Watch me struggle to repaste this overheating Dell XPS 15 laptop 

Being a repair tech for many years, this was hard to watch with the battery still plugged into the main board

I would disconnect that battery before poking around.

I actually have had issues with this exact same laptop. I also put some high quality thermal pads in some spots on the heatpipes, and some on the top of the vrms to contact with the back panel, and now I can sustain a 60W load without throttling

After all that struggling and complaining he says: "That was such an easy fix!"

When repairing a laptop, you should disconnect the PSU and the battery. And press power button for a few seconds, to discharge caps that still might be charged. The discharge even applies to desktops and servers. You dont wanna risk the hardware when i accidently touch a wrong component or trace.

Just repasted my core i3-6100 with stock cooler for the first time! Went from 75C+ to 53-58C full load :)

I've been on the fence about subscribing to you, and you literally won me over with the OzTalks shout out. Well played!

Aaaahh yes! Another classic case of design over functionality, a decent spec'ed laptop with a poor thermal solution. And guess who invented this trend, because im never gonna say?!! Oh and just out of curiosity...do u like APPLEs Dawid?

Hey Dawid! Love your content. Keep up the good work!

Dawid: restricting upgrades like some other ones... Me: Cough... Cough ... apple

Nice chill video. Thanks Dawid, you're one of my favorite tech youtubers.

I LOVE your channel! The humor and tech insights is great!!

Thanks, following your guidelines I was able to successfully clean the inside of my XPS 15 9570 and apply new cooling paste, laptop still works afterwards hehe. I had never opened up a laptop before, but it worked. The average temperature dropped by about 15 degrees I think. Fans are still quite active when working with video or audio, so I guess I'll buy a better cooling pad as well in order to drop the noise level further, but at least now I don't have to be afraid of my CPU burning to dust anymore. Also thanks to the community section for mentioning the battery disconnecting thing.

Fantastic video Dawid. Please do more informative videos like these! The fun videos are fun, but you need to do more serious videos like this once in a while too.

On a sidenote, I recommend to actually spread the thermal paste when doing this on the naked dies. On a desktop CPU, there is the heatspreader, so the usually recommended "pea-sized drop of paste" is fine. On these dies, there is no heatspreader and you might create hotspots on the chip if the paste does not cover all the eges when squishing it down with the cooler. Also, using slightly more paste than needed won't do harm. You'll start to see negative effects when you use ludicrous amounts.

This is so funny, you uploaded this video just as i was working on my dads laptop's paste 🤣. Love the content Dawid

I have to agree with other commenters, your videos are great to watch. They're not filled with ads, or water bottles (Linus, looking at you!) but your mannerisms alone (this is a compliment) and tech talk make us want to watch. 👍

This just goes to prove you don't need crazy, over the top content to be entertaining Sometimes just doing a thing is enough

A little handy hint..... bridge the gap between the fan to fin array, and the fin array to exhaust vent opening with electrical tape. You can gain 10% better efficiency from the fans. 👍 If you wanted to REALLY improve things, use liquid metal TIM but use PCH load balancing pads(square foam pads with the center cut-out for the naked die) or thermal pads cut to size. That'll stop seepage as you'll need to apply a little more than usual because of the molecular binding between copper and the LM.

I like that you didn't disconnect the battery. Always do this when working inside a laptop (same as disconnecting/turning off the PSU on desktop)

Cool Beans >> Dawid a little tip , I allways use a black felt pen and put a black dot on the top of the fan conector on laptops if I remove fan or other items so when I put it back together I know which way to plug it back in :)

Dell give the full service manual detailing exactly how to completely take apart all (most, there might be some missing occasionally although normally a mistake rather than on purpose) their laptops online. Just search for the model and look under documentation. It is simple as well, go to the section that you want to take it apart to/get to and it will list every section you need to go through in order to reach that point. Then just follow that order and the instructions for each.

lmao i got a 6 year old laptop i wonder how dry the thermal paste is

Just did this on my Dell 9550 - It dropped my idle temps around 4-6c....and under load around the same! That's absolutely worth the time. The fans barely kick on anymore at idle - almost whisper quiet

This laptop is known to have the battery swell and explode. Keep an eye on yours. You can usually tell if the mouse trackpad doesn't click as well as it used to. Mine had 3 of the cells swell up.

Aside from unplugging the battery, I would also suggest marking any connectors with a felt tip pen when you take them out so you know which way they go back in.

I like to touch a magic marker to the TOP of connectors (or in the case of black ones - apply a tiny bit of tape or label printer material) to indicate the orientation.

