Prepare For Summer

You know those ads "prepare your car for the winter"? Well, your computer deserves some attention as well.

The summer we've been having this March took its first victim - the thermic paste of my old Intel CPU fan has died, causing my computer's core temperature to get to 90+ degrees and shutdown a few seconds after boot. The fan itself was working OK, but without the conductive thermal layer it was useless. Also, the pins that hold it together to the CPU were not in great shape, and the guy at the hardware store said this could happen again in a month or two.



Since this is only fucking March and we have a long summer ahead of us (plus moving from Haifa to the hot Herzliya), I decided to give our computer a treat and purchase a powerhouse of a fan - the Thermal Take Blue Orb.



The installation of this fan requires removing the motherboard. I tried instead to take a shortcut and juts remove the back panel.



But no good. So, I disconnected all the MB cables,



and took out the motherboard



Consulting with the manual all the way through



And fighting off both our cats



Applied some fresh thermal paste (very important step!)



Screwed the fan back on the top of the MB



Fought off our other cat Nano



And voilà:



The result: my computer is summer-ready :)