Serious Overheating Problems - Page 3

Heh, yes, the stock pads are not fun. The ones AMD used for a while (and intel used sometimes, too) that were like bubble gum were really bad. They're essentially impossible to remove without resorting to real nasty chemicals, like oh, say... goof off. I don't even want to think about what goof off would do to the PCB on an athlon (or P4, or anything else it came in contact with).

I never actually had the displeasure of dealing with any like that, although I've heard pretty much what you just said. A bubble gum consistency just paints a really ugly picture in my head lol

Solvents? I always used a razor blade. Yes, it took a bit of time and effort (and only one cut finger to show for it), but no worries as to damaging the CPU/PCB...

No worries with high percentage isopropyl alcohol either. The thing is that if you only use a razor blade you won't get into the crevaces of the heatsink and a lot of the TIM will be missed. The TIM was/is engineered to get down into those crevaces and fill up any spaces where air might be and close those gaps and make a level-as-possible surface. A razor would be good for starting the removal of a stock TIM, but the job should be finished appropriately, IMHO.

And that's why I lap. It also does an excellent job of getting into those crevices...

If anyone has had their laptop for a while now, and they are experiencing any overheating issues, I definitely recommend opening up the heatsink and cleaning it out. I've had my 5660 for over a year now, and I'm usually pretty careful about where I place it, but when I opened that sucker up (the heatsink), I found that more than 90% of the ventilation was blocked by dust!!! So maybe thats why my laptop was idling at 61 ~ 63 degrees (well, I guess I could mention something about the fake silver thermal compound from CompUSA, but I'm too embarassed to get into that). The cover of the heatsink on the 5660 is held on by 3 small screws and 4 small latches. The only screwdriver that I found to be small enough to work was one for repairing eyeglasses, which I also used to pop off the cover from the latches. Then used a vaccum and some alcohol soaked q-tips to remove as much dust as possible (remeber to not let the fans spin when vacuuming!). After putting everything back together, and replacing CompUSA's garbage with Arctic Silver 5, my laptop now idles between 40 ~ 47 degress. Soooooooooo much better. I actually ended up getting scared when I was in bed later that night when the fans turned off. I thought my laptop had died until the faint clicking of the hard drive reassured me it was still alive and kicking. I can't remember a time when the fans have ever been off except within the first 10 minutes or so from bootup.

I finally got around to cleaning out the dust in my computer and wow, I can't believe what a difference it made. I didn't use any canned air, rubbing alcohol or arctic silver, just dry q-tips to take out the dust in the heatsink, which there was a lot of.

To anyone who's experiencing recent overheating problems and has had their laptop for a while, it's probably the dust in the heatsink. I've had my 5670 for almost a year and it had a thick layer of dust and junk in there which I just peeled off. My laptops runs so cool now.

A simple solution

I'm a Vj, so I have to constantly run video on my 5620 for hours at a time. My laptop used to get so hot that the SmartCard door warped.

This is what I've done, and it took me less than $20 and only 5 minutes

Buy a Holomaxx laptop cooling pad.
Toss the USB cable that comes with it - Get a Universal AC adapter and plug it into the power slot. Crank it up to 9V (or more).

Enjoy.

The extra voltage from the AC adapter causes the cooling pad's fans to run at much higher RPM than they would have run if you had let it be powered by USB. I have gone from crashing every 15 minutes to 6 and 7 hours shows of high-res video with no problems.

Feeding a 5v fan 9v is a real good way to kill the fan, too. It may handle it for a while, but it will wear out sooner than it would at 5v.

The 5620 shouldn't be getting that hot under any circumstances. Have you cleaned the thing out?

After having a look-see at the Clevo manual, it appears that I may be able to clean the heatsink to some extent by simply unscrewing four or so screws and going at it with q-tip, vaccum, canned air, etc. Is this the case?
edit: I have a 5680.

HI guys,

I openned up and cleaned the heat sink, but now, i can't powered up my comp! Can someone help? What did i do wrong? Did i short circus something? Thanks in advance.