I always like the RU-vid --> Dawid has uploaded a video - notification.

Dawid, I was installing a new fan in my father's laptop last night and I had the same issue at first. It's hard to tell which way it's supposed to go in, but the main thing is that it shouldn't need much force when plugging it in correctly. That was after me needing to solder a fan wire together because it got moved in front of a screw hole when putting things back together, snipping the wire and shorting to the case.

I like how amazed you are with the condition of the two year old laptop. One can only imagine what lies beneath the case of my 2013 MacBook Air. 😂

Computers weren't always as forgiving when it came to inserting and installing things. It was quite common for devices to go up in smoke and even flames. Some of the components I recall being able to be placed backward quite easily were AT power supply cables that went to the motherboard as well as the AT power switch that went on the case and needed wiring. There were memory chips for video cards that could quite easily go in backward, and often CPUs didn't have a protective heat spreader, which left the fragile die very vulnerable to cracking. Then there was the AMD Athlon debacle where if your heatsink became loose, your CPU would burn up in a matter of seconds. IDE and floppy cables could also go backward or on the wrong end, and the floppy power connectors often burned up when inserted upside down.

Thanks for the vid. I'll be doing this soon, once I get my new battery I'll do both as once. Mine has "stock 5 year old Dell thermal paste" in it... The only reason I've not been forced to do this earlier is that I built a desktop which I'm using 90% of the time.

why did this video not pop up in my subscription box but instead in my recommended...

Nursing a drug addiction with out its family members knowing. This is why you have the best tech channel my friend.

Reminds me when I repasted my 1070, after only 4 years it was extremely dry. result on a manual fan curve: 7 degrees lower, and obviously slower fan speed. thanks for your videos full of humour and interesting tech and reviews.

heeeey Dawid lovin the videos thank you, hope you are safe and well could you try a test between: cleaning the fans and leaving the original thermal paste and: leaving the fans dusty and changing thermal paste: and a mix between both options please. i personally think just doing the fan cleaning is suffice enough, many thanks and keep up the great work :)

I should get over my fears and tear open my six year old Lenovo G505S that overheats and crashes just by attempting a Windows Update. It's basically unusable at this point, so it's not like I have anything to lose, right?

I reposted a few things during covid. A 13 year old dell studio xps 1640 that never over heated which was amazing. Second was my old gaming 14 year old gaming pc with a Athlon 4800+ and a 9500gt. I was amazed the graphics card paste looked brand new, I've never changed it before was genuinely shocked to the point I almost just stuck it back together to see how long it would last.

I had an exact one of those and I was going to open it to do the same thing but managed to completely destroy the screw heads of the two under the flappy thing. Luckily my brother is good with a power drill.

I did a repaste on my XPS 9560 and dropped over 10 degrees C at max. I think it was about 15 degrees. When you re-screw the cooling pipes, they are numbered. Tighten them numerically.

My old ThinkPad T550 boots and then usually doesn’t let the CPU go beyond 36% utilisation (i5 5200u). Nothing has helped so far. New Bios, fresh Windows, new energy saving plan blabla... Thanks for giving me the inspiration to simply repaste it. How hard can it be? I love the niche you found and develop here on your channel. Keep up the good work!

Found your channel from the UK guy on RandomGamingInHD. This laptop case actually has better ventilation than my Asus Vivobook

I had liquid metal and 0.120v undervolt on my XPS 15, it made it amazing compared to stock.

Really liked the video....will try it on my laptop which is getting quite hot.

Awesome Video!

I’ve got this exact configuration but with the 1080p screen. You’d be surprised how well it runs games at medium settings

Man, I subbed a little while ago and started watching your other vids thinking some of your off the cuff comments were a one off. I'm so glad I was wrong. "Nursing a drug addiction" 🤣

I have the exact same laptop. Try deactivating turbo boost in the bios. It changed my life. Previously it was consistently around 90° under light load, now it stays below 70° for the same kind of work. And it feels much more snappier. Turbo boost is just useless for a laptop that can't cool itself properly, and it impacts performance and durability.

I have this exact laptop actually thats cool! just replaced it though but it served me well for almost 4 years

I am surprised it helped so much. My laptop is an old Sandy Bridge based i5 Asus that is really slow but the biggest problem with it is a lack of an SSD but it seems complicated to change the HDD in without taking the entire thing apart. At least running a lightweight version of Linux helps a bit but it is still slow.

Try Conductonaut. I have a "gaming" laptop from Dell that would throttle pretty much instantly when brand-new. Some conductomaut allows for better performance and lower thermals. That stuff is tricky to apply, but works wonders.

