T420s disassembly and clean
Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2015 2:23 pm
I just successfully disassembled and cleaned my 3 year old T420s. Here are some thoughts and observations that may be useful to someone.
MyT420s has been running burning hot and sluggish lately. It is in daily heavy use. Idle temps around 80C, quickly spiking up to 98C without much loading. I'm guessing the sluggishness comes from the cpu throttling back to avoid getting to the 100C shutdown threshold.
The hardware maintenance manual HMM was indispensable. Just about every part needed to be removed in order to get at both sides of the fan. The whole process took about 1.5 hours. It is important to set aside a quiet time to do this.
Before unplugging the antenna cables from the wifi and wlan daughter cards, take a photo to remember which coloured cable went into which connector. There are 5 coloured cables in mine, with identical connectors. The HMM does not show the colours.
There are a lot of screws to remove. The screws are not identical. I laid out strips of blutack that corresponded to the positions of the screw holes on the case, and methodically stuck each removed screw onto the blutack. This allowed me to see where each screw went, and stopped them rolling off my desk.
Make sure you have enough desk space to lay out each piece as they are removed.
All I needed to remove the screws was a small jeweller's Philips screwdriver. I also found a flat blade screwdriver useful to peel back the sticky tapes, and to work cables out off and back into the cable management tabs. Be careful about accidentally nicking/damaging the insulation of the cables with the screwdriver. I did that and had to put tape around the teeny tiny and fiddly damaged area.
The parts can feel fragile when disassembled. But they are not made of eggshells either. Gentle jiggling was needed to remove and refit the piece containing the speakers and touchpad assembly. Sometimes when a piece refuses to budge it can be due to an undetached cable. Rough sudden yanking is not recommended! A part that doesn't sit flush will need to be gently rocked and jiggled into place. The tolerances are quite tight so the pieces should fit snugly before screws are attached. Don't force anything to fit.
I did not detach the fan assembly from the motherboard. I did check that the heat pipes were firmly attached to the cpu.
Cleaning was done with a can of compressed air, and a slightly damp cloth. When blowing dust off the fan and its surrounds I made sure to hold the blades with a finger to stop the fan spinning. The was quite a lot of dust between the curved blades.
I also used a household vacuum cleaner (with the dusting brush attachment) to clean the less delicate parts like the chassis and keyboard.
After reassembly, I ran the fan on turbo speed for about 15 minutes to clear out any stuck pieces of dust from the fan.
Idle temps are now 45-55C. I call that an improvement! And the machine feels zippier too.
MyT420s has been running burning hot and sluggish lately. It is in daily heavy use. Idle temps around 80C, quickly spiking up to 98C without much loading. I'm guessing the sluggishness comes from the cpu throttling back to avoid getting to the 100C shutdown threshold.
The hardware maintenance manual HMM was indispensable. Just about every part needed to be removed in order to get at both sides of the fan. The whole process took about 1.5 hours. It is important to set aside a quiet time to do this.
Before unplugging the antenna cables from the wifi and wlan daughter cards, take a photo to remember which coloured cable went into which connector. There are 5 coloured cables in mine, with identical connectors. The HMM does not show the colours.
There are a lot of screws to remove. The screws are not identical. I laid out strips of blutack that corresponded to the positions of the screw holes on the case, and methodically stuck each removed screw onto the blutack. This allowed me to see where each screw went, and stopped them rolling off my desk.
Make sure you have enough desk space to lay out each piece as they are removed.
All I needed to remove the screws was a small jeweller's Philips screwdriver. I also found a flat blade screwdriver useful to peel back the sticky tapes, and to work cables out off and back into the cable management tabs. Be careful about accidentally nicking/damaging the insulation of the cables with the screwdriver. I did that and had to put tape around the teeny tiny and fiddly damaged area.
The parts can feel fragile when disassembled. But they are not made of eggshells either. Gentle jiggling was needed to remove and refit the piece containing the speakers and touchpad assembly. Sometimes when a piece refuses to budge it can be due to an undetached cable. Rough sudden yanking is not recommended! A part that doesn't sit flush will need to be gently rocked and jiggled into place. The tolerances are quite tight so the pieces should fit snugly before screws are attached. Don't force anything to fit.
I did not detach the fan assembly from the motherboard. I did check that the heat pipes were firmly attached to the cpu.
Cleaning was done with a can of compressed air, and a slightly damp cloth. When blowing dust off the fan and its surrounds I made sure to hold the blades with a finger to stop the fan spinning. The was quite a lot of dust between the curved blades.
I also used a household vacuum cleaner (with the dusting brush attachment) to clean the less delicate parts like the chassis and keyboard.
After reassembly, I ran the fan on turbo speed for about 15 minutes to clear out any stuck pieces of dust from the fan.
Idle temps are now 45-55C. I call that an improvement! And the machine feels zippier too.
.