Cleaning Lenovo 3000 C100 laptop
I have this laptop – Lenovo 3000 C100 – and I love this machine. I’ve had it for several years, and with zero trouble. I’ve upgraded the harddrive, added RAM to keep up with the times. Once, my bag’s strap broke and the laptop plunged a few feet into concrete floor. It survived the impact – the case chipped a little in a corner, but everything else was fine. A great machine.
Recently it developed some age-related issues. The fan developed a tendency to whir loudly on started, and it has started overheating. In fact, it has gone into thermal shutdown on several occasions.
I stuck the external sensor of a digital thermometer on the laptop’s exhaust port to see how bad it’s gotten. It was idling at 47C. Running a flash video sent it to a 63C fever. And that’s at the exhaust port – the CPU must have been even hotter.
Clearly, I needed to check on the fan and the filter. What follows are instructions to get to the fan and the filter. Use these at your own peril.
Unplug and remove the battery before proceeding.
I couldn’t find a cleaning howto, but I did find a video on replacing the CPU. I figured I just needed to go part of the way, and I’d get to the bits I needed.
The video shows where to lift the top cover. It’s the piece of plastic that runs across the top of the keyboard, right below the screen, and has the power buttons and indicator lights in it. It simply lifts off with some clicking.
The wire clip with red handle holds down the right side of the keyboard. Release this clip.
The left side of the keyboard is held down by a screw that goes into the fan housing. Remove this screw. The keyboard will now slide up toward the screen. It is attached to the board by a cable. You shouldn’t need to disconnect it.
The fan housing is held down by two screws. The one on the top left can be difficult to reach, especially when inserting it back. Keep that in mind.
After you remove these two screws, the fan simply comes out, exposing the internal side of the heatsink. It is still attached to the board by its power cables. The space between the heatsink and the fan housing is where the dirt tends to accumulate. In my case, almost half of the heatsink was plugged up.
I used a hand-held vacuum cleaner to suck up the dust in the compartment. Then I put everything back together. I didn’t end up with any extra bits, so I probably did this right.
Upon reassembly, the laptop idled at about 37C. Running a flash video ran it up to about 43C (as before, temperatures are for the exhaust air). The fan also sounds a lot better.
The procedure took less than ten minutes, and that includes me being careful and taking pictures.
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Tags: heatsink cleaning, laptop cleaning, lenovo 3000 c100, overheating
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