My Laptop: An Epic Story

Chapter 15

Figured out the exact cause of its problems and fixed them! So as you found out in previous chapters, (Im doing a starwars thing here where i start off on 15 incase i need to backtrack), i spilled diet coke all over the keypad of my laptop. Of course I blame Chris for this...

But it would get a garbled boot screen every time it started, and would only boot properly in VGA mode or Safe Mode. Which is shit. I went through a long thing with Alienware, who refused to fix it (Because their wankers). For months i thought "Oh my graphics card is fucked, either that or somethings really wrong with the motherboard", I expected to buy a new GFX card, I still might feel like upgrading.
But alas, all i feared was naught.

After i opened it up it still refused to work, then suddenly, no garbled screen and a perfect boot! This happend for about 24 hours, it stopped working the next day in college. I tested it in the heat, and in the cold. I didnt really do anything inside, just checked for surface damage, then put the parts back. So i thought it was a thermal thing, me moving the parts about freeing something allowing it to cool qiucker or something, i had no proper explaination.

Last night i opened it up again, i had to procrastinate for this exam i have in a few hours. I questioned why instead of using thermal paste or traditional thermal pads, they seem to be using a spongey pad and a rubbery pad. Ive never seen thermal bridges like these before. The ones for the memory chips were rubbery and the one on the GPU was spongey and kind of dampish. I put it down to some kind of thermal grease in the sponge, but i think now i was wrong.

I believe because of the immense heat of the GPU and the addition of Diet Coke, it turned what was once a rubbery thermal pad, into a spongey greasey Coke monster. I took it off and wiped away some moisture around the chip, it was in between loads of transitor things. Stuck some proper thermal paste on the GPU and stuck back the heatsink. First boot again was a disaster, however every boot since has been perfect.

Ive had to open the laptop a few times since for various reasons, i monitored the GPU temp and it creeped toward 100 degrees, my laptop shuts down at that point. Opening it up again showed that there is a great distance between the heatsink and the GPU, the paste never connected them. I added more paste and fashoned the blue rubbery stuff into a more economic fit. And a few times i forgot to reconnect the fan. However now, my temps idle aroun 78, around what the used to.