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Hi, I just bought a used ThinkPad x230T and wanted advice on cleaning fan and adding thermal paste. What is my decision point on doing these things, given it is about a 6+ year old machine?
Even in a good environment, the thermal paste is always shot after 5 years - with cleaning being worse on some machines but easier on others. It will still make the job much easier even though you don’t have one of the difficult systems. Since this is a old Lenovo, you can get away with using high concentration isopropyl alcohol or even denatured if you have it. I don’t recommend the AS5 iFixit sells as I have had trouble with the paste drying out and curing wrong, but have not had such issues with Artic MX-4.
Hi @redjay , After 6+ years and if you don’t know what kind of life it had and in what environment it was kept it may be worthwhile to open it up and clean the fan and clean off and replenish the thermal paste on the CPU. This action may keep it going for much longer, with less problems than if you didn’t. Here’s a link to the service manual for the tablet. Scroll to p.89 to view the necessary pre-requisite steps and then the procedure to remove/replace the thermal fan assembly. It also shows how to re-apply a new coat of thermal paste on p.92.
