Ask HN: How do you repair your personal C? Advice on thermal paste? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you repair your personal C? Advice on thermal paste?

1 pointamts7 comments

There are issues with my only work-suitable notebook, like the crackling sound from the cooler fan upon boot-up, occasional overheats on moderate-to-high RAM/CPU loads (at [1] more detailed description). This HP laptop has just 3 years of moderate usage. Can you advise on should I replace the CPU thermal paste?

Tangentially, I was also curious whether a thermal paste can also be electroconductive if used not as intended. Can a thermal paste, especially on copper or metal oxide basis, also be electroconductive?

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/723317/Optimal+repair+of+HP+250+G6:+overheat,+cooler,+display+frame#answer723320

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Thermal paste usually lasts very long if it was applied correctly. Many coolers do spin up to maximum shortly after power on, at least for a short time.

Maybe clean the fan, but I mostly suggest to always replace it if the form factor allows for it if you open the device anyway. It may have a broken bearing, which in most cases isn't that bad aside from the additional noise. So it is strange that the notebook seems to overheat. Perhaps there is really some form of blockage which just needs to be cleared.

Yes, the overheats seem strange, given the 8GB RAM and 250GB ssd. It overheats (up to 50C) and freezes generally when I have several browsers opened (incl. Tor) with dozens of tabs, a Windows 8 VM instance running (with or without active connection from there to a remote desktop) and an Audacious player active. But the last time it overheated was when I was installing Jupiter notebook and Anaconda, separately. According to psensor Linux app I use for monitoring, the max CPU load so far was 51%, for free memory - ~4%. I was also advised to reinstall my current Ubuntu 20.04. Can it be this is due to Ubuntu issues?

50°C is not a temperature that should lock up your system, or do you mean on the outside of the casing? Otherwise that is a fairly normal operating temperature for a CPU, especially for a notebook that is even quite good. If it goes beyond 80°C it might be concerning, but I had a notebook CPU that regularly reached 95°C while still being stable.

Difficult to say, but I would very much believe this to be a software issue. Your main memory is quite low but that should also not lock your system, just slow it down.

I think 20.04 is the current long term support version from Ubuntu. Are you sure it completely locks up? If you hit CTRL+ALT+F1 - F4 it doesn't bring you to the system console? Otherwise a software component might be crashing.

A reinstall might work, could perhaps be a driver issue that causes the freeze. Difficult to analyze.

50°C as shown by psensor app. <<Are you sure it completely locks up? No, if I don't wait for ~20 minutes or more for mouse/keyboard to be activated, I reboot after ~5 minutes of "frozen" state. CTRL+ALT+F1 brings to the system concole normally

Then it should be a software problem since the system is not really freezing, just your window manager probably. Temperatures are good. I am no expert for the possible causes here, my uneducated guess would be a driver issue or some incompatibility with your hardware.

Reinstalling is a lot of work but might help. If you don't care for LTS versions, perhaps try a newer one. But that is all based on guesses, maybe ask in a forum specifically for Ubuntu and tell them about the specific hardware you are using. Perhaps someone has similar experiences.

Is the battery fresh?

Does it overheat running on battery and/or wall power?

Do you have a plan if you loose/strip screws and cannot reassemble the computer?

Good luck.

<<Is the battery fresh? I don't know, I rarely use on battery, so should be. <<Does it overheat running on battery and/or wall power? On wall power <<Do you have a plan if you loose/strip screws and cannot reassemble the computer? As indicated in an answer on ifixit, I plan to put screws in dedicated containers with marked down sticky notes. But I can't afford a blank screen after reassembly,though this should probably indicate to recheck some display bus connections, as I will need to disassemby the display module too to repair the left bottom frame part and the hindge. I also have a second ASUS notebook, it is minimally functional for work (4GB RAM, with USB ports and the audio port unstable function probably due to exposure to air humidity). But there's Ubuntu 16.04, which is mainly locked up by tripwire (probably a tiger Linux app extension) requiring a passphrase after multiple incorrect attempts of entering the user password.

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