Solved! How to remove this heatpipe? Screws not recognized.

[Sharon_K]

Hi there!

my old beloved Samsung np900x3g is overheating. After doing some reading, I thought it would be a good idea to replace/clean the fans and add new thermal paste. However I cannot remove the heatpipe. Can someone please help me and confirm or disagree? I attached a photo.

1. The thing I am looking at is the heatpipe (black metal in the red area), because it goes to the fans, I would assume the cpu is below it?
2. The gray "stuff" under the metal on the left is the dry thermal paste?
3. The three little circles show the "screws"? Can I remove them? If yes how? I don't recognize them?

Thank you all a lot for your help

Sharon

 

[AlHuneke]

The first thing I would advise is for you to see if you can find a service manual for this machine somewhere on the internet. I've had pretty good luck finding manuals (don't know about Samsung). The service manual should tell you how to remove those parts. It should also tell you to follow good ESD practices. This is important else you may damage the electronics.

Get yourself a can of compressed air used to clean electronics. Brushes and vacuum cleaners are a bad idea (see ESD again).

Does it overheat all the time or just when running certain programs? Have you looked at task manager to see if the CPU is working hard all the time? It's quite possible there is a software issue or a virus (anti-virus doesn't detect everything). Does the fan come on when it gets hot? Does the fan sound "normal"?

 

[Sharon_K]

Hi

thank you for your reply. I took your advise and tried to find a service manual, unfortunately with no success. The laptop does not overheat all the time, with light applications the CPU stays cool. The laptop gets only hot, when the CPU is working above ~70%, so the behavior seems normal to me. However, the CPU gets then extremely hot, close to 100 Degrees Celsius. The aluminum body gets then too hot too touch. Since the fans are old (~8 years) I am planning to replace them, but they seem to work fine. So the only hint I found on the internet is, that the heat transfer from CPU to fans is not working, hence I am trying to replace the thermal paste. It would be too bad, if Samsung did not plan for this

Thank you again,
Sharon

 

[bignastyid]

It looks to me like you are looking on the wrong side, that looks to be the back of the screw, the head is on the other side of the board.

 

[AlHuneke]

Hi

thank you for your reply. I took your advise and tried to find a service manual, unfortunately with no success. The laptop does not overheat all the time, with light applications the CPU stays cool. The laptop gets only hot, when the CPU is working above ~70%, so the behavior seems normal to me. However, the CPU gets then extremely hot, close to 100 Degrees Celsius. The aluminum body gets then too hot too touch. Since the fans are old (~8 years) I am planning to replace them, but they seem to work fine. So the only hint I found on the internet is, that the heat transfer from CPU to fans is not working, hence I am trying to replace the thermal paste. It would be too bad, if Samsung did not plan for this

Thank you again,
Sharon

I think you are on the right track. What is the app that is making the laptop get hot? If it's gaming or something like video editing I can understand. If it's something like Word or simple browsing, I would still suspect an issue with software. I had an issue with browsing taking much CPU that I only fixed with a Windows reinstall.

I couldn't find a service manual either. Not all manufacturers make them available. Make sure you are taking ESD precautions when touching the motherboard.

 

[Sharon_K]

It looks to me like you are looking on the wrong side, that looks to be the back of the screw, the head is on the other side of the board.

Interesting! This idea did not occur to me. Why on earth would someone design this in such a way? If you are right, I would have to disassemble the whole board in order to reach the backside.

@Al: CPU gets only hot with gaming or heavy Multi tasking. Word, Browsing, YouTube etc. are fine.

Thank you all for your support. I really want to safe this baby