24 | July | 2009 | Laptop Repairs

In the summer months you might have noticed your laptop fan making more noise than usual. This is because dust and lint gets wedged between the fan and the heat sink and the airflow becomes limited. This can cause the laptops components to overheat and the fan spins faster to compensate for bad airflow.

This overheating will reduce the performance of the laptop and it’s battery charge and could also reduce the laptops lifespan. I recommend cleaning out the heatsink every 6 months or more on all makes and models and desktop computers not just laptops.

: Dust builds up in the heatsink and fan assembly.

: Step 1 Remove the VGA nuts.

: Step 2 – Unscrew the heatsink.

: Step 3 – Unplug the fan.

: Step 4 – Remove the HSF.

: Step 5 – Remove the black tape.

: Step 6a – Unscrew the top of the fan.

: Step 6b – Lift the top off.

: Step 7 – Vacuum out the dust.

: Step 8 – Place a small amout of thermal compound on CPU on rebuild.

Acer Travelmate Laptop Removing Dust from Heatsink HSF

This is a Toshiba 17″ Laptop with a smashed LCD screen. On this model I had to remove some screws from the base and three screws from inside the battery bay before the bezel could be released.

I’ve changed the way I display the photo’s. Click to enlarge them they will open in Lightbox. If you hover over the middle right or left side you get an arrow which will goto the next step (photo).