Amilo Pa 3553 Overheating issues & CPU acting weird

[Zyph]

Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pa 3553 Notebook
AMD Turion X2 RM-70 (Griffin) 2.00GHz (supposedly)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 Hybrid X2
4gb RAM
Windows Vista

Having some major overheating problems with this one.
When booting up, loading Windows & programs the CPU usage hits 100% for a long while and during this phase the core temperatures go up to 90-105C and then while idle the temperatures are between 65-90C (verified with Core Temp and SpeedFan)

Were going to open up the notebook to get my hands properly on the cpu fan & heatsinks to properly clean those, but reachin the fan is impossible without breaking some parts or taking the whole notebook totally apart (great engineering!).
Couldn't find a guide for how to disassemble this model so haven't tried to force it open yet, doesn't seem to open easily so I'm obviously missing some (hidden) clamp positions. While not being able to reach the fan itself, I did atleast blow compressed air into the fan and all of the cooling ducts, visible parts of heatsink etc. No dice.

Also, the CPU is acting very strangely.
Both Core Temp and CPU-Z show the core speeds/frequencies fluctuating.
Instead of saying 2000MHz as they should for this CPU, the values keep bouncing between 500-2000MHZ, as if the CPU is having an identity crisis. BIOS still shows 2000MHz.

Warranty has run out.

Any ideas what to do or what's going on to start with?

Any help would be appriciated!

[sabrex]

Were going to open up the notebook to get my hands properly on the cpu fan & heatsinks to properly clean those, but reachin the fan is impossible without breaking some parts or taking the whole notebook totally apart (great engineering!).

Its a service panel underneath 9 screws you do not need to take the whole thing apart!

sorry its very crude but here is the location of the screws on the panel. Obviously remove ac and Battery before you remove the panel.

panel.JPG (10.37 KiB) Viewed 15452 times

I would think about re-applying Heat paste on the CPU after cleaning off the old.

if you do not know what you are doing ...dont do it

Also, the CPU is acting very strangely.

well intel have speedstep and you will have AMD = AMD Cool'n'Quiet (check Bios there should be an option)

[Zyph]

Here's a picture of where I got before. Removed the service panel which gave access to the HDD, RAM, WLAN etc. and were able to remove the DVD-drive just fine. As you can see removing that panel doesn't give access to the cooling fan at the end of the copper heatsink tube and I don't see a way to easily get to the cpu either as the copper tube is laying on it and there doesn't appear to be a way to remove it without disassembling the whole notebook. Red circles show all the places that I've removed screws from. Still it doesn't appear to come off easily/cleanly and I don't like to force it since I'm not sure of the plastic clamp positions and which side I should pry open first and so on. And do you need to remove the keyboard first with this model? No clue. Would be no problem if it was my own computer, but it's a friends who I'm trying to help.

Have disassembled mainly HP laptops before and those have had different type of base to work with and have experience of reflowing motherboard components & (re)installing CPUs etc, but I'd just have to get my hands on those parts first.



Any clue how I should proceed?
Where to pry it open?
As I said, wouldn't want to force it open only to find myself not knowing how to put it back together again

[sabrex]

Well the copper tube is removed from that area.

heatsink.jpg (62.38 KiB) Viewed 15419 times

once those screws removed it should just lift up. you can then clean it off and re-apply heatpaste.

Unfortunately if you want to get to the fan on this unit then its a complete Strip !
Fujitsu doesnot release strip instructions.

[Zyph]

Thanks!

Thought myself that removing those screws wouldn't do much as the part of the heatsink that's next to the fan seemed pretty solid in place, but apparently it did come loose just fine!
Cleaned the old thermalpaste and applied new, better, stuff which seemed to help atleast a bit. Temperatures came down to 60-70C (which is still too high for my tastes), but atleast the computer is a bit more stable now and even survived the re-installation of Windows too (on previous tries the system crashed during installation due to temperatures peaking under stress).

Recommended the owner of the laptop to invest to a cooling mat thingie under the laptop, hopefully one those would help to further reduce the overheating.

Thanks again!

[Tanukki]

There's also this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardwar ... guide.html

[lutsukala]

did the middle chip touch the heatsink at all? if not, then its gonna burn something real soon
P.S. i ripped it apart quite much, but the fan seemed to be stuck in there no matter what.. no screws or anything (maybe just some glue or smth)... didnt care to take a closer look, so i just put everything back together, bending the heatsink a little (be careful not to break it into 2 pieces