For the last couple of years, my laptop has been getting SUPER hot. Like, worryingly so. Too-hot-to-physically-touch-with-your-hands hot. The CPU itself never overheated though, so I was never sure exactly what was going on.

The laptop has a ridiculous heat distribution system that was locked up tighter than a fucking bank, and I always got scared off from taking it off to examine the issue.

But today, fed up of having a giant brick of a laptop, I finally did. I couldn't see any issues immediately, so as a last ditch I decided to try replacing the thermal paste. It was the only thing I could think of that might help, though I was somewhat doubtful that it would do anything.

Halfway through removing the thermal paste I have the brilliant insight that I should probably actually check that the thermal paste I was pretty sure I had was actually there.

Readers, it was not.

So now I'm stuck with a CPU with ruined thermal paste, no replacement thermal paste, and no way to easily get thermal paste.

And THEN I discover that, hidden by the ridiculous heat sink and not immediately obvious even once it's off, there was a small little cavity between the fans and their respective exterior grills that was absolutely caked with dust and lint. Completely packed in, wall to wall on BOTH fans. I'm honestly amazed the fans could still spin.

So, the good news is that I'm pretty sure I found my problem.

The bad news is that I now have to wait for some probably unnecessary thermal paste so I can actually reassemble the damn thing and hope I didn't fuck anything up removing the absurd heat sink assembly.