**Guide**P5W-DH Cooling Mod (Pics)
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/5089/titleot3.jpg
Note: I am not held responsible for any damage you cause to your computer from using this guide. What you do to your computer is up to you. This would obviously viod any warranty you have on the motherboard.
Tools & Materials Needed:
- Small Pliers
- Sharp blade (something small such as a utility knife blade or exacto knife)
- Qtips
- Rubbing Alcohol
- Your favorite thermal paste :)
1. Flip the motherboard over and use the small pliers to squeeze the plastic pins closed while pressing them into the motherboard until they pop back into their holes. Be careful not to over squeeze or you might damage the pins.
2. Start with the lower heatsink. This will be a bit difficult to remove since the stock thermal paste is very dry. Use some soft levar and support it using your finger. Put the other end under the heatsink and slowly push it up a little under all four sides until it pops off. Be careful not to support the lever on any parts of the motherboard.
3. Now the upper NB heatsink should be much easier to remove. Simply unlatch both sides and rotate it a little and it should be easy to pull off.
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/9785/cleaningwa6.jpg
http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/1244/heatsinkseq9.jpg
As you can see, asus has loaded on the thermal paste and trust me, it is VERY dry. Now comes the "fun" part....
4. Use the small blade to scrape off some (not all) the dry thermal paste on the LOWER chip (the bigger black one). The top of this chip is plastic, so you can apply a very small amount of force to scrape the dry paste off. Once this is done, use a Qtip of paper towel moistened with rubbing alcohol to clean the rest off. Again, you can use some force with the blade, but dont start slicing through the chip. Get as much of it off as you can. This is what mine looked like:
http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/3836/sbcleangh2.jpg
5. This is probably the most difficult part since now you cannot use the blade. The thermal paste on the upper NB is as dry as the stuff you have just scraped off. You might want to grab something to drink becuase this took a while for me. Use the rubbing alcohol and a Qtip to rub all the thermal paste off. This is a bare chip so I would only use some soft object to clean it. What you can do is cut the Qtip in half and use the soft plastic of cardboard stem to GENTLY scrape some paste off.
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/7074/nbcleandy5.jpg
