At the time, I didn't remove either the HDD or DVD-ROM, I'll remove them. I do recall that prior to the previous cleaning, my drive was heating also (around 120-130C). So mabye there's some in the crevices that I didn't get.

I hope that I recognized the heat sink right, it was a long, curved part with fins (like a radiator) near the fan. If there was supposed to be thermal paste on it, there was none, only dust. I'll take a more detailed look at the parts list next time around.

The reason for the cleaning, and reapplying paste if needed, is that I need it to last mabye another year. If it dies before October, no problem, my money will be refunded. That will be $400 extra towards my new one. The way things are looking, my next notebook is going to cost around $800, mabye $900, plus tax & possible shipping, if I don't buy locally. But the plan is to buy local, where I can actually feel & see what I'm getting.

There are a few Toshiba's in this range, they have 6GB RAM, expandable to 8GB, my final decision will be whether to go with a solid dual core or a low end quad. Some of those quads aren't what I expected (1.6, 1.7, 1.8GHz). That's barely more than what I have. The better dual cores have much higher GHz. This will be a tough decision on my part, and I'll get some advice as the time draws near.

For the meantime, I just need to keep what I have running, so that I can continue to contribute to the folding community, as well as have a backup to fall back on in the unlikely event that my desktop goes south on me. I may have to purchase an inexpensive HDD for it soon, Computer Geeks has a couple of 40GB ones (all that I need at this point) for $35.

Thanks for all of the advice. I'll work on that cleaning, as soon as this folding job completes. And take a look at that paste.

Cat

 

[Nibiru2012]

I got at Samsung laptop drive last week at Newegg for $39.99 and it is a 250 GB 7200 RPM with a 16 MB cache! They also had it for 10% off for email subscribers so with shipping I spent about $42.00 total.

Why spend $35 for a 40 GB 5400 RPM notebook laptop drive when you can get one similar to what I got. I upgraded my portable external hard drive unit I use to take to clients and friends to do computer upgrades, repair and installs.

With a 7200 RPM drive you'll definitely notice an increase in speed and responsiveness too. Besides it's a Samsung HDD and they rock! A Western Digital Black Scorpio with the same specs is $49.99

 

[catilley1092]

If I'm not mistaken, my notebook only supports IDE drives. I looked on Newegg once for one, all they had were 5400 RPM ones.

Plus, there's the issue of SATA drivers for Win 2K/XP. My notebook is just one model from the SATA ones. The Latitude D620 offered SATA, plus Intel Core Duo, mine is the D610 with the Pentium M CPU (2.13GHz).

That D620 probably would have been a decent folder.

Cat