Recommended Product

Arctic Silver 5

This stuff rocks. So a while back I noticed some really problematic slowdown in my computer. Those of you who have been around here awhile may remember that back in the day I had a similar problem with my otherwise high-end machine. At the time, it was under warranty, and a quick trip back to the manufacturer for a new CPU took care of the problem. Now, that same repair would be astronomically expensive, so I did a little research to see if I could fix it on my own.

First, I gave it a good cleaning. Downloaded the repair guide, stripped it down, blew some air in, cleaned some dust clogs very deep in the machine. I felt very manly. Or at least geekly. Meekly?

Anyway, that worked for about 5 days, and then it started to slow down again. Like Windows 3.0 slow. Very bad. So I did some more digging. I thought back to when I had pulled out the CPU - it had made a very loud sprucking sound, and popped off the board still attached to the heat sink. The thermal paste (a substance whose existence has only just recently been revealed to me) had hardened into a dry film on the CPU backing, effectively rendering its heat dissipation powers useless.

So a week later I went in again with some rubbing alcohol and a new vial of Arctic Silver 5. One rice-sized dollop later and it was all back together and powering up. Now, aside from swapping RAM chips and AGP cards, I haven't really gone digging into the guts of a computer since they came with an -86 attached to the end of their names. Going into an out of warranty laptop had me a little nervous. But you do what you have to when the alternative is $4000 planned obsolescence.

I was expecting to see a little improvement, but nothing major. Happily, to my surprise, the change was instant. As soon as it booted up I could see the difference, and within minutes I was flying through Paragon City at top speed and playing quicktime files without the fans spinning up like hydroelectric turbines. So it really works. I highly recommend it.