Still picking bits of thermal paste out of my motherboard from a customer's laptop last Tuesday

A kid brought in a gaming laptop that was overheating, and someone before me had globbed on what looked like a whole tube of cheap white paste that had hardened into cement. Took me 45 minutes with isopropyl and a plastic spudger to clean the CPU die, anyone else run into this kind of mess from DIY repairs?

3 comments

3 Comments

laura21122d ago

Buddy of mine spent an hour chipping off what looked like dried toothpaste from a CPU.

harper_murphy22d ago

Why would someone do that to their poor CPU? That's just brutal, I feel for your buddy. I've seen some nasty thermal paste jobs in my time but dried toothpaste is a whole new level of sad. Honestly, at that point I would've just given up and bought a new cooler or something. Your friend has way more patience than me, that's for sure.

jake_hall8822d ago

Yeah, "dried toothpaste" is the perfect way to put it. I remember reading somewhere that some old cooling guides from like 2005 actually suggested white toothpaste in a pinch, which is wild to think about now. Your buddy's patience is legendary though, because I would've just tossed the whole chip and called it a loss after the first scrape.