Fixing an XPS with a parking ticket: Is this a terrible idea?

[Musty]

My boss asked me to take a look at his laptop. It was BSOD with a failure to detect hard drive message.

 

Our IT department looked at it twice (taking a week each time) and told him it was fine, but as soon as he turned it on it crashed again.

 

When I looked at it i re-seated the M.2 hard drive and it worked fine for an hour while it was sat on my desk. As soon as I moved the laptop it failed again.

 

I noticed the M.2 had some flex to it, and the sticky pad on top of the M.2 that I guess normally prevents it from flexing with support from the chassis was a little worse for wear.

 

I don't know if this is a thermal pad or not? It didn't feel or look like one I've seen before.

 

Anyway... i reinforced it with what I had to hand. A folded up segment of parking ticket.

 

Everything works now, even if I give the laptop a good shake / throw around in my bag. 

 

I know its not a good fix, but it isn't going to cause any... long term issues is it? 

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

If it's stupid, but it works, it isn't stupid.

[gbkendall]

Shouldn't cause any long term issues. Only issue could (potentially) be throttling due to heat on the SSD. Most likely it was a thermal pad though, and those can be had for pretty cheap if you're noticing any performance dips due to heat. 

[Musty]

1 minute ago, gbkendall said:

Shouldn't cause any long term issues. Only issue could (potentially) be throttling due to heat on the SSD. Most likely it was a thermal pad though, and those can be had for pretty cheap if you're noticing any performance dips due to heat. 

 

Yeah overheating was my main concern if it was a thermal pad.

 

It was a relatively thick pad at some point in its life. Pale green with a sticky back and a spongy material 

 

I'll have a quick look online when i get a chance. Everything I've seen seems to be relatively thin which wouldn't help with the flex issue.

 

 

[gbkendall]

2 minutes ago, Musty said:

 

Yeah overheating was my main concern if it was a thermal pad.

 

It was a relatively thick pad at some point in its life. Pale green with a sticky back and a spongy material 

 

I'll have a quick look online when i get a chance. Everything I've seen seems to be relatively thin which wouldn't help with the flex issue.

 

 

From what I can see online, it looks like 1.5-2mm should be thick enough. You can also always squish two thermal pads together to make a thicker one if it ends up not being thick enough. 

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

4 minutes ago, Musty said:

Everything I've seen seems to be relatively thin which wouldn't help with the flex issue.

You can get thermal pads anywhere from .5mm to 6mm+ thick. You can try to guesstimate the gap you need to fill, or just get an assortment of thicknesses. It's a nice thing to have on hand.

[Musty]

2 minutes ago, gbkendall said:

From what I can see online, it looks like 1.5-2mm should be thick enough. You can also always squish two thermal pads together to make a thicker one if it ends up not being thick enough. 

Just now, Hairless Monkey Boy said:

You can get thermal pads anywhere from .5mm to 6mm+ thick. You can try to guesstimate the gap you need to fill, or just get an assortment of thicknesses. It's a nice thing to have on hand.

 

Thanks! I'll order some and swap one in when they arrive.

 

The temporary fix will at least give him a working machine in the short term. 

[Gazereths]

13 minutes ago, Musty said:

 

Yeah overheating was my main concern if it was a thermal pad.

 

It was a relatively thick pad at some point in its life. Pale green with a sticky back and a spongy material 

 

I'll have a quick look online when i get a chance. Everything I've seen seems to be relatively thin which wouldn't help with the flex issue.

 

 

If the thermal pad wasn't attached to a finned heatsink of somekind with some airflow it wasn't doing much. In my experience only the PCIe 4.0 SSD's need heatsinks anyway, and there's disagreement on whether the entire thing should have a heatsink or just the memory chips or controller.

 

You could install Crystal Disk Info to check the temps on the SSD and use Crystal Disk Mark to stress the SSD while checking temps.

 

Edit -  Stop parking illegally lmao

[Musty]

Just now, Gazereths said:

If the thermal pad wasn't attached to a finned heatsink of somekind with some airflow it wasn't doing much. In my experience only the PCIe 4.0 SSD's need heatsinks anyway, and there's disagreement on whether the entire thing should have a heatsink or just the memory chips or controller.

 

You could install Crystal Disk Info to check the temps on the SSD and use Crystal Disk Mark to stress the SSD while checking temps.

No finned heatsink, it was just directly contacting the aluminium chassis.

 

I would normally run some tests like this, but the laptop is totally locked down by our IT services. I don't have admin on it unfortunately. 

