Mystery of the Thermal Paste

[RetiredGuy1000]

Guy calls today.
"Can you help me? I replaced the thermal paste on my Asus laptop. However, when I try to boot up I get nothing. Even plugging in the laptop shows nothing where before a light went on normally."
"Ok", I said
"I didn't cut anything that I am aware of", he said. "I thought the operation went flawless. Power supply seems fine except that it doesn't come on."
"But the laptop is completely dead?"
"Completely. But why and can we fix it?"

I was stumped. Still am.
What caused him to brick his laptop? You would not think that removing a heatsink, adding paste, and putting heatsink back would brick it. Maybe he roughhoused the CPU in some way.

 

[Joep]

Stumped? Why? Have you Googled this to find out how often this goes wrong?

 

[sapphirescales]

Did he ground himself before touching the components? Did he disassemble the laptop in a clean environment? Was he gentle when taking parts out or did he flex the board or damage something when trying to take it apart? There's no way to know any of this because you weren't there and no client is going to fess up to making a mistake. Hard pass. If you touch it, everything that's wrong with it automatically becomes YOUR fault. By all means help him back up his data and try to sell him another machine, but whatever you do, don't "fix" the damned thing.

As soon as I know a client has disassembled a laptop themselves, it's an automatic NOPE on my part. It's bad enough when I get something in that another shop has worked on, but when it's some idiot client that thinks they know what they're doing it has DANGER, DO NOT TOUCH written all over it.

The exception is custom built desktops. I'll work on those that a client built because at least the parts are easy and affordable to replace, and I charge enough to bite something unexpected that might happen.

 

[RetiredGuy1000]

Oh I passed.

First off, the guy is a do-it-yourselfer. Secondly, I didn’t want to own that laptop for any reason.

The guy isn’t a client so I haven’t put much thought into reasons this occurred for him. I figure it was an electrostatic discharge.

 

[Mick]

The fact he'd decided to replace the thermal paste shows there was already something wrong with this machine . You wouldn't just do that for fun. And, doubtless, whatever that thing that's wrong was would become your fault if you did actually manage to get it running again. Well left!

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

"Even plugging in the laptop shows nothing where before a light went on normally."

Well he did something wrong xD you're going to open it and its either going to be something simple or its going to be something ridiculous like he used the wrong screw for something and put it through the board xD.

 

[MDD1963]

the number of folks who smear conductive Arctic Silver (or equivalent) either into sockets, and/or allow it to ooze out of/off of heat spreader and into areas it should not be is just plain astounding...

 

[mikeroq]

You wouldn't just do that for fun.

You don't know what my idea of fun then is!

 

[Diggs]

the number of folks who smear conductive Arctic Silver (or equivalent) either into sockets, and/or allow it to ooze out of/off of heat spreader and into areas it should not be is just plain astounding...

What makes you think Arctic Silver is conductive?

 

[RetiredGuy1000]

those photos are amazing! lol

 

[rsarceno]

You don't know what my idea of fun then is!

I think I know what you did wrong. You use Artic Silver 5 which is suppose to be use only on the other side.
You need Artic Silver 10 for this side

Or use Artic Silver 15 which works on both sides

 

[Markverhyden]

You need Artic Silver 10 for this side

I thought it had to be Arctic Silver X10. Makes those electrons go 10 times faster.....

 

[frase]

He probably blasted the fan with compressed aair as well, which can berk the fan.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Arctic Silver 2 and 3 were conductive, as far as I know from 5 onward it isn't.

 

[ChrisTech]

Did he ground himself before touching the components? Did he disassemble the laptop in a clean environment? Was he gentle when taking parts out or did he flex the board or damage something when trying to take it apart? There's no way to know any of this because you weren't there and no client is going to fess up to making a mistake. Hard pass. If you touch it, everything that's wrong with it automatically becomes YOUR fault. By all means help him back up his data and try to sell him another machine, but whatever you do, don't "fix" the damned thing.

As soon as I know a client has disassembled a laptop themselves, it's an automatic NOPE on my part. It's bad enough when I get something in that another shop has worked on, but when it's some idiot client that thinks they know what they're doing it has DANGER, DO NOT TOUCH written all over it.

The exception is custom built desktops. I'll work on those that a client built because at least the parts are easy and affordable to replace, and I charge enough to bite something unexpected that might happen.

+1

 

[Galdorf]

What makes you think Arctic Silver is conductive?

It has a slight capacitance seen it kill a motherboard a doityourselfer did 1st pic of mikeroq

 

[Diggs]

It has a slight capacitance seen it kill a motherboard a doityourselfer did 1st pic of mikeroq

I've seen Arctic Silver 5 slobbered all over everything and never cause an issue. I've tried to measure any capacitance with everything I've got and get nothing. Hmm.... Good to know.

 

[NviGate Systems]

Maybe it was toothpaste.

 

[MDD1963]

Arctic Silver 2 and 3 were conductive, as far as I know from 5 onward it isn't.

I know back in 2005/2006, Arctic Silver was conductive... (Admittedly, I've clearly not kept pace with the obviously radical advances in non-conductive compounds in the thermal compound industry!)

(I use Noctua's compound, a tiny amount goes a long way, easy to spread with a scotch taped finger!)

 

[MDD1963]

What makes you think Arctic Silver is conductive?

I see/read that the newer formulations are NOT electrically conductive...(they do advise keeping it away from leads, contacts, and anything electrical, however) I had mistakenly remembered the cautions about it being conductive in 2005/2006 when I used it...

SInce it is not...
The pics above w/ socket coatings of TIM above looked quite impressive, and might serve as a good guide.