repasting a laptop

D

Dome

2[H]4U
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Mar 16, 2002
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so i have a 3-4 year old asus g73 republic of gamers(whichever model bestbuy carried)

its getting hot as shit lately. i read that it might be a thermal pasting wearing out. a local computer parts store said they charge $55 to dust out and repaste the computer. i know thermal paste only costs a little and if it were a desktop i'd do it myself. i've never opened up a laptop and i would hate to ruin it, even if it is old.

do you guys think $55 is a waste of money? is it easy to mess up a laptop? i was originally going to buy a cooling pad but i heard that's useless
 
It depends on the laptop. Most business model laptops are pretty easy to get the HSF out while most consumer laptops need to be mostly disassembled. If your laptop is the latter, it's worth it. They're most likely going to lose money just on the labor. Most techs will take about 45 minutes to disassemble and reassemble a laptop.

What you might want to try and do is Google the disassembly instructions for that model. Not only do the OEMs use crap thermal grease, it does harden and lose it's ability to transfer heat over time. However, laptops tend to build up dust between the fan and the heat sink as well.
 
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I will warn you that in order to get into the laptop, you'll have to remove the keyboard which is affixed with double-sided tape. You'll have to carefully ease that stuff apart or you risk rendering the very easy-to-bend-and-wreck keyboard into crumpled electronics.

I would only take a G73 apart if you have ample experience working on laptops. I do it for a living, but getting into that model is a pain in the ass. I've done it twice and I still hope I never have to do it again.

There are a couple of good teardown videos on YouTube if you need help.
 
thanks for the advice, i'll take it to the shop tomorrow to get it cleaned out and redone.
 
Make sure you power it on in front of them to prove it works before they get into it... with a manager present.

Laptops suck for this type of maintenance.
 
I've tried to pry off the keyboard in the past and I was nervous I'd break it. I'll drop it off to the store tomorrow. Thanks
 
$55 is a good deal considering if they break it, I assume they'll replace it.
 
If you've never repasted or replaced a CPU in a laptop before, then pay the $55 for a professional to do it. Whether it helps your problem or not is a different issue.

Before you do that though, do something simple like remove the keyboard and see if the CPU fan is full of dirt and dust. Then, check your CPU utlization to make sure there is no program running constantly that is causing it to stay hot. Also, consider dropping the power setting to 'power saving' mode so the CPU idles down when you're not using it. Finally, if you're using Vista, 7 or 8, switch to Windows Basic theme. That will keep the GPU from always running at max speed/power since the default theme is GPU accelerated.
 
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