On 12/03/2013 10:16 PM, Michael Hennebry wrote: > I found my fans and am about to get some thermal Make sure you make a note in which direction all the fans in the PC are blowing. Usually there is an arrow on them which tells you which way they blow but you can also feel it by holding your hand in front of them. The replacement fans need to blow in the same direction so think about that when putting them in. > grease and a megohm resistor for static discharge. > Sometime today or tomorrow I will likely > open the case with fear and trepidation. Don't worry. It's nothing like it was in the eighties when stuff fell apart by merely looking at it (except for the IBM keyboards). > The sides and top of the case are metal, but painted with an insulator. > The front is plastic. > The back is metal. > I expect I should touch that before opening the case. As far as I know touching something that's properly grounded should do it. Maybe something like gas/water/heating pipes (unpainted bare metal). Stating the obvious but please do disconnect the power cord before doing anything and wait a minute. If the power supply itself has an on/off switch (usually at the back) then leave the switch on and disconnect the power cord. If it also has a light you can see it go dark. Even after the power supply has been disconnected it can still have a charge so don't go poking any metal objects in there unless you want smoke coming out of your ears. > What about after? Is there something else I > should touch before trying to edit its guts? Don't think so but refrain from touching the actual chips. And do it near a lamp with a lot of light. > If thermal grease is the problem, > how do I find out and how do I clean off the old stuff? There are a lot of instructions here: http://www.arcticsilver.com/intel_application_method.html# > I've read that just adding more is not a good idea. Correct. You only need a really small amount of it. It's only needed to fill any air pockets (=lot's of heat getting trapped) with thermal paste between the cpu and the heatsink so the heat is guided away through the heatsink instead of getting stuck and frying your cpu. Clean both the heatsink and the cpu so the old stuff is removed. Only then you apply thermal paste only on the cpu (not on the heatsink). Read the instructions at the link I gave you earlier. > If I add to much thermal paste, what do I do about it? Remove it with a credit card or something non-metallic similar. Read through the instructions at the link I gave you earlier. I usually remove dust with a vacuumcleaner where I can without touching anything in the PC. If you want to do it the fancy way get a can of compressed air and blow the dust straight out. Good luck. Regards, Patrick