I put thermal grizzly kryonaut in my gaming laptop today and the temps are so good now (75c on cpu and 60-65c on gpu) under full load

Makes me realize I know what my laptop’s problem was all along

You have the best analogies!

If you think those fan connectors were a pain, try the thin ribbon cables under the keyboard, or even worse, the stupid snaps on the antenna leads and WLAN card.

Also, to note that the coolers are super easy to bend by accident, then you're screwed lol

Okay i have a Dell g3 3590 and i might need to do that as it is nearing two years, the video was pretty useful to get an idea on how to do it, thanks!

Love your content! Keep on doing what you do and let's see if you can fix a RTX3090 from wish😂

Uh! New Dawid vid! Weekend saved!

Legends say he is still fixing

I've had a few dell gaming laptops now and at this point its rule of thumb to buy new paste with the computer and immediatley change it because the stock dell paste is garbage, I usually see a 10-15 degree decrease from just doing that alone

" ... like a Spring breeze into a ... ... tunnel full of angels". You're just making this up, aren't you? 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Dawid is my favorite Alternate PC Device.

Not on a laptop, but I just repasted my RTX 2060 Super, and the temperatures dropped like 10C at idle, but still maxes out the 88C Limit :( - damn you Gigabyte with your sub-par cooler...

Overheating laptops are the norm, always repast it directly! GC extreme very good paste

that struggle trying to reconnect the fan wires back in is just insanely relatable

I love your strange planet merch

I actually have the model right before this one, the XPS 15 9550. It's the same thing just a generation earlier (i7-6700hq / GTX 960M). It was a great laptop in 2016 but has started to physically fall apart these days. The biggest thing was when I went to repaste the CPU/GPU, the actual rivets holding the backplate that the heatsink gets screwed into had actually cracked and fallen off the motherboard, making it impossible to put the heatsink back on properly. I had to solder the thing back on to the motherboard really jankily to get it to work. The SD card reader has also stopped working and the backlight has become quite finicky. Also sucks they don't do replacement batteries for these laptops anymore :( Oh also, if you have the time/energy. doing a liquid metal repaste on this thing helps temperatures _immensely_ . Just make sure to epoxy over the substrate capacitors on the CPU/GPU first to prevent any potential shorts.

Poking metal tweezers in the computer with the battery still plugged in..nice!

Metal tweezers with battery connected. That's pure genius.

I think that Dells are designed to thermal throttle. It's a power saving feature! 5:50 Wow, that's a puny heatsink. I guess that's the price to pay for having a thin and light form factor.

-Hey, the fan's not that bad! *coughs up the Sahara desert* *thumbs up*

He uses such great analogies

I missed one screw when i was repasting mine and accidentally slightly bent the heat pipe 🤦 It still works as good though thankfully lol

I replaced my brand new msi prestige's (1185G7) thermal compound with mx-4. With stock I got around 1000 cb in CB15 in the first run, and 870 in the next ones topping of at 41W ( I don't care too much about clocks), always at 9999999 inferno temperatures as soon as I hit the run button. In 15W mode, it took around 10 seconds to hit PL1'S 12W. After repaste, I hit 1080cb, keeping 50W for the longest time (3 runs) and throttling to 42W briefly and hit again 50. I also observed more thermal mass as it took longer to hit 90's, but never 9999999999. But curiously, now in 15W mode it no longer triggers PL1. What an improvement!! I also noticed that surface temperatures feel colder under load. As for GPU, I didn't take measurements beforehand, just remember run on low 80s while gaming. Now in long testing, 70 degrees is the max. Obviously the system runs quieter. So, to say the least, OEMS's pastes are 🦌💩. Mine had a very nice application, with only the GPU got a bit spilled out (that Dell though OMGosh) But remember, this is a brand new device with fresh compound, which would've worsen overtime,and there is room for improvement with higher quality paste or liquid metal which I won't use. Recommended?? Well... I voided my warranty unfortunately, but I yoloed it because I knew what I was doing. I was going to install a second drive anyway. So if you are an intensive user, want the device to last and know what you're doing, absolutely YES. For the average user, I'd recommend let an expert do it for you or wait for warranty to expire. (now praying to not have any failures)

Planned to do this to an 8 year old Fujitsu ultrabook, but couldn't for the life of me figure out how to open it up. No thermal throttling, but a really loud CPU fan at almost any load that I am sure is covered in dust and human particles.

