Need help with laptop refurbishment

Omaeka · 20 Jan 2013 at 02:37

My little Toshiba Satellite has been with me for 3 and a half years now, and I think the little fella is on his deathbed. The laptop locks up quite often and regularly reaches over 100C in both cores, and becomes very physically hot. I was wondering whether it would be possible to get it refurbed somewhere? I'm clueless on laptops, what would it involve them doing to it and how much would it cost?

CPU - Intel Celeron T1600 1.6ghz duo core
GPU - 124MB Intel Express Family Chipset
RAM - 2GB DDR2
OS - Vista x32

Thanks!

d_brennen · 20 Jan 2013 at 02:41

Most likely needs the heatsink cleaned out. You can do this yourself with a little patience, a screw driver or two and a soft paint brush

Omaeka · 20 Jan 2013 at 02:46

What kind of heatsink gel would be best? I assume you'd advise replacing it?

If the CPU has been hitting 100C+ for over a year on a regular basis, is permanent CPU damage likely?

Thanks!

d_brennen · 20 Jan 2013 at 02:49

Nope, CPUs are hardy buggers. Everything around the CPU will be slowly damaged by the heat though

What I mean by heatsink clean is that the fins of the sink are probably clogged with dust and fluff, hence the temps. You'd need to reapply paste to the CPU and possibly the GPU if it makes contact with the heatsink as well if you need to take the whole assembly out. Some laptops need to be fully stripped down, some you can get at the fan by the main service hatch (where the RAM/HDD etc is)

e:

Like that

What model?

Omaeka · 20 Jan 2013 at 03:02

It's a Toshiba Satellite, that's all I know :/ is there a way of finding out? I think the box is long gone. It's never had anything done to it physically other than general use in around 4 years, so it's probably clogged to hell.

Omaeka · 20 Jan 2013 at 03:07

Aye up, looked on the bottom and found this:

Toshiba Satellite TE L300 - 22X SYSTEM UNIT

d_brennen · 20 Jan 2013 at 03:11

They have a sticker underneath

Going to bed now but maybe youtube has a disassembly vid. From my experience a lot of the Satellite/Pro models require you to take the battery out, remove a couple of screws under that, take the top trim of the keyboard off, take two screws out of the top of the keyboard, take KB off, remove 5 or 6 screws from under the KB, flip the laptop over and remove the 10 or so screws underneath, flip it back over and carefully unclip the ZIF connectors for the touch pad and unhook the speaker cables. Then finally remove the palmrest. From there you should see the fan and heatsink in all their glory. If you're lucky you can simply unscrew the fan and dust out the fins. If you're really unlucky you might need to take the motherboard out and take the heatsink off of the CPU to get in there

Phew

e: just saw your post above

I've taken far too many laptops apart

e2: you don't need to take the lid/screen off for this purpose

Omaeka · 20 Jan 2013 at 03:14

I'll look into it, but if it is as you say I doubt I'll be able to do that, It took me 5 hours and I had several strokes just trying to swap motherboards on my PC. that was a lot simpler than that sounds. :/

Just watched that :| holy hell, why is the fan so hard to access? Should just have a thing you take off from the bottom with enough room to clean. What out of 10 would a can of compressed air achieve if a full dismantle + physical clean is a 10/10?

Thanks!

d_brennen · 20 Jan 2013 at 08:08

Well, quite possibly a -10. You see if you dislodge a big clump of dust (which is especially bad if you are a smoker or have pets) it could become entangled with the fan unit itself and stop it spinning

It's worth a go first off if you want to avoid a strip. Blow the **** through the vent on the side and hoover through the air vent on the bottom.

Monitor the temps after the operation and make sure the fan is free spinning. If it becomes trapped for too long it can be damaged (they are cheap though). A reasonable temp for those chips on idle is ~40c, 65-75c load

beermonster · 20 Jan 2013 at 11:57

Just take the keyboard off and blow it with air, it will come out the gap on top rather than through the narrow vents underneath, should make a world of difference. I wouldnt bother repasting it if your not confident in a full strip down.

Omaeka · 20 Jan 2013 at 19:03

d_brennen said:
Well, quite possibly a -10. You see if you dislodge a big clump of dust (which is especially bad if you are a smoker or have pets) it could become entangled with the fan unit itself and stop it spinning It's worth a go first off if you want to avoid a strip. Blow the **** through the vent on the side and hoover through the air vent on the bottom.

Monitor the temps after the operation and make sure the fan is free spinning. If it becomes trapped for too long it can be damaged (they are cheap though). A reasonable temp for those chips on idle is ~40c, 65-75c load

You're probably gonna shoot me here but I've started propping my laptop up on 2 PC game boxes as this morning I realised that the laptop has intake fans on the bottom :/. The last 4 years I've been putting it flat down and ever since propping it up I do get 40-50C idle and 60-80C under load, monitored with GameBooster. I still think that a clean out is in order though, so I'm gonna grab some compressed air and see how it goes.

beermonster said:
Just take the keyboard off and blow it with air, it will come out the gap on top rather than through the narrow vents underneath, should make a world of difference. I wouldnt bother repasting it if your not confident in a full strip down.

Blow it with air, as in compressed air or just actually blowing air on it?

Definitely not gonna try a full strip down as I have 0 confidence that i'll be able to reassemble.

Cheers for the help dewdz.