Chatter Of The Squirrel

Thermal Goop

June 21, 2008 on 12:24 pm | In Tech | No Comments

Dug up an old discarded notebook.

It was state of the art in its time. But now many years obsolete. It’s still running Windows Millenium, and I can’t reinstall anything on it cos it doesn’t have a CDROM drive.

Tried using PCMCIA & USB CDROMs, but the notebook won’t boot from them either.

It hasn’t been used in a while, so I opened it up. Managed to find a service manual of the notebook, so I managed to get it open without serious mishap. Only losing a screw, broke one claw, and cracked one fragile connector. Nothing critical.

Main thing that needed serviced was the thermal goop.

There’s a crusty yellow cake all around the processor.

Out comes the IPA, and scrubbing ensues. There’s a thick cake on the motherboard controller too, so thick that I had to shave it off like I was whittling wood.

The processor, I’ve got some Arctic Silver 3, super synthetic oil & 70% silver particles goop to interface it properly with the heatsink.

The motherboard controller, is a little harder. There’s a 1mm gap between the controller and the heatsink. Need some kind of thermal pad thick enough to interface them.

A quick check in my storeroom, and I dug up an old CD-ROM drive. As I remember, (from hours spent taking things apart for random reasons), there are these rubber thingies that interface the hot integrated circuits with the metal case of the CDROM to sink away heat.

And I got just enough to do the job.

Managed to put the notebook back together, and it still runs.

Not sure if there’s a discernable performance difference. But there’s great satisfaction in taking care of your hardware.

I’m thinking of ordering a new battery for the notebook to give it a new lease of life.

The specs is very modest. But the fact that it’s still chugging along after so many years leaves me in awe of its engineering. I have a stack of dead Dells that won’t boot up anymore, and some with floppy hinges that’s looking like shit already.

But this dear little thing, it’s worthy. I won’t mind spending maybe RM200 to give it new life.

I’ve already cracked open this one’s dying battery. 8 lithium cells, that I’m not confident that I can find in stock in Malaysia. And eBay is turning up some reasonable leads that doesn’t cost all that much.

Further updates to come…

Looking forward to installing Linux on this via network.