Gaming laptop fans, thermal paste and SSD: interactive 3D teardown

All 9 steps

1. 1Undo the 12 bottom screws

   Undo the twelve Phillips #1 screws in the bottom cover. The three along the rear edge, into the hinge brackets, are long (6 mm); the seven along the sides and the front are short (4 mm): lay them in the tray apart. The two at the front corners are captive: undo them until they turn freely, and leave them in the cover.

2. 2Pop the bottom cover off along the rear seam

   Slide a plastic opening pick into the seam between the cover and the deck at a rear corner, by the hinge, and run it along the rear edge: each clip pops as it passes. Then lift the cover from the back; the clips along the sides and the hooks at the front let go as it rises. Set it down on the mat.

3. 3Unlock the battery plug and unplug it trap

   Before anything else inside, unplug the battery. A thin metal lock across its header holds the plug in: put the flat end of a nylon spudger against the lock’s front edge and push it back about 2 mm, until it stops; it stays on the header. Then walk the plug straight out towards the battery, pushing it by its body at one end and then the other, never by its wires. Hold the power button for 5 seconds to drain the charge left on the board. Avoid this trap: The lock has to be undone before the plug can come out, so the battery is still plugged in while you push it. Push it hard, or on past the point where it stops, and the thin metal clip slides off the back of its header, springs up and drops onto the board: it lands across the power stage behind the header and bridges the main power rail. There is a spark, and the board is dead. Push the lock gently with a nylon spudger, about 2 mm, until it stops; it stays on the header.

4. 4Fit the new SSD in the second M.2 slot

   Many gaming laptops have a second M.2 slot, its screw waiting in the standoff. Undo that Phillips #0 screw, push the new SSD into the socket at about 20°, gold fingers first, press its end down onto the standoff and do the screw back up over it, snug. The first drive, with the system on it, stays where it is.

5. 5Blow out both fans, their blades held still trap

   With the cover off and the battery unplugged, rest the spudger’s tip on a fan’s blades through its intake to hold them still, and blow short bursts of compressed air into it: the dust packed between the fan and its fins goes out through the rear vents. Do the other fan the same way. Keep the can upright, tilted no more than its label allows. Avoid this trap: Blow into a fan without holding it and the air spins it far faster than its motor ever runs it. Its tiny bearing is not made for that: it wears, and the fan starts to rattle or hum, often weeks later, and has to be replaced. A fan spun by air also works as a small generator, which is why some guides warn of a voltage sent back into the board; we found no maker that says it does harm, but there is nothing to gain from it. Hold the blades still with the spudger and blow in short bursts.

6. 6Unplug the fans and loosen the heatsink, 7 → 1

   Push both fans’ 4-pin plugs out of their headers with the spudger, by the plugs, never the wires. Then loosen the heatsink’s seven captive spring screws in the reverse of the numbers printed beside them, 7 down to 1, a few turns each until its spring is free: 7, 6 and 5 round the CPU, then 4 to 1 round the GPU. They stay in the heatsink.

7. 7Lift the heatsink and clean off the old paste

   Lift the heatsink straight up off the CPU and the GPU, fans and all, and set it upside down on the mat. With a lint-free swab and 99% isopropyl alcohol, wipe the old dried paste off both dies and both copper cold plates until they shine. The grey pads over the GPU’s memory chips stay on the plate: leave them unless they are torn.

8. 8Lay on the phase-change pads, heatsink back 1 → 7 trap

   With the alcohol dry, lay a phase-change thermal pad on each die with tweezers, its bottom film already off, and peel its blue top film away. Turn the heatsink over, lower it straight down and tighten the spring screws in order, 1 to 7. The pads soften above about 45 °C, the first time the laptop works hard, and flow into a very thin layer. A non-conductive paste works too: a small dot on the CPU, a thin line on the GPU. With clean fins and a fresh interface the CPU runs about 30 °C cooler under load (our illustrative figure). Avoid this trap: Drive screw 1 all the way home while the other six are still loose and it pulls its corner of the heatsink down onto the GPU: the heatsink rocks on the GPU’s die, and its far end lifts off the CPU. With its plate a hair off the die, the CPU overheats as soon as it works hard, and the uneven force on a bare die can chip its corner. Tighten the screws in their printed order, 1 to 7, each one only until it stops.

9. 9Reconnect the fans and the battery, refit the cover

   Push both fans’ plugs back into their headers, then push the battery plug straight into its header by its body and slide the metal lock forward over it until it stops: the last thing done inside. Hook the cover’s front edge in, lower it and press along the rear seam until the clips snap, then drive the screws back in from the tray, the long ones in the three rear holes, and do up the two captive ones.

What you need

• Phillips #1 screwdriver · for the 12 bottom screws
• Phillips #0 screwdriver · for the M.2 and heatsink screws
• Plastic opening pick and nylon spudger · never metal near the battery
• M.2 2280 NVMe SSD · for the second slot
• Compressed air · short bursts, the can upright
• Isopropyl alcohol, 99% · with lint-free swabs
• Phase-change thermal pads or non-conductive paste · one pad per die
• ESD-safe tweezers and a magnetic screw tray · for the pads and the screws

Questions

Safety

Shut the laptop down (not sleep), unplug the charger and unplug the internal battery before you touch anything else inside, pushing its metal lock only with a nylon spudger. Hold the fans’ blades still when you blow them out, keep the air can upright and the alcohol away from heat, and work on a grounded ESD mat.

