new fan and thermal paste

[achat_2]

The fan in my x201 is completely died since few days and today I received the replacement.

I did some training on my (non functioning) X201 (i5) on the fan replacement but not on the cleaning and reapplication of the thermal paste.

Is there any specific product (cleaning and paste) that I should look for?
I see there are a lot of different pastes and I am not sure what shoudl I order.

Thanks for any suggestion.
A

[Cigarguy]

I've taken a few X201 apart to reapply thermal paste. A lot of work. Just be methodical, patient and follow the maintenance manual.

For cleaning off the old thermal paste I use Isopropyl (rubbing alcohol). Use 90% alcohol or better. I have 99% alcohol that I use for cleaning electronics and electronic paste after soldering. With the chip installed, I soak a lint free rag full of alcohol then wipe down the top of the chip. Then a small puff of compress air to ensure that there's not lint laying on top of the chip. Then apply a very thin layer of thermal paste. Finally put/clamp the CPU heatsink fan back on making sure everything is tight and secure.

For thermal paste, just use a good one. Lots of good thermal paste out there. For this generation of machine no need to spend a lot of money on the exotic and expensive thermal paste. In the past I've used Arctic Silver 5 but over the past few years switched over to Arctic MX-4. Why? Because the MX-4 was on sale. Proper application and install thermal paste and heatsink fan is more important than one brand of good paste to another.

[achat_2]

Thanks a lot.

Yes, I dismantled the non functioning X201s few days ago (never did anything similar),
just to revive the fan and reassemble, following both the manual and a superdetailed video on youtube.

Ok, so I will go with this Artic MX 4.

A.