Is it worth opening a 12-year-old laptop to clean the heat sink and replace thermal paste?

[powerstarprince]

Hi there! I have an HP Pavilion g4 laptop, which I purchased on December 31, 2012. It's 12.5 years old now. I replaced the Toshiba HDD with a Samsung 870 EVO SSD in January 2021. I bought a Lapcare battery in September 2021. I installed Linux Mint over Windows 8.1 in September 2021. I replaced one 2GB RAM module with an ADATA 4GB RAM module in October 2023. I removed the Ralink RT5390BC8 WiFi and Bluetooth adapter in June 2025. I use a TP-LINK T3U USB wireless adapter.

I play an old Windows MMORPG game called "Ragnarok Online" on a private server that runs with the help of Wine on my Linux laptop. The CPU temperatures are around 95 degrees Celsius. The temperatures on Windows 8.1 back in 2021 were around 75 degrees Celsius with Intel Turbo Boost disabled.

The laptop runs well even after 12 years. It is sufficient for me as a secondary laptop. I went to an HP authorised service centre, and the engineer refused to service it as the laptop is more than 12 years old. He said it is difficult to service old laptops. Since it turned on fine, he didn't want to take a risk. He suggested I visit another service centre authorised for DELL to have it serviced by an experienced engineer.

I haven't gone there yet. But I would like to ask if it's worth it. Can it reduce the CPU temperatures for the game to around 80 degrees Celsius? I couldn't disable Intel Turbo Boost on Linux Mint.

I can use the laptop for another two years. The last time I went to a service centre to clean the heat sink was in 2018 or 2019. I don't think they have replaced the thermal paste in my previous three visits to the HP authorised service centre. What's your opinion?

 

[SaiyanGoku]

Do it yourself. Don't even bother going to service centers when they don't know how to do anything other than formatting the disk and installing pirated software.

 

[powerstarprince]

I have watched a YouTube video and read the service manual. I feel it isn't easy to do it myself. I have never dismantled a laptop before. But I was able to remove the service cover to replace the RAM, SSD, and WiFi card.

Shall I remove the battery and use it? The Lapcare battery has died after 1.5 years. I should have purchased an OEM battery for around ₹2000. I always use the laptop plugged in now.

I think the Arctic MX-4 thermal paste should be sufficient for my processor. I wouldn't know the thermal compound that the service centre uses.

 

[powerstarprince]

My AMD Radeon HD 7670M GPU (Discrete) stopped working as my laptop couldn't suspend, restart or shut down normally. I had to disable the GPU in the GRUB file for it to boot normally. It can now suspend, restart and shut down well. I thought it was a kernel issue, but that wasn't the case. The GPU could have stopped working due to overheating. The laptop now runs on the HD 4000 GPU (Integrated).

If I had replaced the thermal paste of both the CPU and GPU, this wouldn't have happened. I'm not sure if I can enable the GPU again in case I do replace the thermal paste. I have also missed a few laptop deals last week. I found out that Amazon wouldn't exchange my old laptop if the battery is dead. Cashify or Flipkart would also reduce the exchange price to ₹2000 or less since the battery is dead and there is no wireless card.

I was considering purchasing either the Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 6 with AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS or the ASUS Vivobook 14 with AMD Ryzen 5 330. It would be great if my laptop fetches at least ₹4000 from the exchange offer. Can I expect better deals for Diwali? Is it also worth replacing thermal paste now so I can use the laptop for another one or two years?