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Your laptop is running hot? Maybe it’s time to replace thermal compound on the CPU. This guide will explain how you can replace thermal compound in a HP Compaq nw8240 laptop. This guide should work for many other HP laptops too.
For those wishing to make their laptop perform cooler overall, adding a high-grade thermal compound to the interface between the chip and the heat sink is a great suggestion. I use Arctic Silver 5 for my hardware, since it’s the proven best thermal paste on the market today. It seems a bit expensive for the amount you get, but it’s well worth it.
If you are having hard time removing the keyboard and accessing the processor, check out service and maintenance guide for your HP laptop (available for download on HP website). In most cases you’ll find disassembly instructions in there.
The results are quite clear – the Arctic Silver 5 helped quite a bit. It lowered the CPU temperature from 151F to 138F (66C to 59C), lowered the Local Temp from 131F to 126F (55C to 52C). The hard drive now stays cooler because there’s less heat getting trapped in the case. I’d say this is a great result for something as seemingly ineffectual as thermal paste.
You can find Arctic Silver 5 here.
By the way, if your laptop overheats and shuts down without any reason, check the heatsink. Most likely it’s clogged with dust and lint. You can clean the heatsink with compressed air.
September 9th, 2011 at 6:45 am
@ Tom,
Thank you. I fixed that.
September 9th, 2011 at 4:30 am
The link you posted for the guide actually leads to an image instead.
December 7th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Just be careful when you use compressed air…Do NOT use when your laptop is running or is very hot..let it coop down first. Also make sure you dont invert the can and spray…then cold liquid air comes out of the can and can actually mess up other components in the laptop and might even give you a frostbite. One of my fans on my dell laptop stopped working when I accidentally sprayed the liquid on that. But for some reason when I opened the laptop and played around with the fan…it started working.
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:02 am
[...] In addition to instructions for removing and replacing the keyboard, the author explains how you can access some main laptop components such as CMOS battery, RAM modules, Wi-Fi card, processor, heat sink and cooling fan. This could be very handy if you decide to upgrade laptop memory, clean the cooling module or replace thermal paste on the processor. [...]
May 13th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Duncan,
Here’s how you can clean both the heatsink and cooling fan on a Dell Latitude D400.
1. Remove the keyboard as it explained in these instructions. It’s not difficult. After you remove the keyboard, you’ll get access to the fan.
2. Blow off dust from the heatsink and fan using canned air. You can buy a can of compressed air in any local computer store.
May 13th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Tom,
Can you see both fans spinning on startup? Maybe you forgot to plug in one of the fans? Are you using the laptop on a flat service so both air intakes on the bottom are not closed?
May 13th, 2008 at 5:07 am
I have a Dell D400 Latitude laptop which gets very hot and sometimes shuts itself down. What is the best way to deal with this? Is it safe to fiddle around inside the laptop? Will I loose anyting on my hard drive? I think I just have to clean the fan.
May 11th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Is see no mention of applying thermal grease on the vga chip within google. I have completely disassembled and cleaned the fans and heatsink on a Toshiba P35 laptop that is known for overheating. Also, I applied new thermal grease on the cpu.
It ran good for about an hour. The next day it would shut off after it got to the desktop. Any comments on what to do.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
[...] 5. Do not forget to apply thermal compound on the CPU and VGA chip located on the graphics card. Without thermal compound the laptop will overheat. [...]
February 27th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
[...] Removing dust from the cooling module (heat sink and cooling fan) will take care of the overheating problem. Also, replacing old and dried out thermal compound with new thermal compound will be a good idea too. This guide was created for a Sony Vaio PCG-GRT260G laptop. Models affected apparently also include the PCG-FX, PCG-GR, PCG-GRZ, PCG-GRV, PCG-GRX, and PCG-NV series. However, these models may have slightly different layouts than the one outlined in the guide. [...]