XMAS gift & a gooey mess: HP Pavillion for my little sister

Agonizel · December 17, 2020

Hi community,

This post is more about emotional sharing than anything else really. So I'm a psych major student, I work on the side at a fast food chain - pretty hard but the pay is good (12€/h).

I like spoiling my sister for Xmas and my mom doesn't have much money.
This year I decided to give my 14y/o sis her first very own Laptop!

So I get myself an absolute deal on Facebook Marketplace: A 2019 HP Pavillion i7 10th gen, 8GB of RAM, 512gb SSD, 1080p IPS 15.6" - backlit keyboard, all sorts of IO connections for 465€! It has 1 year warranty left.
In addition, the guy includes a laptop bag and a M220 wireless mouse, pretty cool right?

Thing is, the fan goes WWOOOOOSSHHHHHH on startup and it just doesn't stop. Pretty annoying. I download CPU FAN: 55-75°C on idle: noice.
By the way, the seller had this ABSOLUTE UNIT of a Cat. It meowed, walked and looked like the Dwayne Johnsons of cats. That cat must've been the mayor of the town's cats.
Anyway, I tell myself the reason why the fan struggles so much is that there's too many cat hair or dust in the laptop, maybe.

So I open it up: spotless. Damn. I spray around with my little airbottle compressor thingy I usually use for my keyboard. Maybe they forgot to apply thermal paste? So I unscrew the cooler and boi...
There was a litteral (but figurative) OCEAN of thermal paste; like the verge pc^10. Holy moly, no wonder the fan spins like an autistic child's fidget spinner, the heat just gets trapped into that swamp of thermal paste.
So, I take out the isopropylic alcohol, wash the damn thing and I apply that sweet MX4 at corresponding dosage. Close everything up: boom 28°C idle, silent as hell.

I was so happy, so proud. I'm stoked to see my sis' reaction to that prreeeeeemiuuuum Laptop I got her.
465€ for a one-year-old +1000€ Laptop, damn today was a good day!

Thanks for reading!

PS: That cat was so big, jesus