Lately my Dell Latitude D820 has been running very hot and loud. I tried to help it cool with various desk and lap positions, but things went from bad to worse. Google search confirmed my suspicion that dust has killed it’s cooling capabilities.
I could take it to repairs, but that’s no fun. And since times at Vidmar family are very stressful, what better way to take mind off troubles that some“screwdriver fun!?
First, I ran I8kfan GUI, a free tool to monitor temperature and change fan speed of Dell laptops. My CPU was hot, and speeding or slowing down didn’t do nothing to the temperature. Another proof, that dust is was in the way.
Getting to the fan is not easy, as one has to:
- unscrew every screw you find on the bottom and back of the laptop,
- remove battery,
- remove keyboard,
- remove hinge,
- remove display.
Luckily Dell provides instructions, so it’s not that hard as it seems. Instructions also tell that you should also remove hard drive, wireless card and RAM, but it’s not true.
After opening my laptop, this is what I found.
This is how it will look after you take your laptop apart (glasses optional).
After cleaning laptop is running 15-20°C cooler than before.
One more piece of advice before doing what I just did – there are three kinds of screws. Black, fat and short for hard drive, silver for display and black and longer for everything else. Keep that in mind when putting machine back together.