Fixing laptop overheating issue

From past couple of weeks my wife was upset about her HP Pavilion DV6 laptop getting overheated. She even mentioned that the laptop did shut down on couple of occasions. So we did some R & D on the cause and probable solutions. Cleaning up the fan of the heat-sink along with the paste around the chips, buying a cooling pad were what many suggested.
Yesterday morning she shortlisted couple of cooling pads and sought my comments on finalizing. That's when I got a crazy idea of opening up the laptop and cleaning the fan and thermal paste as that was one of the issue for overheating. That was a crazy idea considering the fact that this is my wife's laptop and one can imagine what can possibly happen to me if anything goes wrong with it post the dismantling & reassembly. Needless to say, I would have to buy a new one for her after facing the other consequences. So you know, it was indeed quite a very risky and crazy idea to start with. Knowing all that, I still wanted to take the risk as I badly wanted to open it up completely and experiment ;-)

Before starting I made sure to check few articles and YouTube videos to ascertain few details. Once I had all the necessary information I unscrewed the back-panel, unplugged hard drive, the display, the front panel, the keyboard and finally the motherboard along with heat-sink. Yeah, that's pretty much everything in a laptop and it took more than an hour.

I even opened up the fan unit and to my surprise I saw more dust than I anticipated. 

Next was the old thermal paste applied to the CPU and the GPU. Thermal paste also called the Thermal Interface Material(TIM) or grease. I felt the paste applied was more than required from the manufactured. I'm sure they know better however with many recent articles including many manufacturers in their websites (E.g. Intel) have recommended just enough of the paste to be applied.
I cleaned it up along with the heat-sink plates which stick to the chipsets.

I didn't have the thermal paste handy with me so I decided to visit a local shop. I couldn't believe that they were selling a tube for just Rs. 20 /- for which the online shopping sites cited Rs 300 to more than 1000. Well, I don't really know whether this local tube is a reliable and good but still went ahead trying it out anyways. There were many recos and suggestions for these thermal paste but somehow couldn't wait for the extra delivery days for the online ones.

So here I was ready with a thermal paste and super cleaned chips. I applied just a drop of paste on each of the chips and placed back the heat-sink and pressed it hard so that the paste spreads on the surface properly as per the procedure.
I assembled each and every part back to their right place carefully and was ready to test the laptop back. Now, believe me, all this whole time I was keenly supervised by my wife. And this was the moment when I was really tensed, of course. I pressed the power button and waited for the display to turn on and proceed with the normal boot up and the laptop was up and running. I tested necessary basic tests and everything was just fine. 
My observation was that it was comparatively radiating less heat now and even the noise made by the fan was smoother. However, my wife will be getting back with the actual results after little more extensive usage. Keeping my fingers crossed in the meantime.

Update [22/07/2016]: After 6 days of extensive use, the laptop is much cooler now and the results are exceeding expectations actually.



Few tips from this exercise:

• If your machine is under warranty then DO NOT open it up as it voids the warranty.
• Make sure you have complete information and materials required before opening the laptop.
• Do not hurry in any of the intermediate steps of dismantling or reassembly of laptop parts. You don't want any problem while pulling out or plugging in of any bus or anything. Be gentle and careful.
• Have alcohol solution to remove the old thermal paste, which I didn't have. And went ahead by normal cleaning up with dry paper and soft cloth anyways.
• If you are sure of any particular good thermal paste, go ahead with it. I took a chance here with locally available one. If the heat situation hasn't improved, I would have to do this procedure again with a better paste this time.
• Do not place your laptop on your bed or soft cushion base while your work. This might affect the cooling process.
• A cooling pad might help.