Breathing some life into a laptop

[LeetleGreyCells]

The other day, I stole the middling SSD out of my old Dell 1735 to see how the TV/Movies PC would like it. It sings!
So, just waiting on a newer and quicker one to go back in the laptop. This machine takes two drives, so it will have, as previously described, a 120GB C drive, with everything possible offloaded from it, like Downloads, and a 500GB HDD in the 2nd slot. It was entirely usable with the slow (!) SSD, a Crucial M500. It should prove nippier with the new one!

The two laptops I've recently upgraded each had a second HDD bay too. It makes a difference.

I've upgraded our media PC with a 250GB SSD for Windows and apps, and the old 2TB HDD (plus about 5 external ones of varying capacities) for storage (I need a lot of storage). Made a stupid mistake at the start, I didn't format the SSD before installing Windows so on restart the BIOS wouldn't recognise the drive as the boot drive! Made sure to do it second time round though.

With the new motherboard, new SSD and all the other bells and whistles, it's as fast as greased lightning now. Very pleased.

And then it looks like they were doing something with our broadband at the cabinet or exchange... all back on now.

 

[aferris2]

The two laptops I've recently upgraded each had a second HDD bay too. It makes a difference

My laptop only had one HDD bay so had to get one large SSD. Would have been better with two so maybe something to consider in the future.
Laptops can be tricky things to maintain. My last one was almost impossible to get into so couldn't open up enough to clean out the fans and heatsinks. Result was it was clogged up with fluff so just got hotter and hotter.
Been thinking about a media PC for a while now. I've got lots of HDDs sitting around so might start putting something together soon. Just got to think of a way of sneaking parts past the goods-in inspection...

 

[DCBassman]

One possible solution I've used is to wrap your mouth around the fan output grille and give several sharp puffs. If it goes well, the intake port erupts! Then power on for a bit, then repeat as needed until things cool down a bit. It's not ideal, but it can help prevent a catastrophic overheat.

 

[aferris2]

@DCBassman yeah, I guess that might work, assuming that the stuff that was stuck does get out in the end. Is there a neat trick for replacing the heatsink compound that doesn't involve taking the thing apart? I did mine back in January (or somewhere around then) and the stuff that was there was like solid grout. New paste had the temperature down from 85-90C to 50C immediately. Not been changed since I bought it in 2013, so it's not done too badly.

 

[ColinJ]

I bought a laptop tray when they were on sale in the 'Middle of Lidl'. It has a beanbag on the bottom of it so it is easily adjustable to be comfortable on my lap. The tray keeps the heat of the laptop away from my legs, and fluff away from the cooling vents.

 

[DCBassman]

@DCBassman yeah, I guess that might work, assuming that the stuff that was stuck does get out in the end. Is there a neat trick for replacing the heatsink compound that doesn't involve taking the thing apart? I did mine back in January (or somewhere around then) and the stuff that was there was like solid grout. New paste had the temperature down from 85-90C to 50C immediately. Not been changed since I bought it in 2013, so it's not done too badly.

This is why I've come to like old Dell laptops. Off with the bottom plate, and the cpu and heatsink are right there, ready to be defluffed/repasted/upgraded etc.