For future reference, I recommend unplugging the battery when doing any work inside the laptop. On the CPU and GPU cores I suggest applying Honeywell PTM7950 phase-change material, and instead of thermal pads give thermal putty Upsiren UX Pro Ultra and finally on the CPU and GPU do undervolting at -100mV or more if it will be stable, disable or reduce the frequency of the CPU in turbo boost, because for most games high clocking is unnecessary. It will be more fps, quieter, cooler and less power will be drawn from the wall socket.

Damn, I was gonna do this on the weekend and couldn't find one single good video...

You should make a video on how different things such as debris, smoke, dust, etc affect performance.

Dawid shops at Costco for his iso possibly, also. 😂 I had an old Macbook Pro 15 overheating and rocked out the Kryonaut. I might do this on my XPS 15 also... The temp swing was substantial with the small package. The fear on the NVIDIA die is real, tho.

Hey Dawid quick pro-tip. Use some sort of video recording apparatus to film the disassembly process. That'll allow you to rewind, and review your steps should you get distracted by unicorns, or whatever... Pro-tips aside, I'd like to thank you for yet another pointless video! I was glued to the edge of my seat the entire time!

Did the same thing about 6 months ago. Went from 90+ degrees with throttling to 78 degrees boosting

From what I have read its the VRMs that are crippling the CPU more than the paste.

Dell thermal paste is like someone took the gum out of a pack of baseball cards from 1985, added a little water and then spread it liberally all over the contact plates, except where it needs to make contact with the CPU and GPU. I had to use a plastic paint scraper to clean it off when I fixed my work laptop. Apple and HP are no better, in my experience. The best thing you can do for your laptop is to change the thermal paste and/or pads right out of the gate.

It really should have a better cooler. 90c is still pretty hot and that's with good quality thermal paste.

I am living in a tropical country with no air conditioned room. My i5-4200U stays usually at 65-75C during normal operation, 50C on idle, while on gaming it can reach 90++ C. And it's been like 5-6 years now and no signs of throttling. As long as it is performing normal and not throttling I keep myself from spending spree on aftermarket coolers.

install the dell software for power management and then put the thermal management onto high performance mode, the fans kick in more aggressively

Small correction, Torx screw not hex. Thanks for the entertaining video.

Man, i have a very similar machine and I’ve had it for more than 4 years now. It’s probably in desperate need for a repaste. I’ve cleaned it many times, but never replaced the thermal paste

It was easy with this model, i have Dell N5110 - this is adventure to clean and repaste cooling solution - you have to full dissasembly laptop to do this :) Even to replace SSD/HDD.

its says next to the battery to remove battery before removing rest of the parts :) but good ol Dawid

With those fan connectors I recommend using your fingers

That intro was comedic gold

arm macs coming in novmeber wanna see how well it performs

updated the new bios 2607 5000 update on my asus tuf gaming x570 plus (wifi) and ryzen 5 3600 . had so much problems so many bios updates since i bought so i went in bios checed it out after updating . amazing the CPU overclocked higher by 200 mhz and my 16 gb memory 3000 never would clock above 3200 mhz went to 3400 mhz. odd thing was getting many mem errors at stock on cpu and stock mem took it to 4.1 all cores and mem had no more errors great update even the 3000 series

Do you have any suggestions for my 5550? The keyboard lights up for 10 seconds and goes black for about the same time. Caps lock indicator is solid and unresponsive. Display backlight is off, but I can see a Dell logo is i shine some light on it. This loop goes on forever, while plugged in. No reponse on bettery

I should probably re-paste my main rig... A CPU running at 5GHz gets a bit spicy sometimes.

Dawid which cpu is in the intro I can never find out which one it is

Nice just FYI, the threads on the heatsink are usually numbered. If you put the screws in and tighten them in the order of the numbers then the thermal paste is spreading evenly in all directions instead of being pushed too much in one direction when you tighten the wrong screw first. Also it looks like you didnt put any adheasive tape over the gap between the fans and the heatsink fin arrays, my laptop has tape there to close the gap and force all the air through the actual fin array instead of having a huge amount of air leaking away without contributing anything to the cooling - espeically once there is dust blocking the fins you will have more and more air leaking infront of the fins if there is no tape forcing the air through the array. Edit: Your final test cnfirms that you could do a better job, your laptop is still getting very hot, up to 90C°, The heat sink of your laptop is very thin and the cooling fin array as well, so you can try to be more efficient by applying the tape i mentioned, my laptop doesnt get above 80C° - up to 80 to 85 dgrees is considered save.

9:07 oh Christ.... the tension and suspense !!!!