• Lithium-ion batteries: never bend, puncture or pry a battery with metal. A damaged cell can go into thermal runaway: it smokes, catches fire and can explode. Discharge it below 25% first; if it swells, hisses, smokes or gets hot, stop and move it somewhere safe.
• Static (ESD): work on an anti-static mat with a grounded wrist strap; a spark you cannot feel can kill a chip.
• Power off: switch the device off and unplug its charger before you open it, and disconnect the battery before touching anything else inside.

About this teardown

3D Spatial Reconstruction: Models are engineered from factual hardware measurements to visualize internal layouts, screw lengths, and hidden cable traps before you open your device. Always verify cable routing on your specific hardware revision.

The laptop is a generic 15.6-inch gaming laptop of our own design, not any one maker’s model, with no maker’s logo on it: 360 × 264 × 24 mm, a CPU and a separate GPU (four memory chips round it) under one copper heatsink with four heat pipes and two blower fans, two M.2 slots, two memory modules and an 80 Wh four-cell battery. It opens the way common gaming laptops do, as their makers’ guides and iFixit’s show: Phillips #1 bottom screws of more than one length, two of them captive, a cover held by clips, the battery’s plug held in its header by a small metal lock, two 4-pin fan plugs, a second M.2 2280 slot whose screw waits in its standoff, and a heatsink held by seven captive spring screws numbered on it.

Where the owner’s brief differed, real laptops decided. The battery’s metal lock is meant to be pushed a short way to free the plug and to stay on its header (iFixit’s guides for ASUS’s gaming machines push a silver lock or a metal bar gently aside, and an owner on ASUS’s forum unplugs the battery first so that dropped metal cannot short the board); it is not slid off. Pushed hard past its stop, ours comes off: that is the brief’s trap, a loose piece of metal on a board that is still live, since the lock is undone before the battery is unplugged. Holding a fan’s blades while blowing it out is what a fan maker advises for its bearing, and Dell says not to let the air spin a fan fast; the brief’s other reason, a fan spun by air frying its controller, we could not confirm from any maker, so the page gives the bearing as the reason and says the other is unconfirmed. A heatsink over a separate GPU often has seven or more captive screws (seven on Dell’s G15), numbered on the heatsink; manuals differ on whether they are loosened in reverse or in the printed order, so ours loosens 7 → 1, tightens 1 → 7 and says to follow your own. The power button is on the side edge here, so the board can be drained with the laptop upside down (on most it is above the keyboard, and the lid has to be opened to press it).

Our estimates and our own design, not measured figures: the temperatures (94 °C before and 65 °C after, under load, illustrative), the screw lengths, the battery’s figures, the lock’s 2 mm and the places of the parts inside, all typical of gaming laptops; the phase-change pads’ 45 °C is their maker’s figure. Dell’s manuals give 5 seconds for the drain. The 3D runs faster than real hands do. In the Reassemble order the parts start out on the bench and go back in a working order: clean, pads, heatsink, fans checked, SSD, battery, cover, screws.

Sources: iFixit: ASUS ROG Strix G15 (G513) battery replacement (14 Phillips #1 bottom screws of three lengths; the silver lock on the battery connector pushed gently), iFixit: ASUS ROG Ally battery replacement (a metal locking bar moved off the battery connector with a spudger’s flat end), iFixit: battery replacement with a metal clip slid aside to unlock the battery connector, ASUS ROG Forum: G513, a metal piece slid to unlock the battery connector; unplug it so dropped metal cannot short the board, HP Inc. (Technical Disclosure Commons, 2019): a board still connected to its battery while it is taken apart is easily shorted by tools or parts, XMG: battery removal (pull the plug itself, never the cable), Dell: residual (flea) power in the board’s capacitors, iFixit: Dell Inspiron 13-7353 battery (hold the power button 5 seconds to ground the board), Parts-People: Dell G15 (5530) heatsink fan assembly (a base cover with captive screws, two M.2 SSDs, a heatsink held by seven captive screws, Phillips #0), Dell Community: heat sink screws loosened in reverse and tightened in order, Lenovo: an M.2 drive goes in at about 20°, iFixit: how to install an M.2 SSD (about 30°), A fan maker’s cleaning advice: hold the blades so the air cannot spin them fast and damage the bearing, Dell: how to clean a laptop fan safely (short bursts, never force the fan to spin rapidly; too much airflow can damage its bearings), July 2026, A duster maker’s FAQ: hold the can upright, tilted no more than 40°, and do not shake it, A phase-change pad maker’s page: solid at room temperature, liquid above 45 °C, not electrically conductive, at its best after about ten heat cycles, ASUS: liquid metal in its gaming laptops (a liquid alloy that conducts electricity, held in by a fence round the die), iFixit: how to apply thermal paste (alcohol of 90% or more, plastic tools only), iFixit: improving laptop cooling (dust out of the fan, a little paste, screws tightened evenly), Price: LTT Store, a 60 × 60 mm phase-change thermal pad, $27.99 (October 2026), Price: PrimeTech Support, Miami, gaming laptop cleaning with thermal paste, $160 (October 2026).

The 3D models, drawings and text are our own. The device shown is a generic one of our own design, not any one maker’s model.