Can I clean my HP pavilion laptop fan without removing the heatsink?

[drake582]

Hi
My laptop model is HP pavilion g6 1318ax with amd a4 3305m apu with radeon 6480g and a dedicated 7450m radeon GPU.
I have been using my laptop for more than four years and it has never gone for a cleaning service.But lately I have been experiencing problems with the fan and the CPU temps going up.So planning to do a complete cleaning of the fan myself.But I don't want to remove the heatsink and reapply thermal paste.So is there any way that I can remove and clean the fan alone without removing the heatsink?

 

[hang-the-9]

You can clean the fan with a paintbrush and some compressed air without removing it. But in many cases if you have overheating, you need to also replace the thermal paste.

 

[robert600]

Yes - I agree with hang-the-nine - I work on these g6 laptops a lot - replacing the paste is highly recommended and I think you'll find it's not too bad a job - the g6 is quite a straightforward laptop to disassemble.

Here's a further thought - once the heat sink is off - replacing the cpu is a 1 screw job and would take only a minute. You could replace that a4 3305m with a quad core a8 3520m (< $25 new on ebay). It's base frequency is a little lower (1.6 vrs your current 1.9 - both turbo to 2.5) but in my experience, quad-core makes a dramatic difference overall. Seems like a bargain for $25 to me.

Oh ... just for your interest .... despite HP saying max ram is 8 .... it will use 16 just fine.

 

[drake582]

Thanks to both of you for replying to my query.So since I cannot remove both fan and heatsink separately I will have to take it out completely and repaste it.I have ordered cooler master Mastergel pro thermal paste which i chose over arctic 5 and mx4 since both were out of stock on amazon at that time in my country.So hoping that paste will do the job well enough.

In the meanwhile I did read from the HP manual that they use thermal paste for cpu and thermal pad for GPU.Not sure whether that information is for Intel CPU+ AMD combo or is it applicable for both AMD APU+ AMD GPU too?If then I would have to buy thermal pads also for the GPU also which would be really a big hassle.I don't want to completely disassemble the notebook and then wait another two weeks for the thermal pads to arrive.So is there any way to confirm that whether I would need thermal pads or not for the GPU??

 

[hang-the-9]

There are some areas where thermal pads are used and there is a larger gap between the heatsink and the chip it's on. Only way to know is to know details about your model, so either look for someone that took it apart online or contact support. Thermal pad is pretty cheap, you can order one and just have it in-case you need it.