 

I would have normally booted to ubuntu from a memory stick to run some tests but my boss only has USBC ports and I don't have a USBC to USBA adaptor handy . 

[mmk]

Sounds like it was using the chassis as the heat sink.

 

[Musty]

19 minutes ago, Gazereths said:

Edit -  Stop parking illegally lmao

 

 It was an accident, I promise. 

 

I tried to pay on a mobile app, but because I was late for a meeting and rushing I didn't check the payment had processed properly .

 

Opened my phone after the meeting to a lovely error message.

[Gazereths]

8 minutes ago, Musty said:

 

 It was an accident, I promise. 

 

I tried to pay on a mobile app, but because I was late for a meeting and rushing I didn't check the payment had processed properly .

 

Opened my phone after the meeting to a lovely error message.

A likely story    I remember having an app that you had to start when you entered the car park and stop when you left.....I forgot to stop it and was charged for about 15 hours parking when I was there for about 3

 

Was there no standoff and screw holding the SSD down? Thermal pads aren't usually that sticky.

[Musty]

2 minutes ago, Gazereths said:

A likely story    I remember having an app that you had to start when you entered the car park and stop when you left.....I forgot to stop it and was charged for about 15 hours parking when I was there for about 3

 

Was there no standoff and screw holding the SSD down? Thermal pads aren't usually that sticky.

There is the normal screw and standoff securing the SSD down. But there seems to be some flex in the middle of the SSD. 

 

I'm not sure exactly what is causing the issue, because it should be fairly secure. Maybe the chassis itself is a little warped.

 

Anyway my best guess is that the fact thermal pad is squished between the chassis and the SSD helps to stop the SSD it flexing too much (just based on force / friction rather than adhesive. It isn't particularly sticky). 

 

The thermal pad on this looks worn and a little crushed, so might not be preventing the flex as well without some additional support.

 

 

 

 

[Gazereths]

1 hour ago, Musty said:

There is the normal screw and standoff securing the SSD down. But there seems to be some flex in the middle of the SSD. 

 

I'm not sure exactly what is causing the issue, because it should be fairly secure. Maybe the chassis itself is a little warped.

 

Anyway my best guess is that the fact thermal pad is squished between the chassis and the SSD helps to stop the SSD it flexing too much (just based on force / friction rather than adhesive. It isn't particularly sticky). 

 

The thermal pad on this looks worn and a little crushed, so might not be preventing the flex as well without some additional support.

 

 

 

 

Well I suppose a laptop would have more flex and movement than a desktop, and the manufacturer obvioulsy knew about the issue to put the pad there in the first place, though it's seems like a slight design flaw. My guess is it's just for stability and not a thermal solution. Is it a bog standard pcie3 SSD or maybe even SATA? If so it doesn;t really need cooling, also it wasn't as if the laptop was cutting out after prolonged use then be usable again, it wouldn't boot even when stone cold right??.

 

Surely your IT dept has backups of all the important stuff on the drive anyway, it'll just be your bosses porn that gets lost if it overheats and fries itself lol

[Musty]

2 minutes ago, Gazereths said:

Well I suppose a laptop would have more flex and movement than a desktop, and the manufacturer obvioulsy knew about the issue to put the pad there in the first place, though it's seems like a slight design flaw. My guess is it's just for stability and not a thermal solution. Is it a bog standard pcie3 SSD or maybe even SATA? If so it doesn;t really need cooling, also it wasn't as if the laptop was cutting out after prolonged use, it wouldn't boot even when stone cold.

Yeah it is a bog standard one. It is from a Dell XPS 15 2 in 1. I didn't actually check the exact model but it should be 3 or 4 years old by now and I don't think pcie4 support came to laptops until Tiger Lake was released last year? 

 

When I told my boss what the issue was, he said that he had been wondering what that grey / yellow stuff was that kept escaping out of his ports in when he removed cables .

 

I guess the original pad was just falling apart. Not ideal for what should be a high end laptop. 

[Gazereths]

2 minutes ago, Musty said:

I guess the original pad was just falling apart. Not ideal for what should be a high end laptop. 

Yeah, but at least it isn't a Mac with a soldered in 256GB SSD and 8GB of soldered in RAM.

[Musty]

4 minutes ago, Gazereths said:

Yeah, but at least it isn't a Mac with a soldered in 256GB SSD and 8GB of soldered in RAM.

 very true. An easy to remove back panel and a 5 minute fix is infinitely preferable.

 

Although it does make me wonder how our IT department had it for two weeks without figuring it out .