[ltp] Renewing thermal paste on an X200

[Jochen Spieker]

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Hi,

My X200 with a P8600 Core2Duo is now over three years old and it has
started to become quite hot when under heavy load (cores max out at a
little over 90=B0C, the whole bottom becomes unpleasantly hot). At the
same time, the air flowing out appears to be cooler than when the system
was new.

The obvious thing to do is to disassemble the system, clean off the dust and
re-apply thermal grease (after removing the old one, of course).  I took
a look at the Hardware Maintenance Manual[1, PDF page 112]. It reads:

| Before you attach the fan assembly to the computer, apply thermal grease,=
 at an
| amount of 0.2 grams, on the part marked 'a' as in the following figure.  =
Either
| too much or too less application of grease can cause a thermal problem du=
e to
| imperfect contact with a component. You need to peel the thin film off fr=
om the
| rubber 'b'.

What is this "thin film [on] the rubber"? Does this only refer to new
fan assemblies? Can I just ignore that part when cleaning the system or
should I buy a new thermal pad or something? Or is one of the parts for
the CPU and the other for the GPU and I need to renew the grease/pad on
both parts? Where would I get a thermal pad with the correct dimensions?

I appreciate any advice or reports of experience with this. I am not
afraid to disassemble the hardware, but for obvious reasons I don't
intend to experiment with the thermal management.

TIA
J.

[1] http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/43y6632_03.p=
df
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