The somewhat larger chip labelled MCH at the bottom is the chipset that drives it. It doesn’t look it, but it does sport a whopping 47 million transistors. With the heatsink removed, we can see the two things that require cooling with this semi-efficient construction: the 1.6 GHz Intel N270 Atom CPU, codenamed “Diamondville” (the tiny thing at the top). There’s no need to remove the sticker on op of the fan: I did this thinking I could insert a bit of oil here, but there’s no access to the axle here. Pop off the power cable here and remove the screws that hold the silver plate in place. It’s attached to a custom made heatsink of sorts (the big silver thing in the picture). Not sure if that’s important or not, or if these can be obtained separately. Here’s the fan, a DC Brushless, Model KDB 04505HA. Then, with the VGA port facing left, start lifting the bottom case off on the right hand side, making sure it slides off over the VGA side of the board. Insert it near a corner and go round the whole laptop until each plastic clip has come lose. The best thing I found was a little green spudger, also courtesy of iFixit.

Now comes the tricky part, namely prying open the two halves of the plastic shell without breaking it, or damaging any of the little plastic teeth that hold it together. iFixit sell a set for less than $20 that I had as part of a iPhone Battery Replacement kit. Remove all those little screws at the bottom with a Phillips head screwdriver. Here’s how it works best, as far as I can remember: I’ve done it many times before, but weirdly, I always forget the most efficient and safest way to do it. The first thing I had to do to get to the inner workings of my little buddy was to open him up. It’s really easy to disassemble too – let me show you how I did it.īefore we begin, always shutdown the netbook and remove the battery and all peripherals (including the power cable). Turns out that the fan can be easily whipped back into shape with a drop of bicycle oil.

Well, that day has come at the beginning on this month, when I noticed a bit of rattling noise that started happening behind my big monitor. I knew the day would come on which the poor thing would either give up and need replacing, or at least require some maintenance to make it go a few extra miles. The only mechanical thing still in use is the internal fan. When I put it in operation 5 years ago, I made sure no mechanical parts we being used anymore to avoid wear and tear: I’ve added an SSD, and once a day valuable data is backed up on a permanently mounted SD card. It’s doing a great job as our internal office server, purring along quietly running CentOS 6. My Samsung NC10 Netbook has been in constant operation since 2013, for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Change wifi card on samsung nc10