Laptop Repair

My computer had an overheating problem, so I opened it up. And saw what can get inside over the course of 4+ years.

This thing was very difficult to put back together once I'd opened it up. For some reason, I ended up using less screws to put things back together. Being economical with screws or the realization of my limits on putting-stuff-back-together?

That white stuff doesn't look like something they soldered on to boost shader performance.

The black plastic sheet is "insulation material" according to the service manual. I'm not sure if what appears to be bacterial growth sprouting beneath it is supposed to be doing.

Some more insulation material.

At the end of it all, I managed to clean out quite a few dust balls from the CPU fan itself. On putting it back together (and saving quite a few screws in the process) I found that the CPU fan no longer spins. So it runs for a couple of minutes before overheating and switching off.

So lesson learned: when you have a lot of screws left over, something is wrong.

Also, the guys over at your local computer shop work hard to put all the screws back in. They deserve the credit, it's not easy to keep track of all those screws.