Opening up HP Spectre to clean fans

[EddyK]

Hi, I felt that there was a lot of dust accumulated in the intake fans of the HP Spectre 13, so I was wondering if opening up the notebook to clean the fans would be okay, and wouldn't void the warranty. I'm also worried about the adhesive sides of the rubber laptop feet. Does anyone have any experience in this? 

Thanks, kem579

[iomare]

Hi,

I can not really tell if it would void warranty. However since upgrades to RAM and hard drives seem to be accepted I would not worry too much.

For the rubber feet you can use strong doublesided tape which you will find in local stores or online. 3M makes good tape.

When cleaning fan use compresses air and make sure the computer is off and cold. Spray cans can spray liquid which freezes components, so be carefull. Also pay attention to static electricity if you use small brush, try not to touch chips and Ram.

Hope it helps,

David

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

I actually have one of these and I have disassembled to upgrade the M.2 disk and clean the dust out. You are correct to be worried about the rubber feet. Its a very thin band of very stretchable rubber. There are 2 of them and they are held in with what looks like rubber cement. Be careful not to stretch them out because if you do it is very hard to smash them back into the channel they come out of. They will come off and go back in with the residual glue that will be left behind. The whole thing is kind of skinny for 2 sided tape but if you sliced off a very thin strip of two-sided tape it might do the trick if you do not have enough residual glue to stick them back in.

Agree with @iomare. Since you can upgrade the M.2 SSD (memory is actually soldered to the motherboard as is the CPU), you do not risk voiding the warranty solely because you removed the back cover. But any damage or problems resulting are on you for sure. The back cover actually comes off very easily once you get the screws out. Be careful the screws are small. 

While you are in there you may want to remove the fan and heatsink and surgically apply some new high grade thermal compound like Arctic Silver with high metallic content in a very thin sheet across the top of the processor just on the core and not on the rest of the processor. Clean off the bottom of the heatsink with alcohol and it is even a good practice to shine it up with some emery cloth very carefully until you get a mirror-like finish. Blow out the dust and with a Q-tip and just a little alcohol clean the fine particulate dust off each blade of the fan. Let it dry completely before using. Also make sure to clean out the grille in the bottom cover.  Don't remove the strip of plastic blocking part of the grille. Its there for a reason.

People complain these run hot. Mine does not and I am sure if you do these things yours will run cooler, too.    

[EddyK]

Awesome! Thank you.

-kem579

[EddyK]

Wow, thank you for the detailed reply. Mine also runs quite hot so I hope this is somewhat of a permanent fix.

-kem579

[banhien]

Hi,

I read few "running hot on Spectre x360" posts from members and just asking my friend who bought 2 Spectre x360 13" machines within 1 year. He said both of them run very normal, one for his son (a PhD student) and one for his wife (a part time school teacher), they are happy with their machines. I don't think both of them are gamers.

Back to dust business, I've got few laptops at home, from few months old to 6 years old I can't see dust building up that hard (have to clean inside). My problem is dust on the keyboards and once a month I use my air blower (for my cameras) to blow dust away (Note: I use external keyboards over 90% of my time on computers).

I like those Spectre x360 13in laptops. By mistake, I did not get a 13" last year but a Spectre x360 15" with 4K screen. This year no x360 13" available when I put my order, ending up getting an Elitebook x360.

Regards.

[EddyK]

Thank you for the advice!

However, I think you've accidentally mistaken my HP Spectre 13 for the HP Spectre x360. I've heard pretty good reviews about those laptops. I would've chosen them over the Spectre 13 if I knew about the overheating issues a bit earlier because the Spectre 13s seem to overheat much more and have fan noise issues despite the fact that the both of them have quite similar profiles regarding thickness and portability. 

I'm also pretty uncertain whether or not to open the laptop up as I'm pretty inexperienced and because I'm not sure if the dust is the main issue. 

I've recently encountered severe fan noise for about 1 minute after every startup, after updating my laptop to the most recent BIOS but I think I should inquire about this in a different post. 

-kem579

[Huffer]

Yeah the 13-v series is the brown and bronze "world's thinnest" model no touch or rotating screen which is what I happen to have and use as my "daily driver" laptop. I have not had any trouble with mine but a significant number of folks report heat problems. 

[AhmedSamir1]

Hey i have the same problem. Did you cleaning it improve the thermals ? Also did you just clean it or did you also apply new thermal paste ?
Thanks in advance.